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Improvisation - Techie Style

Yesterday afternoon I was presenting at the Webtrends Engage conference in London on Usability, User Experience and Data Visualisation. Now, when presenting at these sort of events there's an AV company on hand who sit at the back of the room and make sure all the sound and light are working as they should. However, Engage presented an interesting problem: my laptop, which contains all the slides, notes and presenter view, which normally sits on the podium, had to be at the back of the room with the AV guy.

Yup, my laptop, was 20 ft away. Brilliant.

So, some lateral thinking was initiated. How could I control the presentation from the front of the room and still know what the hell was coming up?

First problem was control. The IR Remote you get with a Mac only works on a clear line of site, and only over a few metres, so this was a no-go. Luckily for me I had my Magic mouse in my bag which was on bluetooth, and that progresses the slide on click so that was control sorted.

But what about my notes and timers? Well, luckily we had an iPad on hand and Apple has a Keynote Remote app on the App Store which allows an iOS device to become the remote for a keynote presentation on a network connected Mac.

Bugger….network.

In steps my Android phone running Froyo. A quick portable wi-fi network was whipped up and laptop and iPad were reunited.

So, after all that, I had my presenter view on the iPad on the podium, my mouse in hand to act as a clicker, and my laptop running the show from the back of the room – all while the AV guy had a little kip.

Macbook Pro, iPad, Magic Mouse, HTC Desire, Bluetooth and Wifi, all to produce a picture of a urinal… fun.

Posted via email from :neil_middleton

Posted by Neil Middleton on 21 Oct 2010