Project presentation is the most feared yet the most anticipated part of a project. Creating a good impression is an important factor to make your clients or bosses take your presentation considerably. So if you have worked your hardest to achieve what you are about to present, you need to make sure that you use high quality supplies as your presentation material.

Presentation folders are what your bosses or clients hold on to as a guide to your presentation, in this light your presentation folder is as important as the content it holds. These are also great use for holding your document in a neat manner. Make sure that you do not use low grade materials as your folder, instead make a custom presentation folder designs that will represent you and your project.

Custom presentation folder, may be ordered or made according to your preference, and the best reference to get a valuable design is to relate it somehow to your project. There are numerous online sites out there that you can use to download your custom folder designs and some do not actually require you to pay them anything however if you need bulk of these folders, it is best that you order them, for this will save you time and money.

However you may want to hire a company to make a custom presentation folder for you if you really are facing a very important crowd or if you don’t have a good color photo printer installed. A professional printing company can handle almost all your demands to make your presentation folder. They are equipped with high grade printing machines that could make your folder look more appealing and professional looking.

Another factor that must be considered is the demand for these folders, some companies order custom presentation folders that contains the company logo. This idea would not only make your company have a standard type of folder, you will also create an impression that your company is a serious business. Files can be stacked neatly inside these folders to prevent important files to get smudges or unnecessary folds.

Companies that produce custom made folders are available through the internet; all you need to do is look for the one that offers much higher discount for bulk orders.

The best thing about hiring professionals to do it for you is that you are sure to get the most out of the designs and would surely create a positive feedback on your reputation.

One of the most common problems I have observed in many meetings & presentations is that many people do not appear to know – or are not interested in – how to “work the room” elegantly in order to network more effectively. Here, I am talking about both speakers / presenters and members of the audience! Many audience members merely enter the room, look for a place to sit and then start playing with their smart phone, iPad / tablet or laptop and drift off into their own little world until the event starts. Many speakers / presenters do little more than set up their equipment (if necessary), and like the audience members, do their own thing until it is time to “perform”.

It is vital to remember the purpose of these types of events is to communicate with PEOPLE from the very beginning. I do not mean from the moment the “owner” of the meeting calls everyone to order or the presenter takes his place, I mean from the moment that people start arriving in the room – that’s when it becomes a communicative activity.

These days, it is not enough to be an expert in your chosen field, you also have to be able to communicate this expertise to everyone in order to progress along your desired career path. This requires visibility and one way to obtain it is through elegant and effective presentations and another way is through the construction of an effective and wide network of fellow professionals that know and trust you. For this reason, one should always take advantage of every opportunity to expand your network and meetings are a great way to do it.

Some people become very nervous or self-conscious in these contexts and prefer to avoid introducing themselves for fear of rejection or “putting their foot in it” by saying something silly or inappropriate, however it is important to remember that many other people also suffer from the problem and they appreciate someone else making the first move! Be a leader, not a follower!

1. Arrive early if presenting or running a meeting. Get everything arranged the way YOU want it, set up your equipment (if necessary) and then get ready to greet as many people as possible!
2. If you are a member of the audience or meeting participant: Enter the room, stop in the doorway or just inside the room, look around to see who is there, find a place to sit & put your stuff down and then start networking!
3. Rapidly greet the people you know well already – focus on the unknowns! You WILL have time to talk more with those that you already know later.
4. Look for people that appear interesting – for whatever reason – and walk straight up to them.
5. Approach groups of two or three people use their Non verbal communication as a guide to whether you can join them or not.
6. Take the first steps, if you appear friendly and open, people will normally reflect your behaviour back to you!
7. Give your name & job. Then ask the other person about themselves – nothing personal!!!
8. Introduce people that you already know to those that you have just met so that they can extend their networks, too.
9. Circulate around the room – do NOT sit down and do your thing or stand up and become a wallflower!
10. Have lots of your business cards easily accessible and share them out. Get business cards from new contacts cards whenever possible. Actually read both sides of the card as soon as you receive them – it is perceived in many cultures as a sign of respect!
11. During the meeting / presentation sit beside someone that you do not know. Always introduce yourself to the people sitting to the left and right of you!
12. Do not initiate conversations during the event, but you can respond – briefly!
13. During coffee breaks, change-overs, etc., continue networking.
14. Never complain about anything (speaker, ideas, installations, etc.) – if something is bad, remain “neutral” – you never know who you are talking to!
15. Beware of the cultural norms governing introductions: in Spain, kissing on both cheeks is common while in other countries it is frowned upon! Check out what is permitted BEFORE the event.

While it often common for some people to feel inhibited in certain contexts and many may find it difficult to initiate communication with unknown people, it is important to remember that the other participants are there for the same reasons that they are. This means that there are certain shared interests for everyone present which provide a real and valid reason for someone to start the communication. So, why don’t you take the first step?

In addition, it is generally recognized that an extended network can be of great benefit to all its’ members by providing a great source of information for those who need it!
If the first time is difficult, the second time will be much easier and the third time even easier and from then on you should have absolutely NO problems.

Remember: Practice Makes Perfect!

When was the last time you went to a presentation and came away impressed by the slides?

It is, of course, fashionable these days to speak negatively about PowerPoint, and how most on-screen presentations put audiences to “death” with an onslaught of one bullet-pointed paragraph of words after another. It is also true that the same people who like to trash PowerPoint often create mind-numbing program themselves, and then claim that it’s not their fault – their bosses make them beget slides that turn brains to butter.

Although businesspeople are pretty much stuck with PowerPoint these days, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, there have been a few pioneers out there who are trying to change the ways we use slides to convey information or persuade others to see things our way. And so even though PowerPoint is still very much alive and kicking, we think that bullet points as knowledge builders might be doomed: some designers at the cutting edge are trying new forms and structures.

One person whose work you should know if you don’t already is Cliff Atkinson. According to Michael McLaughlin, coauthor with Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, “Cliff Atkinson believes he’s built a better mouse trap. He wants us to dump boring, bullet-riddled slides, and he has a creative solution: he taps Hollywood-style storytelling to transform PowerPoint presentations from endless lists of bullet points into compelling communications.”

Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points shows you how to use the power of storytelling to make PowerPoint presentations effective communication tools, not just speaker notes. With Atkinson’s method, you not only produce presentations that are not boring, but you are also forced to think about what you are saying in a way that all audiences relate to: telling them a story.

You should also be aware of Lawrence Lessig, who has created a buzz over the last couple years with what he believes is a “minimalist” presentation design approach. It’s interesting, and definitely worth getting up to speed on it if you’re in the presentation business. The best example of this style that we’ve seen is in a keynote given by a guy named Dick Hardt. You really need to watch this performance to appreciate its power as an antidote to the common business presentation. Here is just one link: identity20.com/media/OSCON2005.

The problem I have with this approach is that while its followers consider it minimalist because there is typically no more that one word or image on the screen at a time, virtually EVERY word in the narrative is projected, so that with a little practice, the presenter simply delivers a completely pre-written script. It is interesting to watch and definitely holds your attention throughout, but rather than putting the presenter at the center of the process, the result is that 99% of the audience’s attention is drawn to the screen.

The really scary thing here is that it probably will have huge appeal to NewGens and younger, who unfortunately have no idea how to relate to another human except through the interface of some electronic device. So this is presentation as video-game / hip hop / text-message-me-from-the-end-of-the-bar. The presentation IS the screen, and the presenter gets kudos for his electronic design skills rather than her ability to be human.

Of course, your Master of the PowerPoint Universe here has not been asleep at the switch for the past couple years, this year you will see the World Premiere of what we are offering up as a whole new language of presentation design, with its own very tight grammar, all based on using minimalism to focus the audience on the presenter.

We haven’t yet decided how to brand it (“Beyond Bullet Points” is already taken, and “Pointless” doesn’t sound very value-added). Internally we’ve been referring to it as The Language of the Bar because we use vertical lines (bars) instead of bullet points to both set off paragraph levels and also presage to both the presenter and the audience how much more (if any) will follow on the screen after the last reveal.

It occurred to us a while ago that whereas bullet points do work to set off one huge group of words from another huge group (the 3-line ‘paragraphs’ we usually see), they don’t make a lot of sense when you do what you should do and never have more than a few words on each line. The line itself sets off the one point from the next. So if you’re using PowerPoint properly, that is, to simply key the audience where you’re going and key you to what you’re going to say, bullets become superfluous. Bonus: your slides look a lot cleaner without them.

Back to this new presentation language: although both Atkinson and Lessig dispense with bullet points, we believe that rather than just throwing out structure altogether, there are increases in both comprehension and retention when the presentation conforms to a set of predictable rules – a grammar, if you will. We believe that when your grammar presages what’s to come (in a haiku, for instance, you know exactly how many words are coming next), you create both heightened expectation and the comfort of knowing how much brain RAM you have to reserve.

Long-term readers know we’re committed to showing the world that PowerPoint (and also Apple’s Keynote, which we’ve been using lately) is NOT the problem. We don’t know if this is the answer, but we know you’ll really, really like what you’ll see.