Helpful criticisms requested

[CrAz3D]

I'm on a panel, for class, that is supposed to present the economic benefits, to the host country, of immigration.  My partner is doing the background info on immigration in the US and Japan (he's a Japanese exchange student).


http://dailycrazed.net/personal/immigration.ppt

Should I drop/add/change anything?


Thanks y'all

[zorm]

Your powerpoint skills make baby jesus cry.

For the highly skilled guys when you make a list of them, make it bullets. No one wants to try and read that clusterfuck of a slide.
You should probably take out "a notable list includes" as well. You're suppose to present your slides and as such you need to fashion them to include 'bonus' material so people can read the main points of whats going on.

If you just get up there and read off your slides like this presentation is setup to do you will make everyone want to slit their wrists.

Likewise with the Mark Hessen quote, you can delete the "he said." and space it out better so that its actually distinquishable and readable.

Open up Excel and when you have a slide that mentions some %, make a pretty graph to replace it instead. People like looking at pretty pictures.

Lastly, on the last slide remove the "although very small." You're presenting the benefits, you have no reason to go "hey look at the good it causes, well, its a very very very small amount of good!"

Just go "hey look at the good it causes!!!" and the other side, if they did a good job, can be like "yeah... but thats soooo small!"

[CrAz3D]

Mk.

Excell to Power Point huh?  I've done it like once in Excel, wonder how well this will work with Open Office?

I need to cut out a lot of stuff, yeah.  It's way too wordy for the moment, but I just have stuff together, now, as a rough  draft

[iago]

For the highly skilled guys when you make a list of them, make it bullets. No one wants to try and read that clusterfuck of a slide.
You should probably take out "a notable list includes" as well. You're suppose to present your slides and as such you need to fashion them to include 'bonus' material so people can read the main points of whats going on.

I agree, and that's a mistake that is very commonly made -- putting too many words on a slide. The way I was taught, you should only have a couple words per point, and rely on speaking for the rest. You want people to be listening to you, not reading the slides.

Excell to Power Point huh?  I've done it like once in Excel, wonder how well this will work with Open Office?

I need to cut out a lot of stuff, yeah.  It's way too wordy for the moment, but I just have stuff together, now, as a rough  draft

It'll work fine in OpenOffice, making graphs is pretty braindead these days, highlight the data and "create graph", then choose from pictures. :)

[CrAz3D]

I always heard something like 3-4 points and like 8? words per point.

I need to go play with OO Calc, i guess

[iago]

I always heard something like 3-4 points and like 8? words per point.

That's about right, I shouldn't have said "a couple", more like "a few". I think 8 might be a bit much (I tend to do about 3 - 5), but in reality anything below 10 will probably work just as well.

[rabbit]

Despite everything you learned in High School English, never use complete sentences on a presentation slide unless it's a quote.

[nslay]

If you have the time...you can make some really nice slides with LaTeX and the beamer package.  Beamer really makes some professional looking stuff...better than anything powerpoint can make anyhow. (With certain LaTeX packages, one can also embed videos into pdfs)

Here's an example of the default layout and theme (taken from Google images):


There are many other themes and layouts...but not bad for the default eh?

While LaTeX is a real pain in the ass...its worth learning!  In Windows you can get an editor called LEd, otherwise Vi works quite well.

[Sidoh]

Ah, LaTeX is so awesome.  Doing homework with it is addicting!  It takes quite a bit of extra time for most types of assignments, though. :(

One of my instructors uses LaTeX for his slides.  I was going to ask him what packages and stuff he was using, but I think you just answered my question.  Thanks. :)

[nslay]

Here is an example using the beamer package:

Code Select Expand

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{beamerthemesplit}

\title{Title}
\author{Author}

\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\frame{\titlepage}

\section{Outline}
\frame{\tableofcontents}

\section{Topic 1}
\frame{
  \frametitle{Slide Topic}
  \begin{itemize}
    \item<1->Appears first \\
        This bullet appears first.
    \item<2->Appears second \\
        This bullet appears second.
  \end{itemize}
}
\frame{
  \frametitle{Another Slide}
  \begin{enumerate}
    \item<1->Another example
    \item<2->And again...
  \end{enumerate}
}
\section{Fragile slides}
\begin{frame}[fragile]
  \frametitle{verbatim environment}
  \begin{verbatim}
for ( i = 0; i < n; ++i ) {
  do_something(i);
}
  \end{verbatim}
\verb!fragile! is needed for verbatim to work properly (i.e. used for code snippits)
\end{frame}

\section{Random}
\frame {
  \frametitle{A table...of nothing coherent}
  \begin{center}
  \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
  \hline
  \multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Cabbage and Chickens} \\
  \hline
  Year& Cabbage& Chickens \\
  \hline
  23& 2.3& -9+i \\
  \hline
  1874& -5& 12 \\
  \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \end{center}
}

\section{Conclusion}
\frame{
  \frametitle{WYSIWYG sucks}
  In conclusion, LaTeX is superior to WYSIWYG editing in almost every situation.
}

\end{document}


Which produces this
LaTeX source is provided here.

NOTE:  Be sure to compile it twice so it will create the outline correctly.

[Sidoh]

Hehehe, -9+i.  I concur with your conclusion!

Cool, nslay.  I'll definitely keep this stuff in mind for the next time I have to do a presentation.

My friend and I are going to do a poster for the an undergraduate research symposium.  We were planning on using inkscape in combination with the plugin that lets you insert/edit LaTeX stuff.  I think it's called TechTex or something.  I think it'd be kind of hard to do anything where you need almost total control of every design element in LaTeX (eg, the containers for the different sections, the diagrams, etc), but have you ever done anything like that with LaTeX?