Part 2 of 4 in our One deck for every audience series. One source deck can serve every audience, but only if each audience's cut still reads as a story. Here is the structure we use to make sure it does.
Two ways to organise the same slides
Part 1 replaced a folder of copied decks with one source file and a collection for each audience. Once that file holds everything, its structure matters. PowerPoint and Genie give you two separate tools for it, and the method works because each does one job.
Sections are PowerPoint's own. They group slides in the slide pane, and every slide sits in exactly one section. Sections decide the order of the story.
Collections are Genie's. A collection is a named set of slides for one audience, and a slide can be in any number of them. Collections decide who sees what.
Keep those two jobs apart and the deck stays readable however it is cut. Mix them - a section for each customer, say - and you are back to copying slides between sections, which is copying the deck by another name.
Sections in story order, each named for a question
Lay the sections out in the order you would tell the full story, and name each one for the question its slides answer. Number them, so the order shows at a glance. A product deck might run:
- What does the customer need?
- What do we offer?
- How is it delivered?
- What proves it?
- What does it cost, and what happens then?
Two kinds of section sit after the story. Themed pools hold depth that only some audiences need, such as detailed technical slides or case studies. A spare pool, last of all, holds slides that are out of the story for now but too good to delete.
Naming sections as questions does two things. Anyone opening the deck can follow the argument from the section list alone. And when a slide does not answer its section's question, it is in the wrong place, or it does not belong in the deck.
To add a section, use Home > Section > Add Section in the slide pane or Slide Sorter, then Rename Section; drag a section to move it with all its slides. Genie's settings can collapse every section when the deck opens, so the section list reads like a table of contents.
Collections cut across the story
With the story in order, build each audience's collection by picking slides across the sections. A first-meeting introduction might take two slides from the first section, one from the second, the strongest proof slide and the closing slide. The full technical deck takes most of every section, plus the technical pool.
A collection is a set of slides in the source deck, so its slides keep the source deck's order. Pick from every section and the cut still runs need, offer, delivery, proof, next step: a shorter story, but the same story.
That also gives you the quickest check on a cut. Filter the deck to one collection, or preview it as a slide show, and note which sections its slides come from. If a question is missing, the audience will feel the gap.
Name a collection for its audience and its length
A good collection name says who it is for and how long it runs, before anyone opens it. We write names in capitals, with the audience and the length in the name, and keep them within Genie's 30 characters:
- PROSPECT-INTRO-10MIN
- TECHNICAL-FULL
- SERVICE-TRAINING-30MIN
Make a twin only when the version you present really differs from the one you send: say, a presented cut with demonstration slides and a PDF without them. A suffix such as -PPT marks the presented twin. Otherwise one collection serves both, and there is one less thing to keep in step.
Let the audience set the stage and sensitivity
Genie gives every slide a stage - draft, review or publish - and a sensitivity - internal, customer, partner or public. In this method the audience decides them: the slides of an internal collection are marked internal, a partner collection's partner, and a customer collection's customer. Slides stay at draft or review while they are written and checked, and move to publish only once they are approved.
That pays off at export. Under Genie's default rules an internal slide never becomes a PDF, so an internal collection stays something you present, never something that gets forwarded. Part 3 of this series covers stages and sensitivities in full.
A routine that keeps the deck in shape
- Put each new slide in the section whose question it answers. Genie offers to add a new slide to a collection as you create it; add it to every collection that needs it.
- Select the new slides and set their stage and sensitivity in one step.
- Now and then, list the deck's collections, and check which collections a selected slide is in.
- Before a meeting, preview the collection as a slide show and read it as the audience will.
Structure first, then the cuts
A master deck that serves every audience is only as good as its structure. Sections in story order, named for their questions, and collections named for their audiences turn one large file into many short, coherent decks. Genie is on the Genie page, free to use, with advanced features under a licence. If your master deck has grown past the point where anyone can find their way around it, get in touch and we will gladly compare notes.
About CATIM. CATIM - Creating Automation Technology In Motion - empowers people to engineer automation solutions that solve hard technical problems. Genie, CATIM's PowerPoint add-in, is free to use, with advanced features under licence: catim.co/genie.