Remote Presentations
I just delivered a conference presentation from about 150 miles away. I was unable to attend the annual Northwest Council for Computers in Education conference, which is being held in Portland this year. I was scheduled to do a presentation, but family issues intervened and I couldn’t go. However, I’ve also been experimenting with a webconferencing service called GotoMeeting, so I thought it would be fun to try a little presentation to the booth my colleagues were operating on the exhibit floor for our regional educational technology programs.
One drawback of GotoMeeting is the lack of a voice over IP client, which requires the use of a telephone for audio. We addressed it with Skype instead. Skype is a free Internet telephone program, which was recently taken over by eBay.
Down in Portland, Anne and Deb set up Anne’s computer on a projector, and then hooked up the audio-out to speakers. I set up a GotoMeeting webconference to share my Powerpoint screen, and they logged in to view it and project it. We then connected through Skype, so I could speak through my headset here and the participants could hear me at the other end. (I could hear them, too.)
The only thing I didn’t clearly understand beforehand was that they scheduled me in my previously-scheduled timeslot and location, so I wasn’t presenting to a handful of passersby at the booth, but a roomful of sixty people! Yikes.
From everything I hear, though, it went well. It was remarkably easy to run the Powerpoint, pretty much like doing it in person. The only mild challenge in speaking was ignoring my own voice coming back through the headphones as I heard it being amplified at the other end. The most interesting part of the whole experience was how easy and natural it was! Now if I had just planned a bit further ahead, I could have recorded it and made a podcast out of it. Oh, well, next time.
By the way, the conference is being blogged through this site here. Go see what I’m missing!