English 420S: Business Writing

We noticed that we haven't received any feedback yet, and we were wondering if someone would be willing to help us out. We would really like to make our project better, and we need to know how to do that.

Is the brochure professionally appropriate? It is designed towards a small and medium enterprise market. Does it catch your attention at all? If you were the owner or a small or medium enterprise, what would you like to see in this brochure?

Although it was not mentioned in the weekly tasks as something to do, I'm posting our group project's web address here to make it easier to find and respond to. Here is the link:

http://osddp.org/node/403

Once the powerpoint is download, simply click view show and it will take you all the way through. Your suggestions and criticisms are greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone

Now that we are nearing the end of the semester, we'd like to get some feedback from everyone regarding the technology used in this class. We want to stress that this is not a course evaluation, but rather a survey to understand how the technology worked for you and a chance for you to discuss that technology. So please limit your response to a discussion of the technology instead of evaluating the course content. Please post your response as a comment below.

Certainly a marketing slide presentation should catch an audience’s attention and distribute vital information. While this stays constant for every marketing presentation, the actual set of vital information will vary according to the service or product being marketed. For example, a daycare may wish to promote its status as a licensed center while licensing may be unimportant for an IT firm. The presentation should give a good overview of the services/products available, and it should highlight the strengths of the product or service. The presentation should also be sure to make the goal or purpose of the company clear. Try this on for size:

I feel that a marketing slide presentation should do what its name implies. It should market whatever the slide show is about. The slide presentation should sell the idea or material that is being presented. This could be selling in many different ways. Selling doesn’t necessarily mean the goal is to gain money by doing the presentation. It could simply mean that the object of the presentation is to gain support for the cause of the presentation. The presentation should market in an interesting and original way. It should catch the attention of the viewers so that the presentation sticks in their mind. If you can manage to get the audience to remember the presentation, chances are the next time that they hear about the topic they will think positive things. This could be your sole purpose of putting together the presentation.

The key aspect to a marketing slide presentation is to get your specific point across while maintaining the target audience’s attention through use of clear and concise detail. You want them to WANT to hear (or read in this case) what you have to say. I think that the Parlor Press slide presentation provided just enough information on each slide to get an adequate amount of information across. Also it provided a great amount of visual representations by providing pictures of the actual text that was being talked about. The presentation was just long enough that it got the point across and maintained my attention. If had been much longer, my mind would have started wandering and I would have lost interest, but instead it was just the right length. Also there was a good contrast in color that was pleasing to look at but again, was not distracting at all. The choice in font was also great because it was distinctive and appealing but not distracting either. I also liked how the same format was used throughout the entire presentation. This helped to provide a sense of unity and tie the entire presentation together. Many times the creator of the presentation try to make it too distinct and change up the formatting of the presentation to be creative, but it just takes away from the material on the slide. I really liked how the last slide had contact information and other links for further information because not everything could be put into one slide presentation and doing that solves that problem.

Most of the time I agree that visuals enhance a presentation. But there are definitely times when less is more and a visual aid or addition can distract attention away from the focus. If the image is irrelevant to the meaning of the presentation or paper then why add it? We are constantly bombarded with information and very often the addition of an image is refreshing when accompanied by mass amounts of text. However, we need to evaluate the relevancy of the image when deciding to insert it into a document or presentation.

There are a few ways that the visuals can actually harm a presentation. They could distract an audience so that they are focused only on the visual and not on what the person is actually talking about. In my speech class they always said that once you are done explaining the visual you’re using you should blank the screen or move on to the next slide so the audience isn’t focused solely on the visual and not on you. Another reason a visual can harm a presentation is that visuals can be interpreted different ways. If there isn’t enough explanation then a visual may mean nothing to an audience.

There are many things that can be beneficial by adding visuals to a presentation. There are an equal number of things that can detract from the presentation.

If you are going to include a picture in a paper, it must fit with the paper. You can't just add a picture of pretty flowers to a paper about George Bush. This most likely has nothing to do with the paper and will just serve to distract the reader. The reading speaks about the placement and quality of picture you include. The picture should be placed in the document at a spot that will help the reader comprehend the information. It also must be clear so that the reader can see it quickly and doesn't become distracting.

One of the requirements for our project 3 is to present either a slide presentation or a brochure. When choosing one or the either, you must first decide what the differences are and also where one benefits over the other, and vice versa.

First, a printed brochure has certain characteristics that an online slide presentation does not. The most obvious difference is that the reader is able to touch, feel, and hold a brochure. You cannot do this with a slide presentation, and this provides the audience or reader with a sort of self-security knowing that they are able to keep the brochure.

The similarities between brochures and PowerPoint surprised me. I have never compared the two until now, but I see that they are both ways to present ideas and thoughts without speaking. This accomplished by using keywords, graphics, and interactive media. It must not be too detailed because it will bore the audience, nor can it be too vague because it will just confuse everyone who is reading the material.

It’s a pleasure to read many of these selections. I have felt (for quite some time) that Power Point has lost the majority of its effectiveness. I can’t even count the number of mind-numbing presentations given by professors throughout my college education, much less the badly planned sermon presentation I experienced at a church a few years ago. It’s simply too easy to screw up. People forget that less really is more.

I have listened and watched my fair share of awful PowerPoint presentations. I think PowerPoint is a great tool when used properly, but in the wrong hands it is lethal. One great example of this was the Norvig’s Gettysburg PowerPoint. I love that speech, in my opinion it is one of the most moving in history. However this speech turned into a PP presentation was just awful (although really funny).

The main gist I got from reading Peter Norvig’s Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation and some other related links about how to make a successful PowerPoint is that people don’t know how to use the program and they misuse it to create awful presentations that are possibly even less effective with the visual help. There was a listing that I made while reading and these are the important things I found from the reading…

PowerPoint is being utilized in high schools, colleges, and even businesses. I think this says something about the technology of PowerPoint, and that is people agree it is a practical tool. Anymore when a teacher asks students to give a presentation, most present it through PowerPoint. PowerPoint is easy to learn, but it is also easy to screw up and make it look bad. Peter Norvig decided to take a different approach using PowerPoint and actually utilize it the way it was intended to be.

I was in high school when I first experienced PowerPoint (PP). It was great because I didn't have to fall asleep and could be entertained by the slides. After seeing the program and getting to experiment with it I have fallen in love with giving presentations. PP is absolutely one of the most simple programs to get accustomed to. It is not only extremely user friendly, but it is fun at the same time. I will have to say that I wish Microsoft would start coming up with more backgrounds to choose from and a lot more visuals . Searching for the perfect match of colors and the appropriate visual aids on certain slides is a creative challenge. I am not the most creative person but I really enjoy this sort of creativity.

This might sound really silly but after reading the project 3 description I think I finally understand what the project is going to be. For project 2 I had no idea what a white paper involved, much less what “open access” meant. I know what a PowerPoint presentation is and I think that I understand a little about how to market a product!

What I think is really neat about this project (other than the fact I understand what I need to do) is that I’ll be able to incorporate what I’ve learned about open source technology and “market” it to other people.

Project 3 sounds pretty interesting; I like how it is setup so that we have choices of what to pick. I have made a lot of PowerPoint presentations as with most of the other people in this class, but I have never done anything with marketing before. The PowerPoint’s that I have created have always been for presentations or speeches and none of them have been automated. This could be challenging if you’ve never done an automated PowerPoint before.

I think project three will be an interesting project. We have to research a particular product or service and do a presentation about it. The presentation will be about the product and its target audience. Features of the application or service and the benefits for the target market are important.

The first stage of the project we just have to submit a proposal about our project. We have choices to rank as a group and will be assigned a topic to research. As a group we have to submit a proposal about the product or service, its components and benefits. It needs to have the target audiences and the strategies for targeting that particular market.