A Quick Tutorial

I know everyone understands technology at different levels. Many things that come easy to me confuse other people. I try to have a lot of patience because I know getting frustrated with folks can just make it worse.

But watching Barb Krebs do the “video report” at last night’s council meeting drove me up a tree.

First of all, there was no video, just still images. Which are OK if they tell a good story (I thought these were mostly inside baseball or self-congratulatory, but whatever). But just because the agenda template which Bruce Rebert gave to Barb says “Video Report,” that doesn’t mean that you need to keep those words on there if that does not represent what you are doing. Since you were hired for your communication skills, that should be simple to understand.

Secondly, Powerpoint is not that hard. I really wanted to go up, take the mouse from her and show her how to use the program. Instead of actually running a slideshow in the program, she clicked individually on each picture in the sidebar, which is distracting when she is scrolling and clicking on the wrong picture and just moving the mouse around the screen. This also meant that the pictures were not full screen so only about 75 percent of the available real estate on the video screens was being used effectively.

Like I said, I get that not everyone picks up technology as quickly as I do. So I have put together this difficult and detailed tutorial to help Barb Krebs and anyone else struggling with Powerpoint.

That’s it. That’s how you properly display a slideshow in Powerpoint. You can also go to the top, select Slideshow and choose from the options there, but the handy little icon right next to the percentage bar is the best way to start a slideshow. Once launched, just click your mouse or hit the space bar to go to the next slide. There are lots of other tricks, but starting the slideshow and clicking the mouse is my free tip of the week.

All of this may sound petty to some people, but it’s just another indication that one of the problems in the borough now is the lack of attention to detail. If you are paid a lot of money for your job and that job entails doing presentations in public, you should know how to use the technology available to you. But I am sure this is someone else’s fault because that’s how borough leadership rolls these days.