So it was day three of Ascilite 2009 and this was a big day for me as I was delivering the final Keynote.
I checked that everything worked. Though I have given keynotes before, this was the first time I was going to tweet as I delivered my keynote. Using KeynoteTweet, an Applescript which in conjunction with Keynote will automatically send tweets as slides appear.
In the auditorium there were two projectors, one would have my slides upon them, whilst the other would have Twitterfall showing all the #ascilite09 tweets.
My slides were “new” but like other presentations I have delivered have either usually a single word or an image on them.
Twitterfall worked well, with a fair few people in the UK and elsewhere following the tweets from my keynote. Of course it can be “dangerous” having a live Twitter feed in your presentation, especially when it is behind you. However looking over the stream of Tweets it would appear everything went fine.
Gráinne Conole was very kind to live blog my keynote on Cloudworks and you can see the results here.
I enjoyed delivering the keynote and all the stuff worked from a technical perspective, bar one. So what didn’t work? I was hoping to use the Remote App on the iPhone, however I have found that this is unreliable when a lot of people are using the wireless network. In future I think I may create my own wireless network specifically for the presentation (I have a spare Airport Express I can use).
When I have better (upload) bandwidth I will upload the presentation to Slideshare and a recording of the keynote itself.
So what did others think? Well I have had some very positive feedback from people at the conference.
Hi James, I thought your presentation was great and that your bravery and willingness to take a risk with some new technology paid off. I liked the idea of providing the tweets of your slides for those following in Twitter and it seemed to work really well.
The ability of changing slides remotely is one I’ve tried to play with too. I have used the ‘Keynote Remote’ app and also played with ‘Air Mouse’ and found it best to use Airport to ‘Create Network’ (a closed computer-to-computer wireless network requiring a password) on the MBP and then connect to that with the iPhone/iPod Touch. Then you have a direct connection between the two devices that has worked well for me.