The Mobile Presenter

The Keynote Remote app for iOS has been available from the AppStore for a while now. It turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote control for a Mac running Keynote, Apple's presentation program. With the recent release of Keynote 1.4 for iOS, you can now also use it to control the Keynote app running on an iOS device, i.e. an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Since this is something I had long wished for, it's time to take a closer look at this little app and see how it works.

Keynote for the iPad came out on the same day as the original iPad, i.e. a little over a year ago now. Version 1.0 was already usable, though maybe only in a "yes, you can do presentations with it" way, i.e. not very comfortable but doable. Since then, Apple has - slowly, but steadily - improved the app. With Keynote 1.4, most of the major shortcomings have now been resolved. Let's have a look ...

I attended FOSDEM last weekend. This is one of the biggest open source events in Europe. So it was full of geeks, i.e. very smart people who are very passionate about their respective subject.

Unfortunately, many of the slides on that weekend didn't show the same level of enthusiasm. In other words, many a presentation consisted of nothing but slide after slide filled with bullet points.

But there is hope.

The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides by Garr Reynolds

After introducing his Presentation Zen method and concentrating on producing better slides in his previous books, The Naked Presenter now takes a step back. It focuses on the art of presenting itself, i.e. the presenter and his interaction with the audience.

I don't remember how or when I first came across Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen method of doing presentations. I do know, however, that I was reading the Presentation Zen blog even before the first book came out, since I remember pre-ordering it. So it's been a while and I do hope that if you ever saw one of my own presentations, that the influence is apparent.

Since Garr is living in Japan, chances of getting to see him live over here in Europe are rare. So when the Presentation Zen Seminar in Paris was announced, I only hesitated briefly to consider the technicalities (of getting some days off from work, and of getting to Paris) before I booked it.

I apologize in advance if this post is getting a bit fanboy-ish ;-) but to summarize, I had a great time in and around this seminar.