While watching the iPad 2 event, I noticed a few times where Steve advanced to a blank slide and just talked. It allowed the audience to focus on him as he built up to the next image and it was pretty smart. Maybe this is a simple trick but it never occurred to me before. Expect a few blank slides in my next presentation.
MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.
My beloved remote has failed me. I’ve been using it for at least 6 years without a hitch and suddenly (despite new batteries, cleaning the contacts, and a few kindly whacks) it has stopped advancing slides. So time for a new one and I took advantage of Macworld Expo to do some shopping.
For me the perfect remote has four buttons: advance, backward, dark screen, and laser. I don’t want extra bells and whistles that I will start pressing in nervous fits. So that was my shopping list, a Mac friendly remote with just the right number of buttons. I found my new remote on the expo floor, the Kensington Presenter Pro with Green Laser and Memory.
The Kensington Presenter Pro ($99) (find the manual here) fits nicely in my hand and features four buttons: slide advance, slide back, laser, and dark screen. It includes a dongle that stores inside the remote. The device works on a 2.4 GHz wireless signal that worked for me up to about 100 feet. Everything just works on the Mac. What really makes this remote shine however are the little details
The Laser
The Kensington Presenter Pro uses a green laser. While green lasers aren’t as unique as they used to be, they are still a lot more rare than red lasers, which is great. When I’m speaking, my green laser looks different, and that’s good. People know when I point.
There is also some science involved. Green light is right in the middle of the visible spectrum where red light is on the edge (meaning less visible). So it has a bright shiny laser with a different color. That’s a plus.
The Thumb Drive
The USB key does more than talk to the remote. It also has 2 GB of onboard storage and a micro SD slot supporting cards up to 32 GB. That means you can put a copy of your Keynote right on the thumb stick as a last ditch back up in case everything else goes wrong. It also means you could conceivably walk in a room with a remote only, plug it in to a Mac and start talking.
The Power Switch
Another nice touch is the inclusion of a sliding power switch. My old remote didn’t have one and it made me crazy. You never knew when the laser might get accidentally pressed in my bag and I’d get to my location to find the batteries dead. As a result, I still have this manic desire to carry extra AAAs whenever I speak.
The Case
The Presenter Pro also includes a zippered case form fitted to hold your remote. It fits nicely in my bag without a big footprint.
Overall, the new remote is a winner.
In addition to releasing the 4.2 iPad update this week, Apple also updated Keynote for iPad. The update solves several shortcomings with the prior version including an overhaul of the presenter display. You can now see your presenter notes or the next slide on your iPad while you present, a feature that probably should have existed from the beginning.
Despite these improvements, iPad Keynote still has one fatal defect: lack of support for a remote. Watch anyone who gives presentations with any regularity (even Steve) and they will use a remote. Having to stop in the middle of your presentation to stab at your keyboard or (worse) look down at the iPad and fumble around for the slide advance button is just not acceptable. It distracts the audience and, more importantly, the speaker. I’ve tried several work arounds including using a paired Bluetooth keyboard (no dice) and even a failed attempt to use a USB remote dongle plugged into the camera connection kit (which of course would use up the dock connector prohibiting VGA connection even if it worked). I still use iPad Keynote in small settings but until Apple builds in remote slide advance capabilities, it remains crippled for many uses.
So what kind of remote would I like? Ideally a Bluetooth “clicker” style remote. It just needs a few buttons: forward, backward, and a laser pointer for good measure. Apple has a Keynote Remote App for the iPhone that lets you advance Keynote presentations on your Mac but it does not currently work with the iPad. Also, I consider using the iPhone as a remote as a distant second choice to a traditional clicker. Using the phone still requires you to look down to swipe or gesture and often involves setting up dodgy temporary networks.
I got to unload for an hour and a half about my thoughts and practices for presenting on a Mac in the most recent episode of the Mac Power Users. It was therapeutic. Get it on the Web or in iTunes.
Recently Ars Technica posted about a study commissioned by the International Journal of Innovation and Learning about the futility of PowerPoint presentations. In summary, it explains how excessive animation and poorly structured presentations put audiences to sleep.
This follows the growing backlash I’ve seen recently against presentation software in general. I find this curious because I was using presentation software before it became popular. I remember the days of walking into a presentation with a projector and everyone looking at me inquisitively wondering exactly what the heck all that gear was for. (I also remember the bad old days before presentation software where I’d spend lots of money on big unwieldy blow ups.)
In the ensuing years, PowerPoint became a staple of business, sales, education, and just about every other scenario where one person needs to communicate information to another. I appreciate that a lot people are sick and tired of “death by PowerPoint.” I disagree that presentation software as a tool is a bad thing. To refine matters, I believe people are sick of bad presentations, not presentations as a whole.
The problem is, that most presentations are bad. While everyone is busy adding animations, transitions, and jingles (yes, jingles) to their presentations, nobody is bothering to figure out how to do one correctly. Using Apple’s Keynote is a good start. It looks so different from the usual PowerPoint templates that it gives you an immediate head start. That is only the beginning though. Keynote is just as easily abused as PowerPoint.
Software developers are not making it any easier with the arms race of tricky animations and visual effects. While these are a lot of fun (when used sparingly), for a lot of misguided presenters, they become a crutch upon which to give a cheesy, sleep inducing presentation. Don’t even get me started on the subject of bullet points and full screen paragraphs.
When done right, a Keynote presentation can complement an oral presentation beautifully. Maybe the problem is people think the presentation software can do the work for them. It doesn’t replace the presenter’s job of conveying information, it only enhances it. The answer is not to abandon presentation software. The answer is to make better presentations.
In Keynote ’09 you can now connect objects with lines (straight or curved) that follow your objects as you move them around. I didn’t know that.
Continue reading
I’m a fan of Jumsoft, creators of a variety of iWeb, Keynote, and Mail related templates, clip art, and other enhancements. Today they announced their free Christmas pack. It includes 20 Cliparts, 2 iWeb themes, 1 Keynote, and 8 Mail Stationery themes. Everything is the high quality you can expect from Jumsoft.
Continue reading
Today the Uncluterer website posted an excellent article on giving presentations. I do quite a bit of presentation work and following years of hard knocks I’d have to agree with just about everything the author says. Especially the part about practice. Presentations don’t happen magically. Unless you are some sort of freak, the only way to come off smoothly is to practice. Believe me. I’ve tried it the other way and it always turns out ugly.
So when I know I’m about to give an important presentation, I practice. No one and no thing is safe from my practice. Mirrors, co-workers, traffic, family members, unsuspecting door to door salesmen: They are all liable to be dragged through an opening statement, a presentation, or a particular analogy that I have yet to get just right. It is good to know I’m not alone.
Guy Kawasaki (yes, THAT Guy Kawasaki) posted links to winners of the Slideshare World’s Best Presentation Contest on his blog. The presentations are very well done and if you do any amount of presentation work yourself, worthy of clicking through.
Continue reading
My friend and MacSparky reader Marie pointed me to Jumsoft’s free “Jam” download of Keynote 3d images. Several of them are useful for presentation work and definitely worth the download. Check it out. As a little Keynote tip, I actually keep a separate folder called “Keynote Source Documents” where I have slides and presentation with re-usable resources. If you haven’t done something like this yourself, this is the perfect place to start.
Continue reading