Member Article

Technical wizardry well in advance...

With Simon Raybould of Curved Vision

I did a freebie session this week and so I felt justified in trying out a little experiment that you might like to emulate… I had a constantly changing splash screen, so that people who turned up 20 minutes before I was due to start had something interesting to watch.

Mine was simple this time - just alternating between the title of the presentation (Panic like a Professional) - and a picture of the famous panting by Munch called “The Scream”. It seemed to work very well indeed. It really set the mood for the presentation, making it much easier for me to get things warmed up when I started - half the work had already been done for me; serious content but delivered in a light-hearted way. I’d established technical competence with my audience before I even opened my mouth, too.

Just a hint, though, if you’re tempted to try it out for yourself - remember that you need to have a way of getting to your first ‘real’ slide elegantly. I use Keynote software, so that’s easy for me, but for those of you using Powerpoint, the solution will probably lie in a hyperlink tucked into the corner of your slides. That way you can jump to the place you want to be without coming out of the presentation.

It’s only a month to our next public training course, so this is something I’ll probably include in the slide handouts from that, I think. As ever, your comments and questions are very welcome to sme@curved-vision.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .