Here’s a really great blog about the hardware side of the AV industry by the consultant Gary Kayye. Lots of insider news and commentary.

Do you know a "Randy AV"?

Posted by Lee Potts at 3:19 PM .

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Why should the speakers be the only one to use the laser pointer?

As often happens, Google lead me to an interesting item that had very little, if anything, to do with what I was originally looking for. This article (PDF), described a method for combining a laser pointer, a web camera, and some programming skills, into a system that allows meeting participants to interact, from a distance, with what’s being displayed on the screen. Although interesting in and of itself, it got me thinking that there must be other, slightly less technically advanced ways to use laser pointers in meetings.

For instance, what if you were holding a meeting where it was necessary to quickly get a sense of a group’s opinions about a series of issues. You could do a seemingly endless series of hand votes: "All right, on question six, please raise your hand if you agree strongly that we should pursue this opportunity. Now raise you hand if you feel we should pursue the opportunity, but don’t agree strongly…"

You get the idea.

What if you were to draw some squares on the white board, or have flip charts arrayed across the front of the room, each labeled with an answer to the questions you’re posing (i.e., agree strongly, agree, yes, no, etc.). Give each participant a laser pointer and have them point to the square or the flip chart that corresponds to their answer. You would then have an extremely interactive and graphically concise representation of which way the vote went.

Although there are some drawbacks to this method that I’ll get to in a minute, there is a lot that would be cool about it. First, it takes what is usually a sequential, option-by-option process and makes it simultaneous. This, of course, speeds things up, but it might also help groups reach consensus because everyone sees which way the group is leaning in real time. Second, it’s a way to take a vote in public, where everybody can see the group’s sentiments, while letting each voter stay relatively anonymous. I haven’t tested this yet, but I’m willing to bet that if you used small key fob laser pointers and positioned the voting squares close together, it will be hard to determine which point of light is coming from which pointer. The third cool aspect of this method is that the novelty might help an audience get more involved in the proceedings than they might otherwise be.

As I said there are at least a few drawbacks to using this method. For openers, it’s not terribly precise. I don’t think there’s any way to get a quick, exact count of who was voting for what, especially in a large group setting. This is obviously best used as a way to get an overall sense of how many members of an audience are voting for what. It will also be difficult if not impossible to generate a permanent record of the proceedings. It might be possible to snap a quick digital picture of each vote but that seems to go against the ephemeral, quick and dirty nature inherent to this method. The other negatives are mainly those you would have whenever you are trying to do anything with a small, very bight, highly focused light source. In certain environments, it might be difficult for everyone to have a clear shot at the square they are aiming at due to architectural features of the meeting space or other attendees getting in the way. In this setting it will also be a lot easier to accidentally to laser someone’s eye. I imagine it’s the moderator who is in the most danger.

In retrospect, this seems like one of those ideas that might have been really obvious to everyone else, and it’s either been done before or is dismissed as impractical by those with more experience. If you have ever participated in or ran a meeting that used a technique like this, please share your experiences with the rest of us in the comments section. I’d also like to hear about any other novel ways laser pointers have been used in presentations.

Posted by Lee Potts at 12:01 AM .

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Robin Good of MasterNewMedia has compiled an extensive list of PowerPoint to Flash conversion tools.I was somewhat surprised to find out that I had not heard of many of them.If you’re wanting to save time in your search for the ultimate PPT to flash conversion tool,look here first.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of touring Robin’s site you don’t know what you’re missing.

He not only publishes the above site but two others: Kolabora and MasterViews International.I have been visiting this site regularly for over 2 years.I find the information fresh,extremely wide-reaching and applicable to much of my communications work and projects.New information is posted regularly and you’ll likely have trouble keeping up.And if you can’t,Robin has a weekly info summary update e-mail service you can subscribe to.

Posted by Ray Guyot at 3:10 PM .

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I was really looking forward to hearing Malcolm Gladwell speak at SXSW 2005. Unfortunately, due to a last minute travel change I had to leave Austin before his talk. Some of you may be familiar with Gladwell’s writings from The Washington Post or The New Yorker – or because of his book "The Tipping Point" published in 2000. In anticipation of hearing him speak, I picked up a copy of his new book "Blink" and listened to it while traveling. (whenever possible these days I buy an unabridged audio CD of a book, load it onto my iPod and listen to it… leaving my eyes and hands free to take notes or doodle on my tabletpc)

Gladwell’s premise is that our adaptable unconscious functions as a powerful super-computer continuously processing countless bits of sensory and stored data for us behind the scenes of conscious thought. The results of this unconscious analysis are fed back to us in many forms, which when combined, allow us to make fairly accurate assessments of even complex experiences in the blink of an eye.

I was very interested in Gladwell’s description of studies showing that when the unconscious is "primed" with subtle patterns of information…. behavioral changes occur. Many years ago, Dr. James Vicary demonstrated that popcorn sales could increase 57.8% when the phrase "I want popcorn" was flashed on a movie screen for 100 milliseconds. (ultimately resulting in the banning of subliminal messaging in most states) What Gladwell is describing however is much more subtle. Apparently the subconscious mind can pick up on very subtle patterns of words hidden in seemingly random sentences or questions in such a way that behavior is affected.

My question for you presentation media professionals is this: Have any of you run across studies comparing the unconscious processing of auditory, pictorial and typographical information? (the work I have seen so far seems to focus on the use of text-based priming) Have any of you used any of these concepts in your work? Are you hiding subtle word patterns in your bullet points? Is this an appropriate (and ethical) area of exploration for those who design and develop presentation media?

Posted by Robert Befus at 1:05 PM .

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We need more toys in our presentations. The Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager is an excellent, interactive data display. It’s obvious that the designer put a great deal of thought into the way it looks as well as the way it works. Gridlines are visible but not obtrusive. The figure, while information dense, has been kept uncluttered by using color judiciously and by hiding additional layers of information until invoked by moving the mouse over an area of interest. It’s also a lot of fun trying out different names and typing them in letter by letter to see the graph change. Using this sort of interactivity during a live presentation would go a long way towards keeping an audience involved and engaged. Anything that brings the presentation of information together with the fulfillment of our almost universal tendency towards play serves this purpose.

Posted by Lee Potts at 11:07 PM .

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Presentation design… for the Head

Convergence has finally reached one of the most important (and technologically ignored) rooms
in your home: the bathroom. Picture this – you stumble into the bathroom at 6:15 am. Even with your
severe bedhead, the face recognition software attached to the camera in your medicine
cabinet recognizes you and greets you by name. "Good morning Bob!" (the medicine cabinet is
always cheerful in the morning) "Would you like to check your body fat this morning?"
(No thanks) The medicine cabinet is attached to a host of health monitoring paraphanelia.
You can access what you want through the touch screen panel in the left cabinet door.

After you have performed all of your perfunctory morning sink operations, the medicine cabinet gently
reminds you to take the medicines you need for the day to work with you. The prescription bottles inside
the cabinet have RFID tags in the labels, so the medicine cabinet gives you a stern warning if you
accidently grab the wrong medication. Later, at lunch, your cell phone rings. It is your medicine cabinet
calling to remind you to take your midday dose.

Now some may not want this level of relational complexity with their bathroom storage unit – but like
it or not, wireless homes of the future may be so equipped. A prototype of the Online Medicine Cabinet
was on display at the CTIA Wireless Show in New Orleans this past week.

Although not on display at CTIA, wouldn’t it be great if the Online Medicine Cabinet could sync up with the King of Thrones!

Learn more about the Online Medicine Cabinet here.

Posted by Robert Befus at 2:29 PM .

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Phil Stella ( Member of the Presentations Council and MCA-I ) has posted a great article on maximizing your ROI for your company or organization by attending InfoComm 05.I love the concept of creating value for your company and being able to communicate an appropriate message to your team,colleagues and of course to the PTB’s ( Powers That Be ).

Posted by Ray Guyot at 10:23 AM .

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POP QUIZ -

Which of these will you NOT find at SXSW 2005?
1.) Bifocals (other than mine)
2.) PCs
3.) PPT presentations
4.) All of the above

The answer of course is all of the above. South by Southwest (SXSW) has been taking place this week in beautiful Austin, TX. I had the chance to stop by and spend a couple days attending the Interactive portion of the conference (there are also Music and Film conferences). While I didn’t really know what to expect, I had visions of something similar to Macromedia’s MAX conference which I attended in New Orleans last fall.

The SXSW Interactive conference is quite a bit different than MAX in that it focuses heavily on design, and specifically Web design. To the 1500 or so twenty-something Mac-ling attendees…… CSS and Web standards are tenets of their religion. The only thing they enjoy more than talking about Web design standards is apologizing to each other when their designs don’t follow the standards they set up. Of course this is the way both design and designers should be. I love it.

This show was loaded with passionate and talented people. I attended presentations by Jeffrey Zeldman, Curt Cloninger, Bram Cohen (Bit Torrent), Matthew Mullenwag (WordPress), Christopher Schmidt, Molly Holzschlag, Dan Cederholm, Dave Shea and Doug Bowman. (the last five were on a panel presentation called Hi-Fi Design with CSS). I really enjoyed Cloninger’s talk on hotwiring the creative process.

There were no PowerPoint presentations to be found at this conference though. All presentations I attended used visuals presented through a Web browser (usually Safari, but sometimes Firefox). So is SXSW a place for Presentation Professionals? Well, although I am not a designer myself, I love to be around people who are passionate about design. I love to see what excellent designers are doing and talk about the creative process. So my only regret in attending SXSW was that I could only spend a short time there before heading on to the CTIA Wireless show in New Orleans. I recommend the SXSW Interactive conference to any Presentation Media Professionals who are functioning in a presentation design capacity within their organizations. Maybe this could be an additional meeting opportunity for some of us to get together in 2006.

Posted by Robert Befus at 1:15 PM .

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It’s kind of a long story. I registered the visualbeing.com domain a couple years ago after reading Robert Lindstrom’s excellent "Being Visual : A Guidebook for Strategic Presentation in the Rich-media Communications Era" as it was serialized on the Presenters University site. I was really taken with what Robert was saying and was planning on putting together a site around the notion of how it’s becoming increasing important to be visual. Needless to say, I never got around to taking the site beyond the initial "hey wouldn’t that be cool" stage and the domain lay fallow until we started kicking around the idea of a presentation professionals blog. The rest is, as they say, history.

Given all that, and given the sorts of topics we’ll most likely be spending a great deal of time discussing, it seems appropriate to kick off this new blog with this quote from the work that indirectly gave it its name:

“As the technology gains a foothold and becomes more commonplace, the market grows accustomed to the new technologies and expectations rise. For many companies, the bar has already been raised and rich-media communication is no longer an exception. It’s an expectation. "

Posted by Lee Potts at 11:57 PM .

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Although this blog is supposed to deal with issues confronting the presentation profession in general, over the next few months it’s going to tend towards focusing on this year’s InfoComm since most of the contributors will be going to this conference.

Please feel free to send me your name and contact info if you like and I’ll add you to the list of attendees that’s linked to on the left.

Posted by Lee Potts at 10:52 PM .

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