Tips for presenting
Ahh, Tip 4A! Tip 4 was about the presentation itself, this tip will be about the technology set up needed to get a good presentation happening. How do you set up your online presentation world?
Good audio equipment - No matter if you are using VOIP or a phone conference service you need a good quality microphone and headset. Get a good quality setup that will be comfortable to use, and, has great audio quality,. Set yourself up in a quite location also, as your voice will be the primary one, all the background noise from your office enviroment will be broadcast to all your participants also, yuk!
Set up your desktop - Remove all personalisation from your desktop, browser, etc. Your participants dont really need to see your bookmarked sites when you are doing a online demo, or pictures of your dog on your walpaper (reemember, they may be on a slower internet connection to you also, and this as your doggy wallpaper is rendered on their screen they are having to wait).
Test your enviorment - May sound simple, but people still do not test correctly before a presentation. Test everything you intend on doing on this machine, are all the plugins youneed there, are all the versions up to date? I have a machine set aside only to run demo's on, never to be used in production (on threat of death!) so I know what is there, and that it has not been randomly upgraded to a verison of something that is not compatible with other things I need to run.
Run two machines - Have one machine as the presentaiton machine, a second so you can see exactly what the participants are seeing. You will need to go as slow as the slowest internet connection (the Go to meeting product actually shows you what the participants can see, and lets you know when all participants are on the same slide as you or catching up)
Have a back up plan - If you can, have two seperate internet conenctions, and a second voice conference provider, just in case.
