Very good point! I sometimes forget to make this point:
As an educational organization our “fair use” parameters are much broader than many organizations. Since we are often commenting on culture, we enjoy a much more freedom than say a public manufacturing or retail company.

Flickr, Photobucket, Bigstockphoto are also regular sources of images for me.

Your point about Creative Commons licensing is dear to my heart.

Thanks for the response!

Thanks for the comments ? much of what you speak to is in my free ebook ?Putting the Power back into PowerPoint? ? you can download it for free off my website ? http://www.craigstrachan.com

One thought about using pictures from images.google.com ? be careful about using copyrighted pictures. If you do an advanced search on http://www.flickr.com, you can search for ?creative commons? material ? basically photos which are legally available for reuse (for free).

Keep well

Craig

It’s good that you bring up this topic: I see bad powerpoint presentations all the time.

I think everyone in business has been in this situation an important but overly boring presentation, which makes it hard to pay attention and absorb the information.

Here is my advice if power-point must be used:

1: Close OutlookClose Outlook when you are showing PowerPoint slides. Otherwise, email alerts pop up.

2: Slideshow Mode

Always use the slideshow mode: it makes your slides easier to see.

3: Standing in projector beam

Always avoid standing in the projector beam, as it is distracting.

4: Bullets as hooks

Think of the bullets on your slides as hooks. By that I mean that the bullet should remind you of your talking points but also incite curiosity in your audience. Use questions, alliteration (repetition of consonants) or juxtaposition of ideas to intrigue the audience. For example:

? Why Automate Processes?

? License to Fail

? Magnet Markets

? Customers: Faithful or Fickle?

? Plan or Wing It?

? Tragedy or Triumph?

5: Use more images

Incorporate images and negative visual space. Break up all the linear text on your slides with stories, examples, images & metaphors. Otherwise, you are not engaging your audience?s right hemisphere, the brain?s center of imagination. That?s when our minds start to drift, in spite of the fact that the data may be important for us to learn and understand. Use more imagery coupled with metaphor. The image search engine that I use is image.google.com. You can save the image files you find to your hard drive and insert them into PowerPoint. Use files that are between 30 ? 100K for good clarity without bloating your PowerPoint file.
6: Simplify text

Most PowerPoint slides are loaded with way too much text. Distill your slides down into simple bullet points with 4 or 6 words per bullet max. Instead, think of the bullets as hooks.

I like the way you have distilled his message using images here. It is much more moving.

Thanks for the timely post!
Terry Gault