[Janel]

This may or may not be the right place for this topic, but here goes anyway. Do any of you use PowerPoint to present yourselves or your work? We have learned to wrangle with computers, digital cameras and photo preparation, web design and cell phones in the past decade or more. It is about time that PowerPoint presentation creating has its introduction, at least into my life.

For the first time, I am preparing a PowerPoint presentation. It is to be shown at the upcoming Collectors of Wood Art meeting in mid-January 2008 in Scottsdale, AZ. The collectors have set aside a block of time to "meet" the artists by watching their ten minute PP presentations. The first CWA/Artist's PP presentations took place at SOFA/Chicago last November, and was a wonderfully successful way to meet each of the artists. We all knew them for speaking with, and for looking at their work in galleries, but the additional information shared with visual aid, and time with our attention made each introduction very memorable.

So now I am teaching myself this program, asking questions, consulting the internet, email to a friend and a phone call to another and simpler help from my son. I am still not sure about many things, and am hopeful that it will translate gracefully from my computer to being projected before an audience. There are elements, pieces of information, which are not written as answers to the questions I have, so I move forward with hope and trust.

Are any of the members familiar with PowerPoint, and are there basic and good to know tips to make this tool work to our best advantage? The greatest concerns I have at this point include image preparation, and what to expect or anticipate at the other end, the host computer/projector system.

Janel

[toscano]

Janel,
I use Powerpoint for work all the time and would be happy to talk you through it.
PM me.

t

[Janel]

I wonder if other members are interested too, or maybe I am just a dinosaur and am way behind the times and everyone else?

Back when, waaaay back, when I was a liberal arts student getting a BA in Art, students of the arts did not get training on how to do any of the business or promotion aspects of being self-employed as artists. I jumped into the world with a keen eye towards doing what ever it took to get by. After the decades of work and experience, there is still a lot to learn, and when computers and digital images joined the list of tools, the learning curve rose steeply. Fortunately I am still trainable! The challenge is living an hour away from educational resources with real people, though the internet helps tremendously, if I know how to ask the right questions.

Tassos, thanks for the offer of help. I will contact you when you have some free time.

Janel

[toscano]

Janel, on Jan 4 2008, 07:49 AM, said:

I will contact you when you have some free time.

I wouldn't wait for that. It may never happen
t

[Jim Kelso]

Hi Janel,

As a Mac user, as I know you are, I would recommend the native Keynote which I've been playing around with. Not as feature-bloated as Powerpoint and very intuitive for a Mac user. The file is exportable as a Powerpoint file.

Jim

[Janel]

Thanks Jim, that is food for thought! I don't have iWork native to my generation of Mac, so I would need to purchase that package. I do have Microsoft Office 2004 Student Addition though, well, rather our son does... I'll learn about Mac's Keynote/iWork and upgrade at some point.

I've got a phone date with a reliable resource set for today, and will get some questions answered plus more, I hope! So far, disregarding the questions about image preparation and file size, the slide preparation is fairly intuitive, and the HELP resource is adequate at best. I am not preparing anything very sophisticated, just lots of photos to show as background to speaking about the work. A different sort of presentation would have to be made if such a presentation would be made without me there speaking.

Thanks for the info, I like Mac things.

Janel

[b_art79]

Hi Janel,
My father has this problem with his eyes. He can't tell difference between colours. This is a thing to think about making a pp pres. for excample it's hard to read with yellow on green, white on black and ofcourse you should not use a lot of text. Just small fraises (?) or words who will guide you trough your presentation. For placing pics. you can use a very low resolution because you will probebly project on a wall. Beamers project mostly around 60 dpi so it's now use to place pics bigger than that.
I use pp a lot for school, it's handy but it's only a guide for your presentation...
Don't let PP take over your personallity!
Good luck and maybe you can place it on tcp when it's finished... good for tips...
Cheers Bart

[Janel]

Thank you Bart. Those are helpful and good to know suggestions. My color scheme is black background, a single fine line near the top, leaving enough space for titles or subject statements, the text is in a gray color so it is not too jumpy. The main content is photos.

I don't know if or how to resize a power point presentation down to a web friendly size. Any ideas about this?

Thanks to my phone instruction/date for your thoughtful help. I understand it much better now.

Back to work now, I need to look busy!

Janel

[b_art79]

Hi Janel,
I believe it's not really possible to bring the size of a hole pp presentation down to a web-friendly size.
You can only keep the size of the file small by using low resolution pics. For digital pics I think you can even go to 32 dpi but you will probebly show detailed pics so this is not the best option. I believe you should do with 60 dpi.
Anyway your pp presentation will probably be around the 3 or 4 mb with quit a lot of pics.
Good luck!
Bart