Pointed & Impassioned Blog » Online Resources

A periodic table of presenting information visually

george — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:57:58 +0000

If you’re ever stuck thinking of ways to communicate information visually, then bookmark the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. All you do is mouse-over one of the squares on the table and you’re presented with a visual sample of how you can organize materials.

And because the table is from the Visual Literacy group, it’s well laid out visually. Colour coding quickly tells you if an element is useful for visually communicating a metaphor or displaying data or laying out a strategy, while symbols indicate how much and what kind of detail is offered in the examples. Brilliant!

Overview of critiques of the Democratic Convention speeches

george — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:14:51 +0000

Six Minutes has a great summary of the Democratic Convention speeches – videos of the main players and quotes from various critics were looking at the technical aspects of the speeches rather than the politics.

Get a quick overview of your word usage

george — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:14:13 +0000

Want a visual way of analyzing word usage in your presentations? Then you’ll love Wordle.net. It creates a word cloud of your most commonly-used words, and gives you a lot of control over what it looks like.

I entered the text of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last night, and you’ll see how the word PROMISE jumps out. Handy way of checking to make sure you’re emphasizing the words you want to emphasize.

A top 10 best presentations list

george — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:53:20 +0000

Found this great list of all-time best presentations as picked by KnowHR – with links to video so you can decide if you agree. They also have a follow-up top 10 from their readers.

Online services for creating presentations

george — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:34:56 +0000

Here’s a helpful list from ReadWriteWeb of online services which allow you to create presentations in the comfort of your own browser. The one on the list which most intrigued me was Slide Rocket.

I’ve also been playing with a new Flash presentation creator called Flypaper – I love their tag line “stories that stick.” I’ll be looking at that in more detail soon (though it IS summer and…)

Online collaboration tool makes great proving ground

george — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:37:38 +0000

What if you don’t have the time, the venue, or the people to run through some practice presentations in person? I’ve been trying out a free online tool that might help. It’s called Elluminate, an e-learning system used by a lot of academics to do virtual collaboration and teaching. Here’s a screenshot:

Now of course you could load up your presentation materials on a place like SlideShare and get feedback, but what I like about Elluminate is that it’s live, with audio and video, so you can get immediate feedback and even try changing things in real time. Then there’s the application sharing, the desktop display functions, and lots more.

Best of all, there’s a simple version of the system which is free, allowing up to three people to join you for a mini-roundtable.