Do You Want a Great Present for Christmas?

Another year has just about gone by the wayside and the Christmas and the New Year seasons are fast approaching. How’d that 2010 New Year’s resolution go to achieve your desired weight loss? This is probably one of the most popular New Year’s Resolutions. I would surely like to know the success rate on that. I’m going to take a guess and say 15%. 15% of the people who make that New Year’s resolution achieve their desired weight loss. Some people may think that is a little optimistic some people might think that figure is a little pessimistic.

If you’re thinking about adding that to you Resolutions for the New Year it really might be a good idea to get a head start on it. Why? I know from experience Christmas and Thanksgiving days alone can add a few pounds to your frame. Combine that with all the days surrounding those days and all the baking that goes on it doesn’t hurt to think about what you’re eating. I’m not saying cut out all that good food that will be on the dinner table those days. What I’m preaching is moderation. Again, from experience these are the times during the year that we fix more than the normal amount of food.

Last Thanksgiving at the dinner table at our house there was turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberries, three layer salad, corn, green bean casserole, rolls, and probably several other things I can’t remember. That was just dinner, there were several hor douvres before the dinner and many deserts after dinner. I used to take a big serving of everything during the meal. In order to achieve your desired weight loss, just think about this. The result of taking a big helping of everything on the menu is that immediately following the meal, the main topic of conversation is how miserable everyone is from stuffing themselves. Speaking of stuffing, there’s always some stuffing on hand for Thanksgiving dinner also.

The next conversation is about taking a walk after dinner. It’s usually said in gest, but why not? You’re probably not going to walk of all those calories immediately, but exercise is always a good thing and it will make you feel better. Take a walk for exercise and enjoy the fall colors.

Achieving your desired weight loss requires that you take action. The great Christmas present that I referred to in the title is that you feel great physically and mentally. You feel healthy and look healthy. Start that New Year’s resolution early this year to achieve your desired weight loss. When you’re at the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables enjoy the food, but take a small helping of your favorites instead of a large helping of everything. If your house is anything like mine there will be leftovers, and Thanksgiving leftovers always taste good. Then after dinner take that walk that everyone jokes about. There’s always those leaves to rake too. Take action and achieve your desired weight loss. You won’t regret it.

The Benefits and Uses of Presentation Folders

The unlimited advantages of presentation folders

Presentation folders could surprise you endlessly if you actually start exploring all the benefits and uses they have to offer for business organisations, educational institutions and, as well as, individuals. An indispensable kit in offices and educational institutes, these folders are also considered to be one of the bests and cost-effective marketing tools available in the market. Presentation folders serve in many simple but significant ways to effectively reach out to your target audience and get your business noticed. Moreover, these folders can be customised exactly to suit your needs and will cost only a fraction of amount when compared to other brand promotional activities. Customised folders are an efficient and convenient tool to make business meets, educational seminars, training programmes and promotional and branding activities memorable and successful.

Make impactful presentations

Business meetings-be it with your prospective clients, investors or partners- are very crucial for the success of your brands. A presentation folder will enable you to make a good impact on your target audience. These folders are very handy for meticulously organising different materials and documents that are required for your business conferences, corporate gatherings or educational seminars. So whether you want to make a proposal, sell ideas, or secure investment for your business models, presentation folders will give you the ease of delivering your message in a powerful and professional manner.

Efficiently promote your brand

Another great advantage of these folders is that they have a longer shelf life and are beneficial for the recipients too. This gives you the liberty to promote your services or offerings in a very elaborate manner. Moreover, you have the freedom to creatively use your brand logo and brand name on the folders. Right from the choosing the colour to the font type and material to deciding the shape and size, you can uniquely design and customise your folder in a way that best appeals to your target audience. Such innovative design folders will not only enhance your brand identity but also will have a strong brand recall value.

Distribute information easily and impressively

A well-customised presentation folder is highly useful for organisations and companies to distribute product information, catalogues, training manuals, presentation notes, posters and other informative and promotional materials in an organised manner. Since most of such information will be used for references and study purposes, presentation folders are always a great choice for easily putting together all those documents and handing them out to your targeted group in an impressive manner.

But remember, all the benefits and advantages of using these folders can be harnessed to your needs only when they are carefully designed and customised keeping your target audience in mind. So it always wise to approach a reputed company which will professionally design and customise folders.

The Dos and Donts of Creating a Powerful Presentation

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program included in the Microsoft Office Suite of products. PowerPoint has become the industry standard for making presentations and it provides a number of advantages over conventional presentation methods, such as:

  • Saving printing costs, especially since many presentations are saved to USB drives;
  • Providing vibrant slides with the use of color, clip art, and different font styles and;
  • Allowing for dynamic content on slides, in the form of the Internet and Video insertions even polling an audience by using a wireless audience response system.

However, with all these advantages, often presentations are lackluster and unsatisfactory to the audience because the presenter uses the Powerpoint presentation software and equipment in ways that are not helpful in getting their message communicated. The tool becomes a distraction or worse yet, the presenter merely reads the slides.

Below, are some simple DO’s and DON’Ts in putting together your next presentation to make certain your next speaking engagement or product launching event goes off without a hitch.

Do’s and Dont’s of putting together a great PowerPoint presentation

First, even before turning on PowerPoint, create a rough storyboard idea of your presentation. Write it out on note cards and put the ideas in order with an intro, body, and conclusion. Now, you are ready to begin with PowerPoint.

DO use large fonts. For your headings, a 24 pt font or larger is best.

DO make certain you are using only 1 or 2 font styles through out the presentation. Add clip art and photographs only if they enhance the message. Consider adding an interactive survey with an audience response system rental.

DO use the 6 by 6 rule. No more than 6 words across and no more than 6 lines down the page. PowerPoint is there to enhance your presentation, not replace it. Keep your slides and presentation simple.

DO plan on the “2 minute per slide” rule. For example, if you have 60-minute presentation, the MAXIMUM number of slides you should have are 30. Too many presenters rush through their slides and give their audience very little time to think about the content.

DO have the presentation printed so if the powerpoint presentation equipment fails, you can read from a paper copy and continue your talk.

DON’T leave the laptop on standby power. If you engage in a discussion with your attendees, the last thing you want is for the laptop to go to sleep.

DON’T leave your screen saver on either. This is another unwanted distraction to the presentation.

DON’T use dark backgrounds in poorly-lit rooms or light backgrounds in well-lit rooms because the slides become too hard to read.

LASTLY, DON’T be the only one to review your presentation. Give it to co-workers, members of your association or even a family member to review. Take their edits and comments to heart.

Now that you’ve mastered putting together a presentation, learn about the PowerPoint Presentation Equipment you will need in Part 2 to be posted on Monday.