The Mobile Presenter

At the end of a presentation, there's usually the question: Any questions? And more often than not, it's followed by - awkward silence.

Now, that doesn't mean that the audience doesn't have any questions. For some reason, people just seem to need a moment to muster up the courage to actually ask a question. So if you're a speaker and you encounter said silence - what can you do? Here's a little trick I learned at a recent conference:

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk

This book unnecessarily limits its target audience to UI and website designers when so much of the content is also valuable to non-designers and "normal" people.

Lists of tips for presenters seem to be popular these days, so I tried to come up with my own, both from a speaker's point of view as well as from that of a visitor, i.e. what do I expect from a speaker? While preparing this (short) list, I realized that it all boils down to one simple rule: Respect your audience.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

This book should be required (not only recommended) reading for anyone involved in teaching, learning, or presenting. In other words - all of us.

[Update 2012-03-08] As discussed in the comments below, Apple broke the Bluetooth connectivity between Keynote and Keynote Remote in iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1. The good news is that they fixed it again in iOS 5.1 [/Update]

When you're wrong, you should admit it: When looking at Keynote Remote, I claimed that the connection between the controlling device and the device being controlled was only possible via WLAN. Turns out I was wrong: It also works with a Bluetooth connection.