After mastering the foundational concepts of Levels 1 and 2, you are ready for a substantial expansion of perspective. Here, the focus shifts toward External navigation—linking to files outside the current show. Such navigation elements can open other slide shows, return to previously visited shows, access a Web site, or open a separate object such as a spreadsheet, text file, or PDF document. External navigation literally puts the world of knowledge at your fingertips. Level 3 provides a wealth of guidelines for managing the potential complexity of this process. With well-designed data management structures in place, finding individual slides out of hundreds or even thousands of options will be easy. Five sessions focus on these topics:

Session 3.1

Advanced Navigation Styles: You'll start off Level 3 by learning about external hyperlinks and Nested navigation. Nested navigation is the most potent form of interactivity in a relational presenter's arsenal. It lets you seamlessly tie together thousands of slides, and access any idea within three clicks, usually requiring only a few seconds. Imagine having that kind of control.

Session 3.2

Presentation Networks: Session 3.2 looks at strategies for hierarchically arranging clusters of slides and slide shows, leading to a structure called a Presentation Network. Presentation networks resemble large Web sites in some ways, but are made entirely within PowerPoint. They give you all the flexibility of a Web environment, coupled with PowerPoint's superior display of information. We'll explore the key components found in most networks, such as a Main Switchboard, Primary Shows, and a Resources section. You'll begin using these components and others to organize sections of content, eventually forming your own personalized network.

Session 3.3

The Seven Phases: Building a comprehensive Presentation Network can be a rather complex task. Many decisions must be made and sometimes the right answers are not obvious. Most of us have mountains of slides sitting around somewhere on our computer; figuring out how to arrange that content into an efficient network may seem like a daunting task. That's where the Seven Phases approach greatly helps. This detailed set of guidelines breaks down the complexity of network construction into manageable subtasks. Session 3.3 looks at each phase in detail and helps you begin mapping out your network's branches.

Session 3.4

Advanced Design: This session considers additional design issues such as strategic use of illusion, incorporation of visual clues, taking advantage of subtlety, creating alternatives to traditional bullet lists, and maximizing numerous psychological effects possible with relational delivery. Those of you attending the live sessions also get another treat at this point. You have a chance to begin showing off what you've accomplished so far. We encourage all live workshop participants to deliver a three- to five-minute Web-based presentation to the instructor and other attendees, demonstrating how visually interactive concepts are being applied.

Session 3.5

Delivery and Interactivity: Level 3 concludes with a healthy dose of what it means to deliver a relational presentation. Visually interactive communication is very different from the slide-to-slide style of normal PowerPoint performances. It requires alternative delivery techniques and strategies. One especially important strategy called the Content Ladder aids a presenter in the delicate task of staying on track, even while spontaneously selecting content to answer questions or shape topics. Toward the end of this session, we look at the likely stages you will go through over the next few months of development, and talk about success strategies that help assure your success when implementing the methods.