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Echo Swinford
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An Interview with Echo Swinford
Interviewed by Geetesh Bajaj, June 5th 2006
See Also: Book Excerpts -- Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
Echo Swinford (pictured to the left) is
a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she's
not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions
on the PowerPoint newsgroup. Echo is also the author of Fixing
PowerPoint Annoyances, published by O'Reilly.
Visit Echo's site Echo's Voice to find several PowerPoint usability
tricks...
Geetesh: |
Tell us more about yourself and what got you started
with PowerPoint.
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Echo: |
I was temping for a medical education communications company
back in 1997.
The owner of the company was planning to outsource slide
work for a series of upcoming conferences. I convinced her that it would be
better to let me do the slides, and when she agreed, I had to learn PowerPoint
-- in a hurry!
Luckily PowerPoint has a short learning curve -- it's easy to start using it
and producing something useable. And the more I worked with it, the more I
learned.
Right now I'm doing freelance work and finishing my Master's in New Media at
the Indiana University (IUPUI) School of Informatics.
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Geetesh: |
Tell us more about your Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
book.
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Echo:
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You know, Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances isn't the kind of
book I'd recommend to help someone learn PowerPoint; people who have used PowerPoint
a bit will get a lot more out of it. It's more the kind of book you
want to have around when you run into snags. And it's got kind of a snarky tone,
which made it a lot of fun to write! I have rather a love-hate relationship
with PowerPoint, and I think that probably comes through a little bit.
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Geetesh: |
You are a regular on the PowerPoint newsgroup--what role
do you think it performs in the world of PowerPoint support.
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Echo: |
Well, when I first started working with PowerPoint, I was
working in a vacuum. I didn't have anyone to bounce ideas off of, to learn
from and teach to. It was really hard. That's probably why I was so thrilled
when I first found the microsoft.public.powerpoint newsgroup. Reading
it every day taught me so much about what PowerPoint could do, and I had a built-in
support system when I had questions. And the people in the group
were helpful and funny -- very real and down-to-earth -- which made it an
enjoyable place to spend time. I couldn't
have asked for anything more perfect. And heck, the
PPTLive! conference grew out of the PowerPoint newsgroup.
Talk about growing a community from the ground up!
I think the group still performs that "colleague" role
for some people as
well as the more traditional "ask a specific question,
get a free answer
from someone who's been there before" role. And since
so many web site
forums just slurp their content from the microsoft.public.powerpoint group,
I think many people are reading the group without even realizing
it.
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Geetesh: |
You've been known as the PowerPoint chart lady--and
all charts start
behaving themselves once you are in the neighborhood. How
can ordinary
PowerPoint users make their charts behave. |
Echo: |
LOL! Developing medical presentations means I've created
and cleaned up more
than my fair share of charts over the years. But I'm not
like the Excel
gurus, creating charts through macros and code -- almost
all of my charting
is done manually. I find that most PowerPoint users are the
same way -- they
either have to create charts manually in PowerPoint, or they
import them
from Excel and clean them up to match the presentation.
Probably the two most useful things I've discovered over
the years is to
turn off Autoscale on the fonts in the charts and never resize
the chart
directly on the slide -- activate it, then size it.
I've posted instructions for turning off autoscale at
echosvoice.com
(#2). I think the other tips there are
pretty useful, too.
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Geetesh: |
What's the single, most important thing people could
do to improve their presentations?
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Echo: |
When presenting, don't read your slides to the audience!
When developing a presentation, make sure it's readable. That
means
making
sure there's enough contrast between the text and the background
and also
making sure the font is large enough.
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Geetesh: |
Can you share any trivia about an unconventional use
of PowerPoint, or
just anything you would like to share with Indezine readers? |
Echo: |
I think I've seen PowerPoint used for almost everything!
What I think is
really cool, though, is when people think a PowerPoint file
is actually
Flash because of the animation. I'm always amazed at what
can be done with
PowerPoint if you push it.
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