Presentations
Learn to Plan, Create, and Deliver a Riveting Keynote Presentation
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4.2 • 56 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Most presentations are terrible. That, however, does not need to be the case for your presentations. Author David Sparks, a trial attorney and seasoned technology speaker, explains how to create your own exceptional presentation. This Presentations Field Guide explains how to plan a presentation that will connect with your audience, the technical wizardry to create a stunning presentation, and walks you through presentation day to make sure it goes off without a hitch. The book was built entirely in iBooks Author. There are 44 screencasts, embedded Keynote files, audio interviews, and other rich media assets to help you make your next presentation riveting. The material is accessible to beginners and power users alike with a thoughtful, fun, and systematic approach to planning, creating, and delivering a stellar presentation.
Chapters include:
1. The Trouble with Presentations
Presentation technology should make life easier. So why does everyone groan and mumble "Death by PowerPoint" when they see a projector? This universal disdain for presentations doesn't need to apply to yours.
2. Tell a Story
Before you start putting together the whiz-bang technology, you need to spend time and energy planning what you are going to say. Specifically, you need to connect to your audience and plan out the ebb and flow of a presentation that is compelling. Every great presentation tells a story. This chapter explains how to develop your story and, step-by-step, turn that story into a great presentation.
3. Apple Keynote
Apple's Keynote presentation application has some remarkable tools for turning your story into a captivating presentation. This chapter uses detailed descriptions, screenshots, and video screencasts to help you transform your ideas into an impressive presentation. Keynote has a lot of power and with versions for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and the web, you'll be able to create and tell your story just about anywhere. This chapter details Keynote's history, installation, file management, themes, screen layout, master slides, use of text, creation of graphics and images, charts and tables, timelines, hyperlinking objects, animation, transitions, slide organization, sharing options, preferences, and keyboard shortcuts. This is all written for easy comprehension with many examples and screencasts to take you from Keynote novice to pro all within the pages of this book.
4. Other Presentation Software
While Keynote is the software of focus of this book, this chapter covers other applications available for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and the web for turning your story into a great presentation. These alternative applications include PowerPoint, Prezi, and more with explanations of their best features and ideal uses.
5. Presentation Day
Once you've got your story nailed down and turned it into a compelling presentation, you'll need to shine your shoes, stand up, and deliver. This chapter is full of practical advice from someone with many years' experience delivering presentations ranging from what to do before you leave the house to the best techniques for delivering your story.
This is the fifth book in the MacSparky Field Guide series. This book, beautifully designed and a joy to read This multimedia book (1.2GB) includes many rich media assets including photo galleries, screenshots, illustrations, over 2 hours of video screencasts, and audio interviews all engineered to make you a master presenter.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Dedicated to helping people “get the most out of Apple technologies,” the MacSparky Field Guides are hugely informative as well as surprisingly fun. In this installment, author David Sparks (a lawyer by training) uses lively writing and funny examples to walk you, step by step, through the process of planning a knockout presentation. With audio interviews, sample presentations, and other interactive features—including two hours of original video—Sparks helps you figure out your story arc and use Keynote and other apps to strengthen your message and capture your audience’s attention. Whether you’re preparing to speak at a work event or a family reunion—and no matter if you're a public speaking novice or a pro—Presentations is an indispensable resource that’s detail-oriented but never dry.
Customer Reviews
Great book, but format too “locked down"
As a college professor, I enjoyed the content and found it very helpful. My only nitpick is that the ibook was not friendly to my choice of reading and taking notes. On the mac, the ibooks font was too large, trimming the right portion of the text. I could not figure out how to resize the font. So, I took it to the iPad to read and take notes. I have an external keyboard that connects to my iPad Air 2 in landscape mode. Unfortunately, I could not get the ibooks content to rotate horizontally. Every time I wanted to switch to the notes app to write something down, I had to constantly move my iPad from portrait to landscape. So I spent hundreds of pages holding my iPad vertically with the keyboard attached. I think I recall David mentioning in an MPU episode that this ibook was really “locked down” in its presentation. He was not kidding!
Good content, poor editing
I'm a fan of David Sparks work. I have bought his previous Field Guide books and found them useful and well edited.
'Presentations' doesn't feel like it was properly edited. I am only partially through, but I have found a number of editing and layout errors, from poor sentence structure to a improper layouts. For example, a large map followed by a full-page quote completely interrupts the flow of text from page 47 to 51, forcing me to flip back and forth to get the connection.
The content seems good (I did an initial skim), by the editorial errors drive me to distraction. Hopefully Mr. Sparks will submit a better edited version soon.
...and I thought I knew all about presentations
Having read all David's iBooks I believe this is his best work yet! I just started though after the 1st few sections and having glanced through the rest there is lots I (even as experienced presenter) will gain for this book esp. for presentations with my MAC and iOS devices. Very well done!