Ms. Mehreen Shafique, Founder, The PowerPoint Company talks to Karvan about the importance of making visually appealing presentations in this exclusive interview.
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1. What led you to establish The PowerPoint Company?
I admired people throughout my life who had some talent related to art. I tried Pastel Painting after my matriculation and found out that I am not a painter but I did realize I have a good eye for colors, their combinations and I do understand a “frame”.
Later in my professional life PowerPoint Presentation became an official requirement and after some time I realized that I can download, copy paste and place things in a unique way within a slide using it as a frame and in 2009 the journey started.
With time it became a passion and with God gifted uniqueness and creative ability, I was able to make a name for myself within the organization. One of my Presentation was sent to our head office group in Russia and my work was acknowledged and replicated in all the sister companies in the world.
I met Mr. Wali Zahid during the “Train the Trainer” program in July 2018 and in a dedicated section for PowerPoint Presentations by the participants my work was displayed and was acknowledged. He guided and pursued me to display my work on a national platform and that is how I evolved as a professional.
The PowerPoint Company was launched on August 21, 2018 while on December 14, 2018, I launched my YouTube Channel.
I am also active on LinkedIn SlideShare and my uploads are being downloaded and viewed worldwide. I have now a community of 500 PowerPoint company members as we connect and correspond on Facebook and it is growing day by day however for YouTube channel and SlideShare I am using different promotional tools.
2. To what extent do people incorporate visuals and an aesthetic sense when designing their PowerPoint presentations?
As per my observation, people do not use visuals in a very appealing manner. Normally most people have stage freight so they use fewer visuals and more of text to aid them during their presentations.
3. What are the most common mistakes you see in people’s PowerPoint presentations?
The most common mistakes are:
• Using a lot of text on slides
• Less use of pictures or visuals
• Dark backgrounds and very light/bright or extremely small or big font color/size or vice versa
• Use of Transitions or Animations which takes a lot of time
• Using lots of combinations of Animations or transitions in one slide
• Use of low-quality pictures in terms of presentation, size or visual
3. What other services does The PowerPoint Company provide?
Apart from assisting individuals with existing PowerPoint presentations and creating new ones for the client we offer
• Business Profiles
• Newsletters/E-Newsletters
• E-Learning Videos (English and Urdu both)
• Training Modules and Programme (Both Product Based & Soft skill based) (English/Urdu)
In the near future, we also plan to collaborate with some of the companies to insource permanent projects of Presentations and also helping new startups with their business profiling and employee grooming and training.
4. Tell us about yourself?
By profession, I am a trainer. I joined the customer service industry back in Dec 2005 as a Call Center representative and paved my way up to different positions, have a multi-dimensional front and backend exposure of different departments. In 2016 I was promoted and moved to the training department. My USP is one and only and that is HARD WORK. This will help you earn respect, goodwill, knowledge and will make you a better person. I strongly believe that “it is ok to be born ignorant but to die as one is a sin”. One must learn, should have this eagerness to make him/herself a better person. The combination of hard work and eagerness to learn will give you “success” as a result.
5. What is your message for the youth of Pakistan?
As you know I resumed my studies 2 years back to get my master’s degree and took admission in the weekend programme. But during this time I also got a chance to spend two semesters with the regular students of the university and I realized that this generation lacks patience, patience to learn, experiment and then adding it to their journey of life. I believe studies also show that the coming generations will even have a shorter span of time for all the above things. On the other hand, the good thing about the youth of Pakistan is how aware they are of their surroundings, their culture, the latest technology, advancements in the world. They have the courage to speak up for things they don’t like, they have the courage to stand up for things they believe in which I think our and previous generations were shy of. My message for all of them is to not to let go of their good attributes and keep the hard work and patience intact within them. Keep the child in you alive who wants to learn and has the empathy to forgive, has the heart to share and believes that he owns the world.
Visit the Facebook page of The PowerPoint Company for more information.
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