Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire Second Edition

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.

Beyond Bullet Points is about how to communicate effectively using PowerPoint. You start by defining a single purpose or goal, set a limited number of objectives to achieve that goal, and support those objectives with explanations logically arranged.Nothing new about that. What's special here is an easy-to-follow system that pretty much guarantees success by forcing you to think about what the audience needs to know, rather than what to put on a slide. It's a very solid approach and much more helpful than, "First, write down your goal."The process starts with a MS Word template that is so simple, elegant and easy to use that I couldn't resist trying it. Once completed, it becomes a roadmap or specification that guides you in creating or finding images that best support the points you want to get across.The author has distilled thousands of years of knowledge about effective communication - from Aristotle to recent research by educational psychologists - into a very simple and practical system. And should you for some reason want to delve into original sources, he credits them.It's much more about content than the software, and assumes a rudimentary knowledge of PowerPoint. It does not include any of those ubiquitous thematic templates with design elements repeated on each slide, and it explains why they should be avoided. It does include a PowerPoint template to help organize and structure your presentation.On the negative side, though the system is simple and elegant, the book less so. It would benefit from a good editing, paring it down to about a third its size. And its layout and design is less inviting than it might be.But that doesn't detract from the value of the information, which includes advice on editing presentations ruthlessly and making the design simple, clear and attractive. The author has thoughtfully provided a concise summary of the system as appendices - not in the book but on the included CD. I suggest you print out appendices A, C, and D first, and use them as a guide through the text.

Well this book, probably covers everything you need to know about creating a compelling powerpoint or keynote presentation. BUT it seems like he explains things using the most amount of words possible. I mean this is a very thick and boring book, and I could never get further than the first few chapters. I feel the author could have explained the same content in 1/3rd of the words, but he is probably getting paid by the publishers by the page, and hence wants to pack in as many pages as possible. Good for the author maybe, but not for the reader.If you do get it, I would not read it, but use it to look up the information you need. But even that is frustrating.Get  Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery  instead, that book is easy to read and explains what you need to know in the most effective way.

Beyond Bullet Points helped me to create my very first and very successful PowerPoint presentation before an audience of 80 people. Until I found the book, I was grasping at how to synthesize the vast amount of details that went into a complex two-year project I worked on. Beyond Bullet Points helped me to untangle my thinking into an organized, powerful presentation. I read and highlighted the book, downloaded the the storyboard form, and even took the webinar available from the Beyond Bullet Points web site to help refine the approach of my talk. It took several tries with the storyboard form before the presentation took shape. The layout of the form helped me realize just how little I could really fit in the alloted 30 minutes, which was very helpful. By viewing the presentation as a series of scenes and using the gray, graphically pleasing divider slides for transitions, I was able to lead my audience through the story of the project's development to a powerful conclusion. In addition to Beyond Bullet Points, I referred to the book Presentation Zen for inspiration for the look of several of the content slides. I received a lot of positive feedback verbally after the presentation, but it wasn't really necessary -- I could tell throughout that I had the audience in the palm of my hand. What a feeling! Thank you, Cliff!

My knowledge, which I gained from working with PowerPoint for years, was more advanced than the information in this book. This would be good for someone just learning the software, but certainly not for advanced users.

Tell me that your boss spends hours doing Powerpoint at you, and i'll recommend that you treat yourself to a copy of this book.You can then sit and smugly codify precisely why his presentations are flat, dull and lifeless affairs. Then, your own presentations will take wings when you use some of the ideas from this book.Should be compulsory reading for powerpoint users.

The title is encouraging and Cliff certainly does have an alternative approach to a stack of bullet point filled slides, but he's not a designer and his book is nowhere near as good as Garr Reynolds' 'Presentation Zen' or Nancy Duarte's 'slide:ology'.Cliff has a method. A pretty rigid format and process to create slides that look OK - certainly an improvement on 90% of what's out there - but it just doesn't have that magic or the creative edge. It's no surprise that this is a Microsoft book, lots of processes to follow to use the software and not a lot on creative design.Plus I'm looking for more versatility and design inspiration than Cliff's one big idea - I don't want every one of my presentations to look the same.I give it two stars for two good points: his use of visual motifs to link a presentation and help it flow (which, to be fair, isn't covered in the other two books above); and his explanation about how to get the best out of Presenter View (contained in the appendices on the CD).If you really want to power up the impact you can make with PowerPoint, look at the designers' books first (Robin Williams 'Non-Designer's Presentation Book' is another good one just published).

The basic message of this book is to structure your presentation and to keep things simple. But for a book that should give you the examples and the know-how on how to create inspiring presentations, it doesn't inspire. I would say this book is protracted, lacks conciseness, and is more geared towards marketing and sales pitches, rather than imparting information or giving update reports.I read the 2008 edition of this book.