PowerPoint to the rescue, I hope.
Last week I agreed to give a slide talk on September 24 here in Dayton and they asked if they should provide a Carousel or a digital projector. I boldly said, "Digital," since I've been wanting to get my programs switched over for some time. Oops. There's a lot to do to accomplish that in such a short time. Fortunately, I have a ton of material on my hard drive, so I'll only have to scan a few slides to fill in the blanks of my talk. So far, I'm impressed with PowerPoint. I found a generic background in the program that will work. I tried to search Microsoft for other choices, but they got me so tangled up in validation of XP and Active-X downloads, that I gave up on that. Anyway, still a lot of work to do, but the slides are basically lined up the way I want them.
Our granddaughter came over yesterday for her last overnight before she starts to kindergarten on Friday. We had a grand time, but as usual, I didn't sleep well while she was here. She sleeps like a log, but I'm always listening for her. I took her to the daycare this morning and we stopped by to see little brother in his new toddler room. They were in the gym--5 little boys, 12 to 16 months old. Every one of them was pushing a wheeled bike or wagon around the room. It looked like a mini-NASCAR pit row before the race. Too funny.
Our granddaughter came over yesterday for her last overnight before she starts to kindergarten on Friday. We had a grand time, but as usual, I didn't sleep well while she was here. She sleeps like a log, but I'm always listening for her. I took her to the daycare this morning and we stopped by to see little brother in his new toddler room. They were in the gym--5 little boys, 12 to 16 months old. Every one of them was pushing a wheeled bike or wagon around the room. It looked like a mini-NASCAR pit row before the race. Too funny.
Labels: family, power point, slides
posted by Nita at 5:50 PM
2 Comments:
Nita - I've done digital PowerPoint presentations for years and years and they're a really great way of presenting - so much more creative! However I learned a lot of lessons the hard way!
So working on the "forewarned is forearmed" approach to risk management, here are some tips:
- It's well worthwhile checking out their experience of using digital projectors. For example, they may have the projector - but not the person on hand who knows how it works! (I cannot tell you the number of times I've had that one happen!)
- Also hope against hope that they've got the digital cable for linking your laptop to the projector to hand. It's a nail-biting time while they go off to look for it!
- Make sure you know where your ports are for accepting the digi cable for a projector.
- For some reason the bulbs on digi projectors blow really easily - but there's usually a spare one somewhere, so long as the techie person knows where!
- Having your presentation on a CD or DVD and using their laptop/projector is another way of doing it - but make sure you're operating the same version of Powerpoint otherwise your file works on your laptop and not on theirs!
The safety first solution is to take a pristine copy of the presentation with you and to get them to run off copies if their projector won't work! I only ever had that happen once......
I hope it all goes OK - good luck! :)
Similar problems have always been around with slide projectors. I thought this might be easier, but I can see I'll have to be prepared. For this first one, I have a new digital project I hope I can learn to use in time for my first program, so I won't have to take chances like you describe. I'll do a run-through or two for practice. Maybe I should buy an extra bulb, too, although that might not help me when I'm away from home. I will have my own laptop to work from, and also a backup CD or thumb-drive. But I can't do the print-outs as you suggest, because the slides are all fine art and wouldn't print effectively. This will certainly be an interesting experiment. Thanks for your comments
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