Presentation Software for your Speaking Engagement

July 17, 2013 // Event Services

Notes about Notes: Presentation Software for your Speaking Engagement

Now that we have a good understanding of how to maximize the effectiveness of teleprompters for presentations – as discussed in Understanding Teleprompters: How to Use Them to Your Advantage – Phase II of this Production Blogging Series focuses on how to help the presenter make the most of their notes. Different presenters have different styles. Helping them find the AV setup that supports their style – and making sure the setup is seamlessly synced to the presentation software – will ensure the best experience for the presenter as well as the audience.

Many presenters fare best if they are able to tightly control their delivery. In this case, it is usually desirable to use a downstage monitor. Monitors can be used to display the main slide deck, or whatever is being shown on the main screens, but they can also be used to display the presenter’s notes.

There are a couple of different ways to get notes to appear on the downstage monitor, depending upon the presentation software used. Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote are the most commonly used programs. Keynote interfaces fairly seamlessly with AV systems, but event planners should spend some time familiarizing themselves with the limitations, as well as the strengths, of PowerPoint (especially PowerPoint 2010 and earlier, which as of this writing are still dominant in the industry over the recently released PowerPoint 2013).

“Presenter View” in PowerPoint will not only enable notes to be displayed on-screen, but will allow the speaker to see what slide they’re on, what slide is next, and even the amount of time that has elapsed. One advantage of using this feature is that users can type their notes directly into the “Notes” field, allowing them to keep their entire presentation in one place. Unfortunately, Presenter View was clearly designed for the boardroom, not the ballroom: it can only be viewed by the presenter at a very short distance.
For larger venues, event host should be aware of the following in order to get the most out of Presenter View:

The customization of Presenter View (pre-2013) is extremely limited.
All changes made in Presenter View (to note size, font formatting, etc.) are lost upon exiting the program.
All formatting is removed from the Noteswhen shown on Presenter View except for basic text, spaces, and returns.
If you have multiple presenters using the same slide deck, you will have to get them to agree on a font size for the notes that they can all see from the downstage monitor.
Presenters with too much text in their notes field may find that their text is cut off on the monitor. Try to stick to outline bullets.
The PowerPoint operator needs to be able to seethe Presenter View in order to resize and customize it, so the feed to the downstage monitor needs to be split and sent to a separate preview monitor for them. Therefore, some additional equipment is required.
Increasing the Notes pane of the Presenters View necessarily means reducing the other panes, such as the images of the Next and Current slides, so presenters may no longer be able to clearly read or see them from the downstage monitor, depending on how far away they are.
Don’t assume that just because you have a downstage monitor, notes can be automatically displayed on it; this requires some additional equipment.

An alternative solution to using the built-in notes capabilities is to create a second “notes-only” deck. By doing this, one is creating, in essence, an independent presenter’s display. Bear in mind that there will need to be a separate display computer running that deck, so you should let your AV or production team know when you intend to use this method.

The biggest disadvantage to using a notes-only deck is making it match the display deck “click for click” in order to stay in sync. It is not enough for it to have the same number of slides – every “click” of the mouse or remote control needs to be accounted for. If the speaker has his or her bullet points in the main display deck coming in “on click” instead of automatically or all at once, then each one of those advances needs to be mirrored in some way in the notes-only deck. Otherwise, the notes-only deck will advance faster than the display deck. Likewise, if the presenter wishes to have several pages of notes pertaining to one single display slide, those “clicks” in the notes-only deck need to be accounted for in the display deck.

The easiest way to solve both those issues is simply to duplicate slides. If a user wishes to have several notes slides regarding a single display slide, he or she will need to duplicate the display slide for every notes slide. That way, when advancing the notes slide, no change is perceived by the audience on the display slide. This solution also works when using PowerPoint’s Presenter View and not all of the notes are visible. The fix is to simply duplicate the slide and split the notes between the two.

Whichever method you choose depends entirely on the needs of your speakers. If the formatting of the notes is extremely important, or your speaker needs to easily reference charts or graphs in the presentation without turning to look at the “big screens,” then the notes-only road might be the way to go. In our productions, we tend to favor the Presenter View method, mainly because it removes a point of failure from the equation – namely the second notes-only machine. It also removes the complexity of having to keep the decks in sync. Whichever method you choose, be aware of the pros and cons of each and plan accordingly. If you go the Presenter View route and have multiple keynote speakers, you should plan on extra time in rehearsals to sort out the display so everyone can view their notes comfortably. If you go the Notes Only route, you should probably have somebody assigned the duty of tracking changes and making sure that all the clicks line up.

After graduating from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. in 1995 with a degree in Technical Theatre, Krueger found himself working for a theatrical equipment rental company. It was there that he made initial contacts that would draw him away from the theater and into hotel ballrooms around the world. Just under a year later, he was hired by metroConnections to help build their event decor fabrication shop and to manage their growing event rental inventory. He also quickly branched into a technology role, building the company’s first website as well as designing interactive game shows for teambuilding events within the next couple years. His role has continued to evolve over the years and now he’s “the man on the headset” for most of metroConnections’ large scale meetings and events, helping to produce hundreds of meetings and technical productions.