Certified Arts Manager
As of today, I am certified by the University of Ulster as an Arts Manager.
Yay for me! Today was the final, "presentation" day. We had all (16 of us) completed three academic assignments through the year (Leadership, Personal Development Planning, and Marketing) and were given our final grade on those, but today we had to do a presentation on... "Something". Some way the course had helped us do something in our jobs. It's an arts management course, and everyone in it is an Arts Manager or some description, so the variety and "artistic-ness" of the presentations was great.
Mine was very techie. As in Theatre Techie, Health & Safety, that kind of techie.
Here's the Powerpoint presentation if anyone wants to have a look. Everyone thought it was brilliant, I thought it was ok, and it was the only one anyone wanted to ask questions about, and provoked discussion during the presentation. In a good way like. People were interested, if not necessarily entertained. :-)
It's fairly A-B-C, but if any Powerpoint Ninjas out there want to give (constructive) feedback or ask questions, please do.
(Special thanks to iRed Lite for assisting me in using my Apple Remote for my Presentation, letting me walk around in a much more relaxed fashion, and enabling me to gesture profusely, as is my wont)
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Comments
Congratulations Matt...great going.
Posted by: Treasa | June 25, 2007 11:08 PM
The PP made my eyes water, but that's cause its B & W and I have a small light which is crap on, my favourite bit was that you used the word "status quo" in an ACTUAL sentence, brilliant!
Posted by: babs | June 26, 2007 1:10 AM
I was trying to work "plethora" in there somewhere as well but I thought it might be going a bit too far.
Posted by: Matt | June 26, 2007 2:14 AM
I'll not dig up comments you made on never using powerpoint when I made a big presentation to say.
"Well done bro"
If you want feedback on the presentation I would say (and thanks to Dan for helping teach me some of these things.
Your content is great, it really was. It just was distracted a bit by
- Too much transitions
- Too much text
You don't need that many transitions. Each slide should flow into each other so I pay attention to YOU, instead of being pulled out by the transition. Good use of animation is bringing up each bullet as they come up, so I'm only focussing on one thing at a time. You don't need the whizz from one slide to the next.
Also break up the text a bit. Give the audience some help taking it in visually. Use imagery (graphs, pictures, decals, shapes) to help people understand the concept. Visuals do make a lot easier to deliver concepts than text.
You want the audience to focus on you as much as possible so you want to make the slide ware the easy thing to not get distracted on.
That feedback aside, the content was great and that's what count. I'm sure you delivered it fantastically, and so any feedback is merely constructive as you did ask.
Posted by: Adrian | June 26, 2007 2:37 PM
Cheers duderino, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.
As I was doing a lot of gesturing (I love the gesturing) during the talky bits, I actually wanted the transitions to draw the audiences' attention, so I made them more whizz-bang as a result. But I know what you mean.
And it was after all the first time I'd ever used Powerpoint, and I lashed the whole thing together in a rush on Sunday evening too.
Posted by: Matt | June 26, 2007 2:48 PM
Hurrah for Matt! Qualified and certified - you're great and you rule.
Posted by: annie | June 26, 2007 8:00 PM
Congratulations on the certification. Great work.
My presentation tips would be similar to Adrian's. You need to break the text up a bit.
And the number one rule we have for teaching our consultants is - no animations. The only one we allow is the "Appear" one. And even that has to be used sparingly. You want to respect your audience not treat them as children by hiding all the information until you tell them it is okay for them to read it. If there are more that 2 animations on a slide I usually tell someone it needs to be re-done.
Just my 2c.
Posted by: SK | June 26, 2007 9:20 PM
Thanks for the 2c's worth, appreciated. Breaking up the text seems to be a common criticism.
As regards the animations, as I say, it was a room full of theatrical types, and smoke and mirrors were appropriate tools. Had it been a room full of bankers, I daresay there would have been less sparkle.
Oh, and I'm totally not a consultant either, thank God (or whoever). :-)
Posted by: Matt | June 26, 2007 10:11 PM
Ah Janey Matt. I don't know nuffink about PP but I thought it was deadly.. and funny.
Well done to you!!!
So are you going to show me how to do this blogging thing? I am very enthusiastic as you know. Plus I want to show off pics of Isobel (AKA gorgeous girl)
love Becca x
Posted by: Rebecca | June 26, 2007 11:18 PM
That baba will end up conceited, I thought it was Gorgeous Girlo? :)
Posted by: babs | June 27, 2007 12:03 AM
Congrats, Matt! Lovely presentation, too.
Posted by: Calista | June 27, 2007 3:19 AM
Congratulations! That's great news.
Posted by: Stuart | June 27, 2007 2:25 PM
Congrats diggity-dog.
Yeah I echo what Adrian said. Powerpoint is about reinforcing what you are saying with useful and connective imagery. It's also good practice to let each slide flow into the next so it feels like you are watching a coherent body rather than a series of slides.
The thing about Powerpoint is that a bad presentation actually detracts from what you are saying, but it doesn't take a lot of effort to make one that enhances, or at the very least complements, what you are saying.
I thought you used a good amount of words. Studies show that virtually everyone stops reading after thirteen words, and they are also not listening to you when they are reading and they lose track of your flow, which is what the presentation should be trying to enhance. Words should be for titles and labels only, IMO. Everything else should be reinforcing images.
I can go on and on about this, I'm quite the powerpoint-presentation nerd.
Posted by: Destructor | June 29, 2007 3:00 AM
Congrats to you Matt!
Posted by: aquaasho | July 2, 2007 11:14 PM