Computer-assisted presentation are the norm for this sort of thing - we've seen a couple without video projection, and it makes it a lot harder. Even overhead projectors just don't cut it for complicated radiological images and anatomical diagrams. This means that for people like me, who are laptop-impaired, we have to beg, borrow or steal for the occasion.
Luckily, presenting in the slots either side of me were two laptop-owning colleagues - unfortunately, one didn't have PowerPoint, and the other wasn't sure if she was able to make hers work at all. (I scoped this out the week before.)
In desperation, I turned to the HTML/JavaScript-based, "I Can't Believe It's Not PowerPoint" solution - S5.
The idea behind S5 is that you write your entire presentation in an HTML file, using <div> tags to mark the various slides and speaker notes, and some clever JavaScript and CSS turns the page into an interactive presentation that runs on any modern browser (I tried Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer). Hit F11 or the equivalent shortcut, and you've got a full-screen presentation that you can treat almost like a PowerPoint.
Advantages? You can roll up to just about any venue with a USB key or CD, and have a full-featured slideshow ready to go. It's free (in both senses of the word). New presentation styles are fairly straightforward to create. It's much, much smaller than either a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation - even with the backend included. There's no easy way to do stupid visual effects. Anything that you can embed in an HTML page can be embedded in your presentation.
Disadvantages? There's no really easy way to create the HTML page. I used the (also quite cool) Nvu to do most of the work, but there was still a lot of selecting and naming of blocks of text. There aren't too many new styles easily available.
While I can wholeheartedly recommend S5 for anyone who needs to prepare a presentation which they have to give in a variety of environments and is reasonably comfortable with HTML, I'd really like to see some budding graphic designers come up with some new visual styles and submit them to S5's creator (Eric Meyer). I also think an S5 extension for Nvu would work really well.
(I'd make the presentation available for download, as it went quite well, but unfortunately I don't have permission to redistribute some of the images. I think part of the success was due to the fact that I was able to answer questions I didn't have any idea about with the self-confidence that only comes from five years at a private school and over a year at WA's most arrogant, elitist university.)
2 comments
Sheeba :: Saturday, August 13th
I think part of the success was due to the fact that I was able to answer questions I didn't have any idea about with the self-confidence that only comes from five years at a private school and over a year at WA's most arrogant, elitist university.
*is so very amused*
Nat :: Sunday, August 14th
AAhh.. false confidence from my private school life. It's how I survive in WAMSS without curling up in my chair
