Image Credit: Pixel Fantasy
Welcome to the 21st Century! As speakers, we often head off to our next presentation with everything that we can think to bring with us. However, as we all know it can be all too easy for us to forget or leave behind some important piece of information or presentation gear. If only there was a way to make sure that this never happened. It turns out that there just might be such a way. Those mobile phones and tablets that we all seem to carry with us everywhere these days have grown in sophistication based on the apps that they can run. A significant number of apps now exist that can help a speaker deliver a great presentation. Do you know about them?
Get Ready For What’s Coming
The good news is that speakers now have an array of tools that they can use to deliver even better presentations. The bad news is that there are so many of them out there, it can be a real challenge to stay up on what’s available and how you can use them. The big question is are you going to be ready for your next presentation? What kind of equipment are you going to have to bring to it? Is there a possibility that you might (once again) show up missing something that you really needed to bring?
Speakers need to realize that a wave of mobile devices has washed over the planet, and it’s the rare speaker today who doesn’t use a smartphone or tablet for their personal or business needs. The result of all of this is that the developers of mobile software applications continue to create new software tools for use by speakers on their so-called “pocket computers.” Let’s talk about some of the best options that you currently have available to you.
SlideShark
SlideShark is an app that lets speakers with iPads or iPhones view or show PowerPoint slides from their mobile devices. This can free them from having to tote around laptops for presentations. Speakers can use SlideShark to show slides on their iPads for small audiences or connect the tablet to a display projector for larger audiences. A chief benefit of the app is that it keeps fonts, graphics, videos, animations and hyperlinks associated with PowerPoint presentations intact when they are being used on mobile devices. SlideShark can also allow you to distribute, manage and track presentations in the “cloud” or at online locations, which can expand the reach of your messages and allows you to gauge audience viewing behavior.
Quickoffice
Guess what – if you have a need to create, edit or review PowerPoint presentations from an Android smartphone or tablet while on the go, Quickoffice from Google may be the solution for you. It contains needed basic formatting tools for creating presentations and allows you to add text boxes, edit or reorder slides, add or resize photos, use a presentation mode and more. When your work is done you can place the presentation in an online file-sharing site such as Google Drive or Dropbox in order to allow a review by colleagues or for access by audience members from any computer.
Presentation Clock
Who needs a clock during a presentation? This app allows speakers to keep time with oversized, easy-to-read numbers that make good use of screen sizes on mobile devices. Speakers can set the numbers to change color at different intervals (from green to yellow to red) in order to keep track of time. Subtle audio and vibration alerts also can be used when time thresholds are hit.
Presenter Remote Control
Guess what – there’s no longer a need to carry a separate clicker once you have this app which allows you to view and control PowerPoint presentations from an Android smartphone. You can use your phone to wirelessly advance slides and control volume on the “host” computer with the app, which works using Bluetooth technology. Another benefit of Presenter is that it has the ability to work with the Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems.
Quotebook
Speakers often stumble onto a great quote and need an easy way to store it for future use in a speech or document. Rather than providing access to stock quotes, this app offers a way for you to collect your own and organize them by author, source, category and more. You can copy the quote text into the app from your computer’s clipboard or simply type it in. Additionally you can add proverbs, lyrics, tweets or other compelling scraps of language you come across online as well.
What All Of This Means For You
Giving a speech is always a challenging thing to do. There you are standing on the stage and you don’t really have anything that can help you to be successful. Or at least in the past you didn’t. Now that we are living in the amazing 21st Century, things have changed. The mobile phones and tablets that we are always traveling with can be loaded with software tools that can help to make your next speech even better.
Using SlideShark you can show your PowerPoint presentation from your mobile devices which means that you no longer have to bring your laptop to your next presentation. Quickoffice can be used to allow speakers to create or edit their presentations on their mobile devices. Presentation clock will show a speaker how long they have left to speak and can change color as you get close to the end. Presenter remote control allows you to use your laptop to display your slides but you can then use your mobile device to click through the slides as you step away from your laptop. We always want to add quotes to our speeches and Quotebook can provide us with a place to put the quotes that we encounter during our day.
Sadly there is not just one app out there that will make your next speech better. However, there are a number of apps that when used together can help to make creating and delivering a presentation easier that it has ever been. Take the time to download these apps, play around with then, and then determine if they are just what you have been looking for in order to make your next presentation your best ever!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: Should speakers use apps to deliver a speech or just concentrate on what they are going to say?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
When we are getting ready to give a speech, we do a lot of prep work. We try to identify who we will be talking to, we write a speech and try to choose the right words to use, and then we practice. Now it goes without saying that all of these things are good things to be doing. However, is it possible that we are missing something from how we prepare? Could that thing be critically important? It turns out that how we sound to our audience is going to have a big impact on how they perceive us. Do you know how you sound when you give a speech?