Know Your Tools
The first year I brought my Mac to camp to handle graphic presentation, I was still a bit of a newbie. I knew the basics of what my software could do, but I hadn’t really learned the details and I certainly hadn’t upgraded any of my software. The great thing, of course, was that even a newbie on a Mac looks really good compared to proficient on a PC.
If you are doing graphic presentation of any sort and want to do it well, you definitely need Dual Monitor support. All of the current Mac laptops offer dual monitor support, as does the current iMac line. If you are lucky enough to have a Mac pro, you can actually handle up to 8 monitors, but we won’t be getting into anything that complex.
Assuming you have dual monitor support, one of the easiest "tricks" to set the stage for great presentations is simply change your desktop. If you have ever been to a presentation and somehow the presentation crashes or they have to transition to another presentation, you have probably seen pictures of their kids, a ton of icons, and whatever other junk they keep on their desktop. Because I do so many presentations, I don’t keep any icons on my extended desktop. I also tend to keep my extended desktop black. If something fails and I have to show the desktop, all they see if a black screen, not my killer Napolean Dynamite Mac desktop.
One of the great things about Mac, is that you can set a different background for your primary desktop and your extended desktop. This means you can keep your custom desktop and not give up that personalized Mac feel while still maintaining the professional presentation you are going for.
Another great thing about Mac is the built in random image on your desktop feature (I am sure it has a cooler name than that). A couple years ago for camp, we had a bunch of pictures that we wanted to use as a default background slideshow. Instead of building a video file and have to put it up all the time, I simply set my extended desktop background to be the folder of all the images and clicked the change pictures check box. Set it to every 5 seconds and the OS does the rest. I had a perpetual slide show and whenever I transitioned to a video or other image, it automatically switched.
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There are a ton of little tips and tricks I will share over the next few days. Some involve extra software or advanced features. Others are simple things like today’s tip that simply involve knowing your computer and what you are trying to accomplish. I am hoping that through writing these I will learn something new as well through the comments. What do you do to prepare your computer for presentations?
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