Beyond Bullet Points: Using PowerPoint to tell a compelling story that gets results 4th Edition

I had already agreed to give a workshop to my co-workers about how to give more effective presentations when I purchased this book for prep. I immediately adapted the recommended process. After years of creating my own slide decks I have my quirky development process. Following the guidelines in this book will allow anyone at any skill level to methodically create a dynamic slide deck and give a speech that will move the audience to action. I wish I'd had it 35 years ago, when I first started making slide decks, before I learned the hard way that bullets kill.

This is the second time I purchased this book. I had an older edition and decided to purchase the update. I'm glad I did, as this expands and improves upon the first edition.The book is absolutely essential for anyone putting together a presentation. Not only does it provide sound theories behind persuasion and storytelling, it makes the process dead-simple with an easy-to-follow template. And this template works for more than just presentations. The structure works for pretty much any content you're creating whether that's a presentation or a blog post or a video. Can't recommend this highly enough.

Not much different from the 2005 ed, which was goodVersion 4, it is practically verbatim. The only major change I can see is the Story Template changed all of the terminology and dropped Act III all together leaving it pretty much up to the reader to figure out how to close the presentation.I prefer the V.1 template over this one.Slicker paper and color photos, and the story boarding is more developed.Following the template is key to pulling the presentation off.A good portion of the book is still geared toward a Corporate audience with the assumption that the reader is an upper-level manager with a team of employees to do your work for you.Know what you are getting into. The creation of an effective 15 minute presentation can take hours for a solopreneur. I use the 45 minute format to create 15/20 minute training videos.I will recommend this book to anyone who creates and delivers PPT presentations, can focus and stick to the plan.

I liked the walking through the process of preparing a presentation. Easy to read, easy to follow...

Great book. Very helpful and practical.

It will change the way you think about making presentations.

I appreciate that it helps to organize the chaos of information, but I just used the template verbatim with my manager and it did not go very well. He said this linear approach does not work anymore with high-level corporate audiences. They want to cut right to the chase and start to dig into the deep details. This layout with simple images, even if you just pull away the map and anchor slides, makes the storytelling too much like a story, not giving enough credit to the speed at which certain audiences can and do process data on a slide. It was an interesting exercise and I still think this linear layout works in some cases. Just not if you are trying to communicate business case or other C-suite type of information.

Although many readers may find this book useful, it describes a particular approach to Powerpoint. It is not anything like a comprehensive users guide.