SlideMagic Blog

Most people visit ChatGPT, create an account, type in something, are amazed by the results, and then move on. But how could you actually use it for real?

One obvious use case is “homework cheating”: copy-paste entire pieces of text to save time and effort. But the results will still be a bit impersonal. (I suspect that in future versions of the program, you could feed it your own writing style so that the bot adjusts to you personally, the back archive of my blog since 2008 would be great for that :-))

But there are a few others:

• The bot answer might be a great way to get a basic structure/setup for your text. You copy they layout of the argument to start, but then fill in the paragraphs with your own language.
• The algorithm can create a check list to see whether you covered everything that should be covered
• ChatGPT can be better than Google to get tutorials or “how to” articles. At the moment the pages that are best optimized for search engines float to the top. This might not always be the best articles. ChatGPT has read them all and will summarize them for you.
• The software can be a great source of examples or analogies that you would not have thought of.

“Google it” is now an essential part of writing pretty much anything. “ChatGPT it” will have to be added to the list.

CONFESSION: Yesterday’s post about the use of humor in presentations was a complete homework cheat…

Using humor in a presentation can be a great way to engage your audience and make your message more memorable. When done correctly, humor can help to break the ice, lighten the mood, and make complex concepts easier to understand. However, using humor in a presentation can also be risky and, if not done well, it can easily backfire and make you appear unprofessional or insensitive. Here are a few tips for using humor in a presentation:

1. Know your audience: Before incorporating humor into your presentation, it’s important to understand your audience and what they find funny. Different people have different senses of humor, so what may be funny to one group may not be funny to another. Consider the demographics, cultural backgrounds, and experiences of your audience when choosing your jokes.
2. Be appropriate: It’s important to remember that humor is subjective and what one person finds funny may be offensive to another. Avoid using humor that is based on stereotypes, is sexually explicit, or is overly political. Stick to jokes that are clean and relatable to a wide audience.
3. Use humor sparingly: You don’t want to overdo it with the jokes in your presentation. A few well-placed jokes can add some levity to your presentation, but too many can become overwhelming and take away from the overall message. Use humor sparingly and strategically, and save the majority of your presentation for the information and insights that you want to share.
4. Practice: Before delivering your presentation, make sure to practice your jokes and delivery. This will help you to feel more comfortable and confident when presenting, and will also allow you to gauge how your audience reacts to your humor. If a joke falls flat during your practice, consider leaving it out of your final presentation.

People accept that subway maps do not reflect the topographical reality of a city. They show how to travel from A to B, which lines you should take, and where you should switch stations.

The generation of my children has grown up with navigation apps and when they are behind the wheel of a car, they actually have very limited awareness of where things are, the only thing they know well is how much time it roughly takes to get to different places.

This map of Tel Aviv and its surroundings might be a useful too for them (credit: Yaron Shemesh)

This is actually how your brain likes to store information in general, not just maps

A company brand has at least 3 audiences:

• Employees (including the founders), that need an inspiring and cool place to work
• Users that are looking for a brand that fits and appeals to the target market
• Investors who are looking at a fundable organization with fundable founders

Think about conflicting requirements when picking your name. Priorities might also change over time. Investors are very important early on, users a bit later. Your first collaterals (decks, a web site) are probably directed at investors.

This post was sparked by overhearing two conversations: one about whether picking a cartoon character as a company name would hurt appeal to investors, and one where a company named itself after an industry it explicitly claimed not be in.

A PowerPoint post today, why not… Someone showed me a little trick to remove a point in a line graph. Useful when you have one year with missing data, and simply interpolating the value between the 2 neighbors would be bending the truth. Putting a zero leaves an odd line (see below).

If you select the data point, (not the data series), and go into format data point and the paint bucket, you can set the line to “no line” (see below).

Repeat the process for the neighbor to the right (see below).

As a result, some weird things are happening to the data series labels though. Also, this standard PowerPont/Excel chart is far from presentable in your slide deck. An alternative approach in SlideMagic? Put in a column chart with a zero column value.

I have been playing around with ChatGPT, here is what it suggest to do to make a presentation more interesting:

Here are some tips for making your presentation more interesting:

1. Use visuals, such as images, graphs, and videos, to supplement your presentation and make it more engaging. Visuals can help to illustrate your points, provide examples, and make the presentation more memorable.
2. Tell stories or use examples to illustrate your points and make the presentation more relatable and engaging. Stories and examples can help to bring your ideas to life and make them more interesting and understandable.
3. Use humor or other emotional appeals to connect with your audience and make the presentation more engaging. Humor and emotional appeals can help to grab the audience’s attention, break the ice, and create a more dynamic and engaging presentation.
4. Engage the audience by asking questions, inviting participation, and encouraging feedback. This can help to make the presentation more interactive and engaging, and can help to create a more dynamic and interactive experience for the audience.
5. Use a variety of presentation techniques, such as changing your tone, pace, and volume, to keep the presentation interesting and dynamic. This can help to keep the audience engaged and prevent them from becoming bored or distracted.

Overall, making your presentation more interesting requires using a variety of techniques and approaches to engage the audience and make the presentation more dynamic and engaging.

Here it is me writing again. Pretty good and useful, albeit a bit impersonal. OpenAI is creating APIs for which I have some interesting ideas how to use them in SlideMagic. Watch this space

If you need to plot the progress of your team in the FIFA World Cup, SlideMagic is there to help you. There are a number of football charts in the library, including a tree where you can add teams in the knock out race to the final (see below).

Simply search for football in the SlideMagic app and the charts will show up (see below).

SlideMagic Pro users can convert these slides to PowerPoint or PDF. Free student plan available

Scientists seem to agree that humans are not really able to multi-task. Checking your phone messages while driving, or replying to every email the second they pop up is not very healthy.

This got me thinking. The stereo types are as follows: the extravert manager proudly claims that the above rule is incorrect, she can easily maintain dozens of email, phone, and live conversations in parallel. The introvert coder thinks the above is absolutely true, the buzzing of the microwave in the background kills her concentration.

I think the manager is actually not multi-tasking that much, and the coder might do a bit of it. If you are a manager, your task is to juggle lots of people and keep everything moving. I would consider this as one task.

If you are coding, you might find yourself rewriting 10 different modules, updating a database, fixing the front end, all in one, all components are open in the editor and the system won’t work unless you fixed all of them. That’s a bit more than one task.

So, I think it all depends on what you all a task.

There are 3 roles that video can play in a presentation

1. Recording. This video does not add anything to the presentation, it is simply a narrative of what you want to say. Especially useful when you are not there to present slides. Example: a TED talk video.
2. Decoration. Spectacular visual and sound effects (try to) enhance something that can also be expressed using “regular” slides. Example: an expensive introduction commercial of a new iPhone.
3. Explanation. The video does a better job at explaining something than a regular slide. Example: an animation of how a vaccine impacts a virus.

Think about these when the question “do we need a video” comes up.

When using images from Google Maps, pay attention to the direction of the sun light and shadows the moment the picture was taken. Only 1 of the four possible orientations is the right one, and this is by no way the default north up. Example below. These are 2 pictures of the same are, and you can clearly see that one just does not feel right.