Recently in Presentations Category

Have you ever read Marie Wallace's article on LLRX called The Power of Post-Its?   If you  give presentations, and let's face it, at one time or another we all do, you should take a look at her method of brainstorming and organization.

The idea is to use post-its and a file folder to organize your thoughts when preparing a presentation.  I've been using it for years, and whenever I think perhaps I could forgo it, and just open up PowerPoint and start there instead, I've been sorry.  PowerPoint encourages a very linear chain of thought, and without figuring out in advance the points you want to make, and organizing them outside of PowerPoint, you can end up with a disorganized mish-mash.

But it is decidedly low-tech.  And if someone walks into my office and sees my file folder covered in post-its, I look far from organized.  I can live with that, but the truth be told, I would like a neater, cleaner way to accomplish the same thing.

This time I'm trying something different, and using Microsoft OneNote to brainstorm and organize.  And I must say, I'm liking it!  I've set up one page with the same elements that Marie recommends for organizing;  I have other pages within the group with screenshots and URLs.  After all of this is compiled, and I know what I want to say, THEN I'll go to PowerPoint to put it all together. 

I don't hear much about OneNote, but it really is a great product for keeping notes and otherwise organizing those little bits of information you're not sure what to do with. 

The power of post-Its without the post-its is working for me!

Sometimes I blog items to make sure I can find them again in the future. In that respect, LawLibTech is my own personal knowledgebase. This item is in that category, and who knows, maybe you'll be interested, too!

If you have a presentation to give in the near future, no matter how mundane or technical, read Where to Start, from Creating Passionate Users.

I especially like #3, "For the love of god, DO NOT start with history!" And let me just say, if you're a vendor, conducting a product demo, don't spend the first 15 minutes of a 30 minute demo talking about your company and how wonderful it is. Spend your allotted time making me care about the product!

I guess you could say that most people have a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint. Ever since PowerPoint became the de facto standard in presentation software, presenters have been looking for an alternative. When the web came along, many speakers tried using HTML to compile presentations. For those who were comfortable in HTML, it was an easy way to create the materials to be projected during the presentation, and also made it a simple matter to distribute those materials, complete with live links, for participants to view after the session was over. For those who weren't comfortable in HTML, well, they were out of luck. There were other downsides as well, as Rich Wiggins details in his article "Will the Web Browser Replace Powerpoint?", Internet Outlook, Oct. 1, 1997.

HTML presentations can be useful for presenting with a live, reliable Internet connection so that instead of screenshots, you simply link to the live web sites. But if you decide to incorporate screenshots or downloaded web pages, things quickly get much more complicated.

There are a variety of ways to find and deliver news information to your organization, including tools offered by proprietary services as well as free options on the web. My presentation at the recent SCALL Institute discusses the methods of delivery, vendor tools, web services and a brief introduction to RSS feeds. (Be aware that the presentation is 3 meg in size, and could take some time to download.)

I will be presenting at the SCALL (Southern California Association of Law Libraries) Institute, Feb. 28th, on the various ways to deliver news and current information. Below is the bibliography for the session which includes selected materials on blogging, RSS, intranets and content licensing. I've included links when the materials are available on the web. Thanks to Marlene Bubrick for making this bibliography presentable.

I just got back from Internet Librarian 2003 in beautiful Monterey. It was a great conference. More details will follow. In the meantime, here's a link to my presentation and handout on Delivering Research Results Electronically using Adobe Acrobat.