Producing A Champions Expertise Presentation (since you asked)

A few people have asked how I created the Champions Expertise presentation on containerisation that I published last week.  There are lots of Champions out there keen to produce their own next month so hopefully this helps someone.

I wanted a structured presentation with my voice overlayed describing each slide. I deliberately didn’t want video / my face on screen alongside the presentation.  That’s good because it’s a pain in the bum to do but mostly I find that having a talking head is distracting people from reading slides. That’s may not be true to everyone but not having video is my personal preference.

Equipment:

Macbook Pro (2014)

Keynote 7.3.1

BeatsX headphones connected via bluetooth.
I find having a good headset ensures there is no bleed or sound in from the surrounding space and these are the best headphones I’ve ever owned, plus they are really fast to charge so rarely run down.

Rehearsing:

I use Keynote on my Mac but Powerpoint does the same thing.  I wrote the presentation including speaker notes for myself , the speaker notes contained the key points I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss when going through each slide.  I try not to write too many speaker notes because I end up reading those instead of presenting so my notes are usually one word prompts.

Once I finished writing I ran through it in presenter mode which shows me a clock countdown as well as the speaker notes. That way I can get comfortable with what I am saying so it flows better when recorded.  I was aiming to run for 10 minutes talking quickly which, in my opinion, is a good length for wanting people to watch online.  I rehearsed 3 times but then I’m a committed over preparer, I suspect most people would rehearse less or not at all.

Recording:

So now I’m ready to record.  Keynote (and Powerpoint) has a feature called “Record Slideshow” when I choose that I go into presenter mode and have a “record button”. The clever thing is that the audio is recording as part of each slide not as a separate file.  I can stop anytime and pick up the recording again or clear a particular part of the recording and do over.  I chose to do it all in one hit.  My secret weapon was to ask someone to sit near me so I could present to them rather than into thin air. I felt that made me sound more natural (hopefully) and it was certainly easier to get into the flow. It did mean I ended up stumbling when he asked me a question part way in but that’s OK, it highlighted where I wasn’t being clear enough so I fixed the slide and started over

Publishing:

Once I was happy with the slides and audio I just saved the file and uploaded it (80MB) to my blog. I could have shrunk it down more and had lower quality, certainly with only audio it wouldn’t have made a lot of difference and I may go back and do that. My blog was also cross posted to twitter and linkedin

And that’s it.  If you have either Keynote or Powerpoint and a decent headset then it’s very easy.  I hope you enjoyed listening and look forward to more expertise presentations next month.

What’s A Conference Without A Dolphin Rotunda?

Those of you that understand the heading to this post know what I mean but for those that don’t.. through 20+ years of Orlando IBM conferences around ICS products, the general gathering place, the place where you’d sit and catch up with people walking by, the place where you could always go to find someone to talk to - was the Rotunda in the lobby of the Dolphin hotel.

This year at Think in Las Vegas there is no Dolphin hotel and no rotunda but I believe we still need a gathering place.  A single location where people can go, get a drink and meet up or catch someone walking by.  Having been to Vegas a lot (don’t ask) and InterConnect last March, I’m suggesting this place - Mizuya at the Mandalay Bay https://www.mandalaybay.com/en/restaurants/mizuya.html

It’s right outside the conference entrance so probably a <5 minute walk

It is basically a bar that opens at 11am and serves sushi all day

It has a live band in the evenings

It doesn’t have to be that place (I’m open to suggestions) but I think we need to put our stake in the ground and choose “A PLACE” so everyone knows where to go and where to find each other.

Anyone?