What is it that attracts an audience within any presentation? Are they the slides? Or is it the speaker? Or is there something else that is the sum of all parts: the audience themselves, the speaker, and the slides? We may all have been speakers at one occasion or another but we have also been part of an audience -- and do all successful presentations have a quality about them that we remember long after the presentation was over? If you think carefully about all successful presentations that linger in your thoughts, then there has to be a common thread that strings through all of them -- and that has to be the charisma of the speaker!

A speaker's charisma can make or break a presentation -- when an enthusiastic, lively speaker talks knowledgably to his or her audience, there is almost no chance that you will get a bored audience. When people in the audience stop looking at their laptops or smartphones and instead give undivided attention to a speaker, then there is something that the speaker is doing right. So go ahead and explore the charisma of such speakers -- study what makes them successful and try to incorporate these mannerisms in your presentations -- very, very gradually! Yes, make this change gradual so that you can grow with your charisma, and make it your own rather than be a clone of someone you are trying to impersonate. Here's a thought that you all should pursue: Get inspired by someone else's charisma but do not ape them. Just try to bring in small nuances of their behaviors that audiences are most receptive to within your presentations, and combine them with your own personality.

We continue with plenty of new content in this issue -- scroll down to find more.

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MapPrez is a PowerPoint add-in that enables you to insert maps, and add place locations as labels directly on inserted maps. All these actions can be done through a dedicated MapPrez tab in PowerPoint's Ribbon. All maps are sourced from Google -- and you can thus insert brilliant satellite and cartographic imagery with a click or two. In addition, MapPrez lets you superimpose vector maps on top of the inserted maps. Learn about MapPrez, a PowerPoint add-in that lets you add high quality geographical maps inside PowerPoint.

Podium is a PowerPoint add-in which enables you to do quite a bit with your slide content. You can manage your PowerPoint presentations, and you can use provided tools to enhance your presentations. You can also create a new presentation from scratch. Podium provides a huge library of media elements such as images, vector drawings, ready-to-use backgrounds, 3D clip art and shapes, embellishments, etc. All these elements are royalty free, and most of these can also be individually customized to match the look of your slides. Once installed, Podium creates a new tab on PowerPoint's Ribbon. Learn about Podium, a PowerPoint add-in that lets you customize and enhance your slides.

These Valentine mobiles are suspended from a rope, and are freely moving pendulum-like in the air with random speeds and directions. All the heart mobiles you see are Theme aware so that their fills change when you apply a new Theme. In addition, we used animation sparingly, yet effectively to create this effect - the entire slide uses just the Spin animation and nothing else! And while this entire animated slide was created in PowerPoint 2010, it should work just fine in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008/2011 for Mac. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the hearts keep on moving until you navigate to the next slide. Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Do you want to be more influential in your meetings and presentations? Consider doing these behaviors so that you are on top of the content as well as your presenting style. Get approval of the content: Talk to people who know the audience, and find out the interests of the audience. Talk to at least two people just to be sure you are getting accurate advice. Read more in this guest post by Claudyne Wilder.

In an attention-deficient, entertain-me-now, wait-while-I-post-that-on-my-Facebook-page kind of world, the typical business presentation is lame. Professional speaker, trainer, coach, tweeter and blogger Kelly Vandever works with organizations who want to take their strategic business presentations from Lame to Fame! In this conversation, Kelly discusses visible changes in the world of presentations, and the use of Twitter as a means to interact with their audience. Read the conversation here.

Drawing Lines
Drawing Curved Lines
Drawing Freeform Lines
Drawing Scribble Lines