Week 5 Presentations- Clear: 5 Rules for Creating a Presentation

Five Rules for Creating an Effective Presentation

One area that was very clear to me when I was reading about Presentations was Duarte's video concerning five important rules when creating a presentation. I always assumed the more information on a screen is better, but as I will describe below, simplicity gets the message across to the audience much clearer

Clay Newton

                      

                              

Treat the Audience as King

Instead of designing a presentation that suits your needs, put yourself in the audience's shoes and look at it from a third-person standpoint. You want the people viewing your presentation to understand what you are trying to convey. It is important to design a presentation that meets THEIR needs.

Tabitha Kokoska

Spread Ideas and Move People

Don't just design a presentation with the thought that is just going to be another commonplace meeting. Approach it with effort in creating meaning to the audience. There are many ways to capture the audience's attention. Play a thought-provoking video, these can help get the viewers involved.

Mark Brannen

Help Them See What You Are Saying

Many people viewing your presentation interpret information better using different methods. There are many visually-oriented people and many people understand information better using speech and audio. The key is to have a great mix of both. This helps people on both sides understand the presentation more clearly.

Practice Design Not Decoration

Everyone knows about the people who make the common mistakes of overdecorating their power point presentations. This falls into the signal to noise ratio, it's important to concentrate more on conveying the message and make graphics that are relevant to the presentation, not to be there to just decorate. Consider using a one-word slide, these can be thought-provoking and allow you to personalize this word to the audience. Quotes can be very powerful but convey a clear message as well.

Cultivate Healthy Relationships

Take a step back from the presentation itself and focus on the people you are surrounded by. Don't hide behind your presentation, engage the audience and the presentation will become easier. Make eye contract and really have passion and intention behind your presentation, this will help getting the audience on your side.

ThinkPanama

Sources:

http://www.duarte.com/training/tools/

Week 4 Clear: Porter's Five Competitive Forces

Porter's Five Competitive Forces 

Micheal E. Porter is a professor at Harvard University. He is the head of the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness. He derived what is known as the five competitive forces. It challenges the old strategies once employed by industries, that the only competition is your direct competition. But as Porter shows, there is much more to it. Below is an outline of the five forces that shape the strategy of a corporation.

By Grahams Child [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)] from Wikimedia Commons

Threat of New Entrants

New companies that enter an industry come with a drive to gain market share. Some companies are just starting out in an industry, but others are larger corporations that have the financial leverage to become a big threat to existing companies. The competitors themselves do not necessarily put pressure on costs, prices, and profitability. The actual threat of new entry does though because if there are not big barriers preventing new entrants, the entire approach and strategy must be developed to anticipate future competitors. 

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

Companies in an industry must be able to depend on a supplier (or multiple) in their supply chain, and the leveraging power of these suppliers are critical to the profitability of a company. If a supplier has many clients and is largely depended on for materials, they have more negotiating ability in supply prices and terms. These suppliers will try to maximize their profits and that could have an enormous impact on a company's strategy. 


Another big part is switching costs. Many companies work very closely with their suppliers to obtain an end product that meets the needs of the consumer. It takes an abundance of R&D and other types of investments to derive such products. This makes it more unlikely for a company to change suppliers. 

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Bargaining Power of Buyers

Large purchasers from suppliers also can hold significant bargaining power over their suppliers. These buyers can demand better quality products and force down the prices of these supplies which can drive up the costs to the supplier. Suppliers are especially at risk from buyers if there is more than one supplier in their industry. If the materials offered by the supplier are relatively common, the switching costs are minimal to the purchaser which can lead to fierce price competition between suppliers of an industry. 


Threat of Substitutes

Substitutes can present a threat to an industry because it can perform the same or similar function by a different means. Substitutes have always been around but sometimes they are not easy to spot or associate with a product. That is because a seemingly unrelated action or product can have a significant impact on a different industry. For example, the increase in internet speeds around the globe with the advent of high speed cable, led to more calls being placed online and less being made using a landline. Phone companies are continuing to suffer less profitability because a price ceiling has capped off the industry.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/duien/with/79371194/

Rivalry Among Existing Competitors


This force nearly goes without saying because rivalry among businesses of the same industry has been around for a very long time. Price competition, continuous new products, and advertising all have an effect on the profitability of a company in any industry. The intensity of competition differs in each industry but high intensity has many common factors such as: numerous competitors, high exit barriers, high fixed costs. Examples include the relatively new industry for smartphones. Apple came out with the iphone which has been an amazing success story, but it opened up an entire industry of fierce competitors vying to be a better choice. Companies such as Samsung, Research in Motion, and Nokia have come out with great substitutes that are as powerful if not more powerful than the iphone. Along with the continuous technological improvements on each phones is the price competition among them. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/guileite/with/929553853/

Sources:
https://ares-uflib-ufl-edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/ares.dll?Action=10&Type=10&Value=88939
UF Login Required

Week 3: Clear "Networking"

Network Topology

There are various networking structures that businesses use in modern times to help relay information back and forth. Some are outdated, some have become popular in the last few years. Below is a list and an explanation for the some network layouts that are used to connect computers and components to each other so that they can communicate. 


Client/Server
This setup includes various computers on a Local Area Network that are connected to one main computer that acts as the server. Stored in the server is many programs and data that is relayed for use by the nodes or clients that are connected to it. 

jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Peer-to-Peer 

When using P2P, the computer acts as a server and a client at the same time, this information relays by uploading as it is downloading and has no central server connection. It depends on the connection of other computers. A side note, peer-to-peer networking has grown in popularity with the start of Napster. The sharing of music evolved into the sharing of other media and has contributed to the growing problem of copyright infringement.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P2P-network.svg 

By User:Mauro Bieg (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Bus Networking

This connection also relies on other computers to transmit information. It is one single line that runs down a circuit. All the computers are connected to the single cable. It is inexpensive and simple to set up, but if one computer goes down the entire circuit is broken.

By Bakshi41c (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

 or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Detailed Video

Credit: http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfessorNVCC

attribution details: Section 6C http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

More info:

Further Information on network topologies used to connect to the internet and other computers are found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_topology

Week 2: Clear- Hardware: How a drive Writes and Reads Bits on a Disk

Reading and Writing Bits on a Disk:


In the book, How Computers work, there was a small area explaining how a PC reads and writes on disks (Hard Drive or a CD).

Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net  http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=584

Details: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/help/acknowledgement/index.php?photogname=Chris%20Sharp&photogid=584

Steps Involved:


1. A blank disc comes with magnetic iron particles randomly placed over the entire disk. In order to write on the disc, an iron core with a coil pulses electricity so that it arranges these iron particles into order.

2. The order is arranged into a language called Binary which is made of 1's and 0's which also stand for north and south (the polarities of the iron particles). 

3. After it is written on the disc, the coil does not pulse electricity through the disc, but acts in the opposite way. It runs over the disc sensing a change in polarities. This change in polarities is decoded into the binary data. 

Week 1: Clear- Course Introduction- Evaluating information

In the course introduction, I viewed the video on Evaluating information on the web. I felt like the video really helped me understand the importance of looking at information and trying to decide whether or not it is a credible source. It is one thing to read about this information, but when it is presented to you by someone it makes more sense. 


There are many things you have to remember when looking at a source's credibility. A few are listed below

• Who is the author
• What is their background
• Many agree you have to have 3 sources backing a certain claim to be deemed credible
• Don't rely on second-hand information, look for a primary source.