Some PowerPoint resources you may find helpful:
Steve Rindsberg’s PPTTools
Sonia Coleman’s Digital Studio
Indezine
Presentations.com
Cliff Atkinson’s site
Royalty Free Music
More Royalty Free Music
Digital Juice
There are a number of Office alternatives available. The links below will take you to their respective sites.
“No-cost”, as in “free to download and install”
Open Office
IBM/Lotus Symphony
Low-cost
Ability Office
Corel WordPerfect
602 Software
Online
Zoho
ThinkFree
Google Docs
A reporter at the Kansas City Star wanted some technical background about webinars for an article. I provided this information, but the content was not used for the article. I’m posting it here for those people inquiring about the broad set of best practices for effective online seminars.
Webinars share qualities of other presentations, and should be treated as any other business event. Moreover, preparation for a webinar is no different than for a presentation taking place in front of an audience.
Most presentations are scripted to varying degrees. Attention to the content and flow is as critical to online presentations as in face-to-face presentations. In addition, the technology required to deliver a webinar is more complex, and rehearsal may be more critical for webinars to find weak spots in the technology framework to deliver the content. IT staff that are conversant with web server loads, internet connections to and from the webinar location, as well as hardware including audio and video, will be critical.
Webinars need a producer in addition to a presenter. A producer may need to handle attendee technical problems, connection issues, audio or video quality issues, as well as handling attendee arrival in the webinar environment as well as managing Q&A;sessions during the webinar.
In addition, a producer may need to handle polling during the webinar. Most webinar packages allow questions to be presented to the attendees, with responses being tallied for the attendees as the presentation continues. The webinar venue can put attendees at arms-length from the presenter, as well as each other, and using polls during the webinar helps establish stronger connections between the audience, the presenter, and the organization.
Allowing and encouraging questions from the audience during a Q&A;segment is best handled by a producer. Questions may come from the audience using their own microphone and headset equipment, or the questions may come through a chat feature built into the webinar software. The producer must prioritize those questions for the presenter, as well as motivate the audience to participate.
The webinar is seen by participants as an educational event, rather than a sales event. Assuring that the webinar content answers an audience need will help move the audience from prospects to buyers.
Webinars are also different from face-to-face presentations.
Audience members are typically listening to an audio feed on their computer. Unless the content is engaging, the audience will be tempted to do other computer work while “in attendance,” such as dealing with email. Without content that is engaging, or using tools to promote engagement, such as polling and chat, the audience will not give their full attention to the presentation.
Video feeds of the presenter may be appropriate. Attention should be given to production values, lighting that is flattering to the presenter, and a video feed that is robust enough to avoid lags, dropouts, and slow response.
Another difference is access. While registering for a webinar may take place online with a simple form, the audience members will attend more readily if the access to the webinar itself is easy. Requiring the audience to download and install a player or other software to participate may discourage some attendees. Some audience members may be prevented from installing software on their desktop computer, particularly in a corporate environment where desktops are managed.
Third-party software packages and hosting, such as Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze), provide much of the framework and tools for delivering a webinar in an easily administered software package. These packages excel in larger organizations where content will be reused, and tracking of attendees and their responses is important.
Here are more of the links used in the Dreamweaver classes:
Testing your pages in many different environments using BrowserCam
Jeff Zeldman’s excellent blog covering web standards.
Pixy’s Color Scheme Generator to generate color schemes and testing them for different conditions.
Search engine resources:
Search engine education from Search Engine Watch. Follow the link in the left-hand navigation labeled Search 101 with a great deal of good information.
Understanding Google’s approach to search is critical to getting exposure for your sites. Their fine set of Webmaster tools
Make a search engine for own site with Rollyo
CSS resources:
Jason Santa Maria’sblog about CSS, web design, tools, and design.
Mezzoblueabout design and CSS. From the creator of the CSS Zen Garden
Nicely done site using multiple, user-specified style sheets from the Tulsa Preservation Commission. I really like this. And I like Tulsa. And I like their old buildings.
Images for your site:
Inexpensive, high quality stock images from iStockPhoto.
Your don’t want your site to end up on Vincent Flanders’ site
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Talking to myself, mostly.
