You can use your favorite social network to register or link an existing account:
Or use your email address to register without a social network:
Sign in with these social networks:
Or enter your username and password
Forgot your password?
Yes, please link my existing account with for quick, secure access.
No, I would like to create a new account with my profile information.
Tips
How-to
News
Videos
Stories
Here at the PowerPoint blog, we want to help you make your presentations visual, engaging, and memorable. Not text-heavy and boring. To help you, in essence, become a great storyteller. Even (especially?) if your story is about bacon.
We also want to give you a chance to win a trip to TEDActive or a copy of Office 2010 for PC/Mac and a Kinect.
To help you create memorable, dynamic presentations, and to show you what other people are doing in their quest to design interesting content for their audiences, we're introducing SlideFest.
Through a combination of Do & Don't videos, Tips & Tricks and sample presentations of what not to do (along with the chance to practice by remodeling some truly misguided attempts), we'll show you how to create great presentations - and then give you an opportunity (starting April 11) to submit your own presentation masterpiece for a chance to win a trip to TEDActive or a copy of Office for PC/Mac and a Kinect. Submissions will be moderated and judged, with the final 20 presentations voted on by the community.
Since SlideFest focuses on what not to do as well as what to do, here's an example of the former - the "graph gaffe":
The site is designed to be fun as well as instructive, so explore it (www.office.com/slidefest if you want to bookmark it), and be sure to check back with us here at the blog. We'll have more info about SlideFest throughout the month, including a reminder about the April 11 start date for you to submit your presentation for the contest.
And speaking of using PowerPoint to tell your story, check out this post from award-winning author Jennifer Egan ("A Visit From the Goon Squad") about how she created a chapter of her new book with PowerPoint.
Enjoy!
-- Erik Jensen
Comments: (11) Collapse
To bad the "submit" button to enter the contest doesn't work - typical Microsoft lack of attention.
@manny, you're right, the date for submitting will be this week, but submissions aren't being taken yet. Hang tight, they will be soon, and when they are, I'll blog about it here on the PowerPoint Blog. Or, you can keep checking back at the submission web site, www.microsoft.com/.../submit.aspx. Sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime.
-Erik
I wanted to double check one of your criteria. You state, "The Submission must not contain any material, images or artwork not created by entrant." I just wanted to make sure that we cannot use Microsoft clip art, even if we ungroup and change it to meet our needs, is that correct?
@susancvineyard, great question. Using clip art is fine. The criteria you mentioned is more intended against copyrighted material. Thanks for writing in!
Thanks Erik but the website specifically states "The Contest begins on April 11, 2011 at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time ("ET"), ends on May 13, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. ET" Confused to say the least.
After many failed attempts to login to submit I just discovered you changed the date to April 14th! It used to be the 11th.
Why did you change the submission time frame? At least you could have a pop-up window that says submissions aren't open yet when you try to login rather than have it just be an endless loop of failed attempts with no explanation. I'm with Manny about your lack of attention.
Bummer! No sound allowed and the file conversion reduced the image quality badly. This format does not allow for any presentations that are designed with user interactions. I know they asked for "presentations" - I guess it all depends on how you define presentation.
If your interested in seeing the real PPT show: www.stevereinhart.com/PPTShow.pps
@manny and cjdunne, you're very right, we did experience a delay this week regarding the submission date for SlideFest. It got pushed out to April 14th from April 11th. My sincere apologies about this, I'm not sure of the reason for the delay but am looking into it. In the meantime, the submission site is now live. Again, apologies to you both and to anyone reading these comments who was similarly confused or inconvenienced.
And manny, I am also looking into your last comment, about sound and the degraded image quality you experienced. I or someone with more information than I will get back to you via these comments with an answer, so stay tuned.
Best regards,
Is it possible to withdraw a submission?
@manny, it’s true that the presentations on SlideFest don’t allow for interactions. Judges will look at the actual, submitted presentations, but the conversion and replay of the files on the site are limited. We appreciate your contribution – thanks for sharing what you’re able to do in PowerPoint.
@cjdunne, yes, if you’d like to remove a presentation you submitted for the contest, send an email to slidefest@microsoft.com with the presentation name and we’ll remove it.
- Erik
When are you announcing winners?
Comments: (loading) Collapse