Product Description

Transform your presentations--and boost your impact--with practical, easy-to-apply techniques for using PowerPoint 2007. Author Cliff Atkinson is a presentation-skills expert who is helping revolutionize the way Fortune 500 companies design and deliver their critical presentations. Even major news media reported the contribution of Cliff's techniques to a verdict in a high-profile trial. In his highly-regarded, popular book BEYOND BULLET POINTS--now fully updated for PowerPoint 2007--Cliff shares his innovative three-step method that helps you unlock the amazing story buried in those bullet-riddled slides. He guides you, step by step, as you discover how to combine the tenets of classic storytelling with the power of projected media to create a rich, engaging experience. With easy-to-use templates, advanced tips, and plenty of illustrations and examples, you'll learn techniques to help you clarify, visualize, and present your ideas so that your audience will remember your important message. This newly revised, popular guide now includes a CD with sample PowerPoint 2007 files and graphics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13097 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780735623873
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Publisher
Key Book Benefits:

Goes beyond how-to and features innovative, easy-to-apply techniques to help you clarify, visualize, and present your ideas

-Written by a leading presentation-skills consultant and popular author

-Includes information on graphic design and delivering presentations online

-Features a CD with sample PowerPoint files and graphics--plus bonus resources on a companion Web site

About the Author
Cliff Atkinson is a leading authority on how to improve your communications across organizations by using Office PowerPoint. As an independent management consultant, his clients include companies ranking in the top five of the Fortune 500. He is a popular keynote speaker and writer, and he serves on the faculty of UCLA Extension.

Customer Reviews

Best yet from Cliff Atkinson... I'm now a complete fan!
I recommend "Beyond Bullet Points" in my class all the time. I continually have people coming up to me and asking where my slides came from or how I go about creating them. While I cannot say that I stick to the BBP process strictly, I do use its concepts heavily in my slides. This is why I tell these people ot start with BBP.

Well, I just picked up my copy of the 2007 version of BBP last week and wow! This is what it should have always been. It was good before, but the difference between the original BBP and the 2007 versions is as big as the difference between PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2007. Cliff has provided much more in the way of research-based findings that support the BBP methodology. He has also, I feel, done a much better job of explaining the whole process.

If you are totally new to BBP, you will understand the process and the reason it works much better with this new version that those of us who are old timers now. If you've used the first book or were even turned off by the first book, I highly recommend taking a look at this one. I don't believe you'll regret it.

Excellent System for Effective Presentations
Beyond Bullet Points is about how to communicate effectively using PowerPoint. You start by defining a single purpose or goal, set a limited number of objectives to achieve that goal, and support those objectives with explanations logically arranged.

Nothing new about that. What's special here is an easy-to-follow system that pretty much guarantees success by forcing you to think about what the audience needs to know, rather than what to put on a slide. It's a very solid approach and much more helpful than, "First, write down your goal."

The process starts with a MS Word template that is so simple, elegant and easy to use that I couldn't resist trying it. Once completed, it becomes a roadmap or specification that guides you in creating or finding images that best support the points you want to get across.

The author has distilled thousands of years of knowledge about effective communication - from Aristotle to recent research by educational psychologists - into a very simple and practical system. And should you for some reason want to delve into original sources, he credits them.

It's much more about content than the software, and assumes a rudimentary knowledge of PowerPoint. It does not include any of those ubiquitous thematic templates with design elements repeated on each slide, and it explains why they should be avoided. It does include a PowerPoint template to help organize and structure your presentation.

On the negative side, though the system is simple and elegant, the book less so. It would benefit from a good editing, paring it down to about a third its size. And its layout and design is less inviting than it might be.

But that doesn't detract from the value of the information, which includes advice on editing presentations ruthlessly and making the design simple, clear and attractive. The author has thoughtfully provided a concise summary of the system as appendices - not in the book but on the included CD. I suggest you print out appendices A, C, and D first, and use them as a guide through the text.

Indispensible guide for creating PowerPoints
This book converted me from an anti-PowerPoint extremist to a true believer. Why? Because all my traditional - and well accepted - ideas about putting together PowerPoints were wrong. Atkinson's BBP system is far better. He starts by explaining some basics about how we learn. What he says makes sense and is backed up by research. Traditional PowerPoint presentations violate most or all of these basics by trying to convey too much, too quickly. Atkinson shows how to break up ideas into digestible and memorable pieces with the proper use of templates, text, and images. But before getting into those specifics, he details his system for creating your overall PowerPoint story. Again, his suggestions run counter to conventional practice. For instance, in BBP, everything starts with the Slide Sorter View. Like most people, I guess, I'd start with the Normal View and start pounding out slides. Wrong! With BBP, you craft your story logically and systematically using storytelling methods that are tried and true. The heart of BBP is in storyboarding, which Atkinson likens to the art of storyboarding a film. The result of using BBP is a presentation that is coherent and persuasive.

Atkinson provides the theory and all the "how-to" details for building a presentation using his templates, PowerPoint 2007, and various other Microsoft products. If you don't use the 2007 version of PowerPoint, many of the "how-to" procedures won't apply. The book is still worth reading if only for an understanding of BPP principles and techniques.