Using Napkin.AI to Streamline Presentations

There is a lot of focus on artificial intelligence (AI) in the media right now. Some of it is good and some of it is bad. Yesterday I had a colleague ask me how I use AI in my job right now. I had to confess that I know lots of areas where it can be used, such as summarizing lengthy articles or generating complex code, but that I don't feel the need to use it. Then I thought back to when I created my last presentation. That is a classic example of where anyone can use AI to help.

I sit through a lot of presentations and hate it when someone creates overly-wordy slides. It makes for a very uninteresting presentation and is often called "Death by Powerpoint." When I find myself putting a bunch of text on a slide, I take a step back and try to figure out how to replace all the words with a simple picture. Sometimes that can be rather difficult and so I told my colleague that AI is a great way to streamline a presentation. We have an internal engine at Sony that we are encouraged to use. That keeps our confidential text from falling into the wrong hands.

My colleague asked if I had ever used napkin.ai, which is a website specifically designed to take presentation text and turn it into a picture. I immediately logged in and gave it a shot. I didn't have to create a new user or anything as I just logged in using my Google account. Then I copied some text from a personal document I had open and it generated several images for me to select. It worked amazingly well.

Should you find yourself trying to create a presentation and have a slide filled with text, I highly suggest you give napkin.ai a test. It may just help things become more easier to understand. Of course be sure not to input confidential or sensitive information as there is no guarantee it will remain so. 

Technical Demo Problems

Recently I joined a group of people where one person tried to connect a computer tablet to a large-screen television for a presentation. We all took our seats while the person tried to get things connected but it took awhile. I have been in that situation many times and the one thing I discovered is that if I am alone, I have a much better chance of getting things to work. When there is a crows present, I can't figure it out.

Seeing the struggle, I offered to go get a cable to directly connect the tablet to the screen. I walked out of the room and that is all it took for the presenter to figure things out. Once that happened, another person came to find me to let me know that things worked and we could begin.

Sometimes having someone offer to help is all it takes to figure things out on your own. When I find myself in a similar situation, I get distracted by all of the people in the room and forget even the simplest technical details. I have to consciously tell myself to take a breath and think through the problem. Then I will remember a simple detail that causes the trouble to disappear and technology to start working again. Hopefully this trick will work for you should you find yourself trying to troubleshoot something with distractions. 

Creating a PowerPoint Template

I have to give a presentation in about 6 weeks and needed to create a new PowerPoint template. Normally a company will have a standard set of templates to use, but my presentation will be given to numerous organizations and other presenters will have the option of using the template that I created today. So none of our existing templates seemed like a good choice.

At first I thought creating a PowerPoint template was going to be easy. I looked at a few of the standard ones I have used but quickly realized none of them were going to work for me. So I started with the blank white template that comes with every version of Microsoft Office. There was a company logo I wanted to use and so I added it from one of my other templates. Then there were some graphics that I copied over from others. Finally I pulled in a background that I like as it does a good job of representing large amounts of data, which is what my presentation is all about. Unfortunately the graphic was just too colorful and nobody could read any text placed on top of it regardless of the color or font. PowerPoint provides a few tools to lighten up the graphic and so I did to the point where black text was easily recognized and actually looked good.

I was pretty happy with the few sample slides I put together and called over one of my coworkers to let me know his thoughts. He thought it looked pretty good except for the font. Naturally I listened to his advice changed the font to something I have liked in the past. It was amazing how the presentation popped off the page with such a subtle change.

I must say that I am pretty happy with the presentation so far. It took me about five times as long to put together the template as I expected and probably am not finished. Remember that if you have to put together any presentations and want to create your own template. There were a lot of trips between "Master Slide" view and my presentation, but in the end it turned out pretty good.

My Presentation

I gave a presentation at PgWest on Wednesday this week. I wasn't going to attend the conference but one of the organizers called me and asked me to submit a paper. So I submitted the same one I gave at last year's conference. The talk went fairly well and I was able to do something I had never done before: ignore my slide set.

Before going to the conference, I told my wife that I didn't want to give the same presentation from the previous year but didn't really have time to revamp anything. I told her I wanted to poll the audience and find out why they were at my presentation. So that is what I did. Some people were there to find out more about the subject I was speaking about while others had specific questions.

Knowing what people were interested in finding out helped me tailor my presentation. It also got the audience involved and they were more eager to ask questions. About half-way through the talk, I abandoned my slide presentation and just showed examples on the computer. I think everyone appreciated something a bit different.