I presented “Remote Presentations That Rock” as part of the IBM Best of Technical Leadership Exchange series.

What worked well? What can I improve next time?

• The one-slide summary format gave me lots of flexibility.
• I told a few more mini-stories. Yay! Next time, I can sprinkle more examples and anecdotes into my talk.
• Apparently, people remember my hats. =)
• The “Oak” room and some of the other meeting rooms at 120 Bloor are excellent for videos. Well-lit white wall for the win! All you need is to bring in one of the desk lights, and you’re good to go.
• A whiteboard is not a bad place to keep notes so that you can refer to them during your talk. Write big.
• Using the text chat for all questions worked out well. Apparently, people are starting to shift to that pattern instead of mixed voice Q&A and text. Good for handling and prioritizing long questions, too!
• One of the organizers suggested puppets. I could do a good presenter – bad presenter thing for fun. <laugh> If I think of the pre-conference time like a silent movie and figure out what to do, that might give people an incentive to come early!
• One of the participants suggested using partially-drawn slides and then drawing on top of them. That might be a great way to do the next version of this talk. Elluminate’s drawing tool feels a bit harsh, but maybe Inkscape or the Gimp might be fun to try. Must check whether screensharing introduces too much of a delay.
• Another participant suggested clipping or taping the phone headset cable so that it doesn’t create a distracting visual line away. Isn’t it so cool that people think of these things?
• I definitely need to keep the equivalent of two bottles of water around. My throat got a bit parched towards the end.
• Lots of good stuff in the text chat. Will reflect on and re-answer questions soon.

Remote Presentations That Rock