PowerPoint on Steroids: Takeaways of the Present to Succeed event

4 min read
May 25, 2021

A few weeks ago, we announced the Present to Succeed event. Since then, the event has successfully taken place with up to 2000 participants. Visitors were enthusiastic and inspired to optimize their presenting skills. In this article, we share the most important takeaways from the event. Among other things, we summarize how to keep your audience's attention, how to create your PowerPoint presentations easily and quickly, and techniques you can use to engage your audience.

Takeaways from the Present to Succeed event

The online conference covered 4 topics: Story, Design, Delivery and Tools in several seminars. Experts shared their expertise with the audience through real-world examples.

present to succeed sponsorssponsors

Stay true to yourself: 6 takeaways in storytelling

present to succeed storytelling

  • Stay true to yourself, never pretend - authenticity pays off
  • Avoid too much distracting storytelling – focus on your content
  • Interact with your slides to keep the audience's attention
  • Create different presentation styles for different audiences
  • Use different storytelling styles to encourage action
  • Spice things up with rhetorical devices

Templates that "save your life": 8 design takeaways

present to succeed template design

  • Speed up production with templates, saved images, and fonts. A faulty template wastes users' time.
  • Take advantage of PowerPoint’s wide range of design options.
  • Use Photoshop and Illustrator to shine with stunning graphics.
  • Design your graphics in cognitively thoughtful aesthetics.
  • Show your audience exceptional templates from Canva.com
  • Use few words on slides to highlight the goal of your presentation

How will you approach your next presentation? 5 takeaways about delivery

presentation delivery present to succeed

  • Keep asking questions to powerfully articulate your important insights.
  • Be mindful during a presentation to build a stronger connection with your audience.
  • Read the room to gauge reactions; change and adjust your tactics. That will make you look persuasive and influence your audience.
  • Share experiences with the audience.
  • Include your audience as an active part of the presentation, not just a passive listener.
  • Align your message as the audience's wants and needs evolve – age, gender, ethnicity, physical ability, language barriers, and even attention spans must be considered.

Save time and stress when creating presentations: takeaways from the tools topic

tools present to succeed

  • Use effective tools to keep colors, typography, and visuals consistent.
  • Increase your productivity to create content quickly.
  • Take advantage of PowerPoint's artificial intelligence and familiarize yourself with PowerPoint's latest features. This way you will increase the productivity and diversity of your presentations.

PowerPoint on Steroids 

empower® was also a speaker at the event. In his contribution “PowerPoint on Steroids”, Stephan Kuhnert emphasized 5 key concepts:

  1. People lose 37% of their time formatting PowerPoint presentations.
    present to succeed formatting word
  2. Existing content and templates should be available in a central storage location so all employees can directly access up-to-date and design-compliant content and elements.

  3. Employees need tools that make it easier to format documents and create diagrams quickly.

  4. Corporate design rules should be integrated directly into office applications so they can be found exactly where they are needed.

  5. In a company with 1,000 employees, over 228,620 hours per year can be saved (7h per week per employee working with PowerPoint)

    present to succeed work in microsoft office

Using insights from the world's largest market research on PowerPoint usage, Stephan shared best practices from well-known companies that have implemented empower® to increase their PowerPoint productivity and brand consistency.

You too can benefit. Take a tour around our empower® website to get ideas about where your company can leverage potential while saving money and time working with PowerPoint and other office applications.

Present to Succeed: Conclusion

We had a great experience with the Present to Succeed event and learned much that we can use ourselves in the future. Besides all the insights and useful tips, everyone got to know each other and network.

We will inform you again next year about new dates for the event. Stay informed about more events and keep up to date with all the latest insights on the topic of presentations on our empower® blog.

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