Death by PowerPoint

 How many of us have gone to a meeting or conference and suddenly, a PowerPoint presentation starts to be shown. There are so many people that try and put everyone on the slides instead of just those few key points.

Something that is very important to think about when you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation is how much information you should be putting on a slide. The less is more rules apply here because the less words you can put on a slide the better. Keep the slides to only the key points and not every word you are going to be saying during the presentation.

Here is an example of an about me done in two different ways, and think about what would look better on a slide:

About Me

-          Small business co-owner

-          Project Manager

-          Bookkeeper

-          Enjoys crafting as a hobby

 

About Me

-          Small business co-owner of Konecny Consulting Inc

-          Project Manager and have my CAPM, which is Certified Associate Project Manager

-          Bookkeeper and I have my CPB, which is Certified Professional Bookkeeper

-          Enjoy crafting as a hobby and I enjoy doing a lot of the needle arts, such as knitting, cross stitch and others

As you can see, I have shown two different about me slides that I might use when I am giving a presentation myself. There is only one that I would use, and it would be the first one because those are the key talking points and I can add all the extra details when I am speaking. Besides keeping the words to a minimum, I would also try and keep the font that I am using very simple and easy to read.

When you are preparing a presentation, you must think about the background colour of your slides as well as the colour of the words on the screen. The lighter the background the better, and try and stick with darker colours for the words. Do not try and put light colour words on a light background because that is extremely hard to read. Also, something else that you need to think about is all of those GIF’s and flashing things that you add to your presentation. These can affect people in so many ways. Keep any GIF as a quick thing and don’t leave it up on the screen for very long because you could be risking the health of someone else.

After you have finished preparing your presentation, put it up onto your screen, but then stand back from where you normally sit and see what the presentation looks like. Do you have to add more pages because of your talking points, or do you need to increase the size of your font so that people at the back of the room can see what you are trying to say.

PowerPoint or any slide presentation system can be a useful tool but using it wisely is important. The keep it simple rule applies and if you are trying to show a screenshot on a slide, make sure that you aren’t showing the entire screen just what is key to what you are talking about.

Example:

To reboot your computer, go to the window button, click on it and then select the power button which is on the right of the window.

Trying to read that from a distance would be a real challenge, especially if you have that at the top of the slide and the rest of the slide is blank. So, remember any presentation tool can be useful if used wisely and make sure you have done a spell check of the entire presentation before you give it as you wouldn’t want to be embarrassed because of some silly spelling errors. The last point I want to make is once you have completed your presentation have someone else look at it and see what they think because they might spot errors that you haven’t.

 

I am not just booth fluff, I am part of a team

It is interesting being female in a male dominant field and how sometimes people don’t think I know anything about it. I know that it is slowly changing, but it is still something that I run up again time and time again. Over the last few years, I have been part of a team that runs a community booth at a security conference. Of course, the ratio of staff in the booth is 3:1, but that doesn’t bother me because I can handle myself when it comes to working in this booth.

Something that does bother me is when someone comes up and wants to talk to the person that is running the booth and when I say it’s me, they don’t seem to understand that. Yes, when it comes to running this community booth, I am the one that is responsible for staffing the booth and ensuring that it is staffed through the entire time of the conference.

Being part of a community that does have quite a few females that attend the community meeting is nice. There are times when being someone that has been part of this community for over a decade can also be a challenge because I just become part of the group and am not seen as being female. One of the local events, one of the women stood up and said she had talked to all the other women that were there, and she thought it was great seeing so many. Well, after she did that, I walked up to her privately and informed you that she hadn’t talked to me that evening, and I am also female.

When you see someone that is working in a booth at any conference, remember that they are doing a job within the booth. Sure, there can be times that a person is used as a means of getting attention to that booth, but that is becoming less and less popular because that does cost money and how much actual business do you get out of that expense.

Being part of a team is very important, and respecting all team members is also important. It doesn’t matter who you are talking to at a booth, remember that you don’t know their role within the community or organization. Something that I always try and strive to do is make sure that anyone that is doing booth duty receives respect because it is a hard job and no, I am not just booth fluff, I am part of a team.

I emailed/texted you, why haven't you responded?

How many times have you received a text or email and even before you have a chance to read it, the phone rings, and it is the person complaining that you haven’t responded yet. Understanding that not everyone can immediately stop what they are doing to read an email or text is something everyone needs to understand.

If the message is urgent, and you need to know that the person has received the message, that is one thing when you should phone shortly after the message has been sent. If the message requires someone to check something or even respond, there needs to be time given for the person to respond. You do not know what the person is doing the moment that the message was received. IN some cases, if you are sending a message to a work account after hours, it may not be read until the next day. If you are sending it to a personal account, it may not get read during work hours.

This respect also goes to when you are messaging someone on a social media platform. The person may not be on the platform when you message them, and if it shows that they are online, they may not even be checking that platform when you send the message. The other thing about social media platforms is a lot of people are only on them occasionally, so trying to get a quick response through that type of platform doesn’t work.

For a lot of individuals, checking messages either texts or emails are done at various times during the day and not as soon as each message arrives. I know that if I were to check every message as soon as it was in my inbox, I wouldn’t get anything done. Understanding that emails or texts are not an urgent means of communication and even if you end up calling someone about the message make sure that you have given them time. In a lot of cases, individuals even turn off the pop-up that email systems provide letting them know that they have received a new email. The pop-up is a distraction when you are trying to focus on getting actual work done.

So, next time you send a text or email to someone, give them time to see the message before you either send another text or email or phone them. Yes, if it is urgent that is one thing, but otherwise make sure that you respect the person you are trying to communicate with.

Tech versus non-tech terms

There are times that when you are listening to a group of people have a discussion you may think that they are talking a foreign language, but they are speaking English, just that they are using terms that don’t seem to make sense in the conversation. In some of these cases, it isn’t the word or term that they are using, it’s how it is understood by everyone that is part of the conversation. I do know that a lot of technical people have what seems to be a secret language that they speak, and it can be very confusion for those that are not directly related to a particular expertise.

I have decided to try and decode some of the words that I have been hearing and how they can be misunderstood by those around us. Now let’s have some fun and see how one acronym or term can mean a lot of different things, and it all depends on who is listening to the conversation.

DC

• Direct current
• District of Columbia
• Domain controller
• Data centre

Backup

• Extra help or support
• Copy of a file
• A situation in which something is not moving
• Music that accompanies the main singer or tune

SAN

• Storage Area Network
• SANS institute

Farm

• A plot of land that grows crops and livestock
• A group of computer systems in one or more cabinets.

These are just four examples of how a word or acronym can have more than one meaning and when you are in a conversation with a bunch of people it can be very confusing to listen to a conversation. One important thing to remember is when you are writing an email, or a document, and you use any of these terms it is important to ensure that everyone that may read the email or document understands the correct meaning of the term. Be careful of prejudging what "Everyone" knows.

It is very important to know the audience that you are writing something because even if they are in a different area of Technology, they may have an entirely different meaning for the same term. So, a term can have a lot of different meanings, and understanding how to communicate to the various people in an organization is very important. It is the translating infosec into regular IT and IT into regular business terms that is vital for good communication.