Blog Archives
How much time does it really take?
To present a scientific subject in an attractive and stimulating manner is an artistic task, similar to that of a novelist or even a dramatic writer. The same holds for writing textbooks.– Max Born
When a graduate student come to me with the big news that its abstract has been selected for an oral presentation, my first reaction is a big congratulations and the second is to already set a deadline for a first version of the talk. Because of the abstract, you already know the content, what needs to be presented. But crafting an effective 7, 8 or 10 minutes presentation is a complete new game.
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OSX Yosemite and iOS8 Keynote: an interactive classroom duo
When Apple decided to rewrite the iWorks’ suite over 18 months ago, many were disappointed by missing features. Zoom to Yosemite and iOS8 versions, and I must say that not only do Keynote, Numbers and Pages are now greats apps, but there actually work extremely well both on the desktop and on the iPad (I do not really use these apps on the iPhone).
OSX 10.9 (Mavericks) is available and free!
Wired is running an interesting piece about the latest operating system from Apple. In part past, Apple provided free or very low cost upgrade for its “minor” version of OSX but paying upgrade for significant new version. 10.9 is a significant upgrade but will be free: Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems | Wired Business | Wired.com.
In a related news, iWork (Numbers, Keynote and Page) will be free with each new Apple computing devices, Mac or iDevices! Office productivity and MS Office compatibility out of the box. That should be interesting…
Time to go analog!
In the previous post, I touched on key questions to ask yourself before preparing a talk. This sets the general parameters (audience, length, …). At this point it would be easy to just fire up Powerpoint or Keynote, shuffle through your previous talks, pick, mix and make modifications.
Instead, I suggest you go analog.
For whom are you presenting?
This is scientific meetings season, at least for me. This means a bunch of PPT presentations to prepare. It would be so much easier to just reuse an older presentation or merge past presentations. In fact, sometimes I feel that this is what is happening more and more often in these meetings. While I do use previously prepared materials, I always start by asking myself a few question key questions before even opening PowerPoint (or Keynote):
