Powerful presentations

Data visualisation - modern approaches
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/
Abstract: Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.

So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before?

Let’s take a look at the most interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.

Secrets of a Winning Presentation Useful Commute Podcast (audio presentation)
http://blogs.bnet.com/intercom/?p=1795&tag=nl.rSINGLE
Extracts: Design your content and presentation around the context of the audience before and after the presentation - what background has led them to invest in this presentation, and what will they be hoping to do better after the presentation.

Interaction is what makes people remember a presentation as it embeds the information deeply in their thinking. At the simplest level, this means asking questions of individuals in the audience and then responding directly to their answers. More sophisticated technological solutions are also available, however, focus on the audience rather than the technology.

PowerPoint is only a tool - it is a platform for displaying content. You should not use PowerPoint to organise your content, do that separately and get it right first. Then consider how best to display that content. This will lead you to prepare more interesting presentations that appropriately utilise images and key points, rather than overloading the audience with written content.