A top complaint from audience members is that many presenters put too much emphasis on PowerPoint and technology while neglecting the message and interaction with participants. One way to deliver more effective presentations that improve your connection to your audience is to add a remote control to your presentation tools.

Why would one more piece of technology actually switch your focus from PowerPoint to your audience? Have you been distracted (or bored) as a presenter stopped the flow of their talk to pace back to the laptop to change to another slide or as they waited for a partner to move to the next slide? This is one of the 6 reasons why you need a remote for your PowerPoint presentations:

• Break Down the AV Wall. Without a remote, you are limited to the area by your laptop which builds a wall between you and your audience;
• Get Control. You never want someone else to control the computer while you have to keep saying, "next please" or flash hand signals. This approach breaks the flow of the speech, annoys your audience, and risks that your helper moves to the wrong slide;
• Fewer Distractions. Use a remote to stop distracting others who watch you walking back to your computer to move to the next slide. Plus, a remote helps you maintain eye contact with the audience instead of looking at your laptop;
• Smoother Animations. The impact and flow of most animations is lost when you run animations manually from your laptop;
• More Professional. Presenting without a remote takes away from the professionalism of a presenter and directs the focus to the technology (or to the lack of tech-savvy if anything goes wrong);
• Cool Factor. Okay, maybe not a key justification, but a remote is a nifty and useful addition to your technology tools.

With a presentation remote control, you can more effectively and smoothly deliver an electronic presentation and communicate your message. That said, even though I am a huge fan of remotes, you always want to know multiple ways to navigate with the keyboard while delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Keyboard commands may sometimes be faster or at least give you a backup plan.

Dawn Bjork Buzbee

Dawn Bjork Buzbee is The Software Pro and a certified Microsoft Office Expert and Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor. Dawn shares smart and easy ways to effectively use software and technology through her work as a speaker, trainer, and consultant. Discover more tips, tricks, tools, and techniques at http://www.SoftwarePro.com

PowerPoint 2007 contains several built-in themes, which include theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. Whether you use an existing built-in theme, create a new theme, or modify an existing built-in theme, follow this procedure to apply a theme to your presentation.

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