Beyond Bullet Points, 3rd Edition: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire

by Cliff Atkinson

Book Overview

Unlock the amazing story buried in your presentation and forget boring, bullet-point-riddled slides forever Guided by communications expert Cliff Atkinson, you ll walk you through an innovative,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735627355
• ISBN13: 9780735627352
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Indispensible guide for creating PowerPoints

This book converted me from an anti-PowerPoint extremist to a true believer. Why? Because all my traditional - and well accepted - ideas about putting together PowerPoints were wrong. Atkinson's BBP system is far better. He starts by explaining some basics about how we learn. What he says makes sense and is backed up by research. Traditional PowerPoint presentations violate most or all of these basics by trying to convey too much, too quickly. Atkinson shows how to break up ideas into digestible and memorable pieces with the proper use of templates, text, and images. But before getting into those specifics, he details his system for creating your overall PowerPoint story. Again, his suggestions run counter to conventional practice. For instance, in BBP, everything starts with the Slide Sorter View. Like most people, I guess, I'd start with the Normal View and start pounding out slides. Wrong! With BBP, you craft your story logically and systematically using storytelling methods that are tried and true. The heart of BBP is in storyboarding, which Atkinson likens to the art of storyboarding a film. The result of using BBP is a presentation that is coherent and persuasive. Atkinson provides the theory and all the "how-to" details for building a presentation using his templates, PowerPoint 2007, and various other Microsoft products. If you don't use the 2007 version of PowerPoint, many of the "how-to" procedures won't apply. The book is still worth reading if only for an understanding of BPP principles and techniques.

It helps you to create the fantastic PowerPoint that proved to be a great success

I am a Chinese freshman who is majoring in marketing in a China university. My schoolmates produce sucking PowerPoint presentation all the time. They actually don't realize that presentation is a kind of communication. They just read the font on the screen! Last week, I made my vivid live presentation by using the method provided in this book. After that, the audience were shocked and one even asked me if I made the Powerpoint all by myself. "It's unbelievable!" "Of course, I am using beyond bullet point."I said.

Great system for creating effective presentations

This book does a great job of outlining a simple and elegant process for developing effective presentations. It also does a good job of explaining why the system is effective with ample references to supporting research. The book is also a useful guide and manual that you can refer to when creating presentations regardless of what software you use. I am an Apple Keynote user and I found the book to be very useful and relevant. In sum, I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to improve the effectiveness of their presentations.

At last! How to use PowerPoint to enhance a presentation.

At last a book that recognizes that PowerPoint is not the presentation. If all your information is on the slides, who needs you as a presenter? In easy step-by-step fashion, Atkinson explains how to use Hollywood screenwriting techniques to tell a story. PowerPoint is a powerful software package, but it is NOT the presentation. This is the first book I've seen (and I've been looking) that tells how to use the software to enhance an oral presentation. A great, easy to follow guide to putting together a memorable presentation. I teach communications at a university and I am recommending this book to all my students and everybody I know who gives presentations.

Stop putting your audience to sleep!

I can't count the number of boring bullet point presentations I've sat through in my life. Unfortunately, my audiences probably say the same thing! With the help of Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points, hopefully my audiences won't have to endure yet another boring bullet point presentation. If you are looking for a book to teach you PowerPoint or looking to transform yourself into a PowerPoint "power user" look elsewhere. If you want to learn to develop effective presentations that engage your audience and not put them to sleep, Beyond Bullet Points is a great book. The book presents Cliff Atkinson's three step approach to presentations: Focus, Clarify and Engage. The method is based on story telling with a few twists to compensate for the complex nature of presentations. Chapter 1 starts with a fictional presentation which the book will transform from a boring bullet pointed presentation to one that engages the audience. Chapter 2-3 (focus) guides the reader as Cliff describes the process of writing the script for the new presentation. Chapter 4-6 (clarify) builds upon the previous chapters as the reader is guided through the process of clarifying the presentation's ideas. Chapter 7 lays out the groundwork to create an engaging script that will certainly bring life to your presentation. Appendix A summarizes Richard Mayer's excellent research on multimedia learning. Appendix B discusses Cliff's excellent tool, Beyond Bullet Points Storyboard Formatter. While PowerPoint is used as the tool in presenting Cliff's idea of storyboarded presentations, the concept is certainly beneficial to anyone that uses alternate tools.