[Air-l] audio/video at IR conferences

[elw at stderr.org]

> If we decide to go this route, then I will use my laptop - I lecture 
> regularly in the room we're using for the plenaries - and the "ProfCast" 
> application (highly recommended if you are using a Mac, by the way).
>
> I will "encourage" the presenters to give me their slides beforehand and 
> I have an arrangement with the a/v folks in the building to give me a 
> "line out" feed from the "house" audio so that the wireless lapel mic 
> comes in to the laptop. The result is very pleasing.


what do you do when someone comes in with a presentation in a format that 
your laptop can't present - there are quite a number of oddball formats 
that might come in, given presenters' various wants and needs - how does 
the AoIR program committee cope?

i would strongly encourage folks to think hard about the sort of ecosystem 
that tying presentations to either a mac or a windows laptop creates.

neither platform is very good at presenting slides made on the other, even 
if you limit yourself to 'just' powerpoint and its formats.

when you add in other slide formats - i personally have been known to make 
sets of slides in kpresenter, openoffice, S7, and a few other weird tools 
- depending on the needs of the moment, and the content - and the various 
'quirks', you really get to a mess quickly.

to some extent i'm playing devil's advocate, but to some extent i am also 
presenting a serious critique of 'modern' presentation technology, which 
mostly stinks.  we as an organization need to think carefully before 
implementing any sort of de facto or de rigeur 'standard' in the space 
that is established for the conference: it causes quite a bit of heartache 
for presenters who don't really want to be bound by someone else's idea of 
what "reasonable" technology might be.......................


--e