Slideshare's PowerPoint contest is almost over.  Tomorrow is the last day for submissions.  There will be a week of voting after that.  Please vote on the submissions, it is how we can improve the quality of PowerPoint presentations.

I have submitted 2 presentations for this contest.  One presentation is about myself, the other a tongue in cheek look at Edward Tufte's famous PowerPoint quote where he said that PowerPoint is evil.  Check them both out below:

With my trusty new iPhone in hand I decided to peruse the App Store. I found an application by Wooji Juice called Stage Hand.

Stage Hand is a way to have the power of Keynote in your hand.  You can control Keynote, see upcoming slides, view your notes, and even highlight your slides.  This is the equivalent of Presenter View in the palm of your hand!!

Someone needs to create a version that works with PowerPoint.

Right now, you can hack together a solution using remote desktop software such as Mocha VNC for the iPhone.  It is not quite as nice as a custom app though.

SlideShare has announced a contest humbly titled, "The World's Best Presentation Contest '08."

Last year's winner was Shift Happens.  Take a look to get an idea of the level of entries you will be facing.  Current entries for this contest can be found here.

There are some great prizes including an Apple MacBook Air and an Amazon Kindle.

There are 6 categories this year, Business, Picture Slideshows, Technology, Educational, Creative/Offbeat, and About Me.  You can enter up to 10 times which is nice.

The 4 judges are Guy Kawasaki, Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Bert Decker.

I am planning to enter in a few of the categories.  We'll see what happens.  You have until August 7th (it was July 31st) to enter.  I will post my entries below:

| View | Upload your own

Here is my second entry:

Your audience cares 8 times more about how you appear than what your message is!  Not only that, but they care over 5 times more about the tone of your voice than your message!

It's true!  A study, backed with hard data, says so.  We have likely heard it before, and to be honest, a lot of us believe it despite being appalled by the implication.

Hold on a second!

Can this really be true?  It turns out that this "hard data" is often misunderstood.  Let's look at the facts...

Albert Mehrabian found in 1971 that there are three elements to any face-to-face communication:

• words
• tone of voice
• body language

These three elements are often abbreviated as the "3 Vs" for Verbal, Vocal, and Visual.  Mehrabian discovered that they are not all of equal importance.  He assigned the level of importance as follows:

• Verbal: 7%
• Vocal: 38%
• Visual: 55%

The implication is that people pay much more attention to your body language and tone of voice than your actual message.  This can be quite disconcerting for the would-be presenter.  Presenters typically put most of their effort into creating their message.

So, should you spend less time on your words and focus instead on your tone of voice and body language?

The answer is no!

Mehrabian defined these levels of importance when the elements were incongruent.  In other words, if your words and your body language are out of sync, people will believe your body language more.  Likewise, if your voice sounds nervous, we are less likely to believe what you are saying.

How does this relate to PowerPoint?

Your PowerPoint presentation falls under the Visual category (hopefully).  If your PowerPoint slides are not congruent with the rest of your presentation, the audience will likely believe your PowerPoint!

This means that when you create your PowerPoint, your message needs to be built into your slides.  If you want to have fun and entertain the audience, then your slides had better reflect that.  Likewise, if you are pitching to a major investor, using cheesy clipart is not going to help your cause.

Your PowerPoint presentation reflects your brand, and is a major piece of your presentation.  Spend the time and effort on your slides to make sure they complement your style, and enhance your message rather than detract from it.

Look at your PowerPoint slides.  Do they match your message?