Here is the SlideShare Zeitgeist for 2011. What are the latest trends in presentations? Well…
- they are getting longer and contain more images
- men use more slides than women
- Keynote is becoming more popular in general compared to 2010

If you want to learn more, have a look at the presentation and enjoy the highly visual way it demonstrates statistics. No doubt SlideShare’s team is following the latest trends in using images and words.

This is the title of Chapter 1 of one of the most inspiring books that ended in my hands in the last years – If you Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. Written in 1938 the book was intended to encourage everyone who desired to be a writer to believe in their talents. And ever since its first publishing the book has served as inspiration not only for writers-to-be but for anyone who desires to express their creativity.

If you do your search, you will find numerous reviews of the book. So, instead of reviewing it I am tempted just to share the first paragraph of Chapter 1.

“I have been writing a long time and have learned some things, not only from my own long hard work, but from a writing class I had for three years. In this class were all kinds of people: prosperous and poor, stenographers, housewives, salesmen, cultivated people and little servant girls who have never been to high school, timid people and bold ones, slow and quick ones.

This is what I learned: everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”

If you also need a bit of encouragement on the way to expressing yourself, don’t hesitate – grab the book!

Graywolf Press, 2007

Last year we shared with you Deni and Punkt’s All Is Full of Love project - the calendar that received such a warm welcome in homes all over the world. We were  impatiently waiting for this year’s edition to appear, especially as we were involved in the entire process of creation and could contribute with a few ideas. It was obviously not only us that couldn’t wait for the 2012 calendar as two days after its print out, the calendar is almost sold out. When you give love, you get love…

The 2012 Calendar: June

Do you already know edudip? I came across it through Renate Kirchmann-Basiry. Renate was so kind to walk me through the platform and show me the functionality. The platform is no doubt a great tool for connecting trainers and learners. I got quickly enthusiastic about the variety of courses you find there. They are filed under different categories and you can easily find a subject of your interest. This is one of my top discoveries of 2011. I even downloaded a widget for my desktop showing me upcoming courses, so I constantly get reminded of forthcoming training.

On-line seminars often require writing homeworks

But the seminar that really sold to me the idea of on-line learning was Zamyat M. Klein’s Schnuperseminar for trainers. It had everything that you wish for in a seminar – a lot of interaction with fellow learners and trainer, working on your own followed by a huge amount of feedback, and fun! And most importantly, the seminar fulfilled its purpose: to provide first positive experience with online learning.

And that’s how my big thanks for my own development in the last year go to Zamyat and Renate. Thank you very much and looking forward to our next meeting (online or live)!

Here we are again, dear Readers! Those of you who are involved in training, probably know this – autumn is somehow always a busy, busy season. Every project needs to be finished before Christmas, before next-year budget… And then comes of course the planning for next year. So, unfortunately we didn’t manage to keep the same tempo with the blog. But slowly things go back to normal and we break the long silence with this beautiful presentation. Even though it is about the art of paper-cutting, it is much more about story telling. So, listen to this beautifully told story and enjoy the out-of this-world creations of Beatrice Coron.

And this week is again colour week. Here is a documentary I found extremely interesting. It asks the question, Do we all see the same colours?, and presents various experiments in proof of the idea that different people see colours differently. Like the Himba people in Northern Namibia who call the water black and the sky white. Unfortunately, BBC decided to restrict the access to the full movie, but you can still watch a preview here.

photo credit www.design-seeds.com

Last Friday we had a wonderful finish of the week with a workshop dedicated to the meaning of colours in presentations. We practiced finding different colour combinations depending on the topic of the presentation. One of the participants shared that a bride’s dress inspired her for the design of her last presentation – white and fresh green. No doubt, inspiration can be found anywhere around us. We’ve recently come across design seeds – a blog for all who love color. We find the sea colour combinations so inspiring, especially now as summer is slowly over, and autumn is creeping in…

Here is a PowerPoint presentation that has been downloaded and shared many times, and there is a good reason why. Have a look and maybe you will feel inspired to do more with your presentations then just showing lists of bullet points and MS clipart.