The "Lessig Method" and sharing presentations over the web

I'm a big fan of the "Lessig Method" of presentation. Though Prof. Lessig's style and his method are certainly not for everyone (nor appropriate for every situation), there is much to like about his approach. This presentation is a good example of his style. The content, too, is especially relevant and important since many of you are bloggers, use images for your presentations, etc. Whether you agree with him or not, his ideas are worthy of discussion (debate?). See his presentation entitled: Is Google Book Search "Fair Use"? The video is linked from Lessig's blog, or go directly to the video here at YouTube. Leon Felipe Sanchez has a version of Lessig's presentation for your iPod.

I'm not suggesting that you copy Prof. Lessig's method. But there may be aspects of it that you can emulate or parts you can incorporate into your talks when using slideware. Lessig's method works best for him live when he is situated very close to the screen so that the audience can easily see the screen and prof. Lessig. But for on-line representation of the live presentation, Lessig's slides in sync with his words is certainly better than viewing a PowerPoint deck alone.

Good methods for sharing presentations?
We all agree that PowerPoint or Keynote slides are not a presentation. But for those who could not witness our presentation in person, it is helpful if we can share the message on the web. A common method of making the presentation available is simply to save the PowerPoint deck to the web (easily done in PowerPoint). But if your slides were effective in the life presentation, those slides will be of little use by themselves. In this case, a written handout of your talk with expanded detail and support may be much better.

What's the best way to share a presentation on the web?
I believe the best methods will allow the viewer to see the person speaking as well as hear them, and be able to see the slides in sync with the narration. Seeing the presenter is important. Facial expressions, for example, are a very important channel for non-verbal communication. I'd mentioned this before when I urged presenters to get out of the dark. Good slides synched with good narration, like Lessig's on-line versions of his presentations, are not bad at all. But would it be even better if we could see Lessig actually speaking, at least part of the time?

One of my favorite methods for sharing on the web is the method Lewis PR did here. Although, since our eyes are conditioned to scan back to the left and the strongest part of a screen is often the upper left, I wonder if it would be better to have the speaker appear on the left and graphics on the right? Also, the three Lewis examples have too much extraneous graphics above and below the slides and video. I like the method (and Flash), but a simpler interface — slides and video — would be even better.

Apple does a pretty good job of making Steve Job's keynote's available on the web. I like the way you can see Steve (most of the time) and the slides (most of the time). Sometimes this is done with a split screen or a single shot which frames both Steve and the slide image.

 
Above: Split screen allows viewer to see presenter and slides.

 
Above: Here we can see both presenter and slides in the same frame.

Easy method for sharing?
I'm interested to hear what you think are the best methods for sharing presentations over the web. Please feel free to point to effective on-line examples of taking a live presentation and making it available for the web.

Comments

[Jack]

I remember an article some while ago about software that overlaid the presenter's face over the slide so you could always see both on screen at the same time. Sounds like a good way of delivering a presentation online.

[Pawel Rutkowski]

Since we all "love" PowerPoint ;) You can use
Microsoft Producer. AFAIR Output can be delivered trough streaming Windows Media Server or saved to file.

Here are some examples http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/producer/prodinfo/demos.mspx (i didn't check it out)

more information (and download)
http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/producer/prodinfo/default.mspx

[Oz]

There are couple of ways that I use:
Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp) Probably the best way to put both your face, audio and the presentation (or anything else on the screen) in one package and save it as one of many popular formats. (Expensive)

Breeze - this is the one I use mostly. Still kinda pricey but gives you a plug-in for powerpoint. So you dont need to know nothing technical. Comes with a basic audio editing software. Very easy to upload and modify. When you put audio or video in the same frame - you pretty much will need to update things after you watch it almost all the time. (Especially on branded company presentations :)You just need a browser with free Flash plug in to view the end result.

Webex - Webex has a extra plug in that records and uploads your presentations - works pretty much the same way as Breeze. Costs similar due to the reason they are direct competitors in the industry. Never used this one but hear similar things to Breeze

Free ways - There is the MS PP Producer as mentioned above or you can search for free capture software to record your package as avi or mpg than convert to divx or swf.

To distribute the package there are couple of ways: GOOGLE VIDEO, torrent technology and your good'ol FTP/Website/Free Upload Sites (megaupload, rapidshare etc)

[Joe Bezdek]

A few months ago I gave a presentation in a large auditorium. The "presentation" itself was actually a series of Keynote presentations seamlessly interwoven with high-def video on a 20' high screen. (And yes, I felt a bit like Steve Jobs at times. :-))

Since then, I've been working part-time to edit the two video HD feeds of the presentation together with the presentation content itself (i.e., slides and videos). This has been quite a challenge.

Though this feature might have limited usefulness, it occurs to me that it would be useful to have a way to stamp a real-time presentation with a SMPTE timecode (maybe Keynote could mark the slide transitions and animation builds with timecodes)--from a central generator, if possible, so that the real-time screen content can be easily synced with other video feeds of the event.

In other words, it's very hard to put a presentation into sharable form. :-)

[Kevin Bjorke]

NOTES VIEW

Before the presentation goes on the web, have the text of your talk - jokes and all - in the notes view. Just as you rehearsed it. Save the presentation itself in Notes View mode, if you are distributing the PPT. Print the note pages, if you are saving as PDF.

Annoyingly, MS makes Notes View a second-class citizen in PP's default menus -- you have to dig it out from under the telescoping secondary menu.

Obviously tone of voice, timing, and slide animation still get lost in this view. But the file is transportable and small.

I'd really like to get all my presentations to be readable as QVGA-size videos for playback from an ipod or PDA. Not there yet...

[Scott McLeod]

You may want to check out Apreso Classroom (http://www.apreso.com/ac_product_overview.asp) or Agility Live (http://www.anystream.com/agility_live.asp). Anystream used to make an Apreso version for the desktop that won numerous technical awards but they've discontinued offering the product. I'm not sure why...

[Servant of Chaos]

Great tips on preserving a sense of the "live act" part of a presentation. I have used Articulate Presenter for some time ... fairly inexpensive and does a great job.

[glad]

perhaps its me nit-picking but why did PR lewis have to keep turning round to see the screen surely he'd have a monitor set up in front of him perhaps?

[Brooks Jordan]

I would agree with the person above that Macromedia (Adobe) Breeze is a fairly inexpensive and high quality way to deliver presentations on the Web. Salesforce.com has some good examples.

However, maybe the easiest and cheapest way is to do a screencast, which would allow you to easily toggle between your powerpoint and video and things on the web that you want to demo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast

[Brooks Jordan]

> However, maybe the easiest and cheapest way is to do a screencast . . .

Yes, I just downloaded Snapz Pro X (requires Mac OS X 10.2 and above) and made a Quicktime movie of my screen with voice over. Worked beautifully.

With a video camera, you could place a real-time video of yourself along side your powerpoint, as Garr suggets, and get the whole effect.

[Brooks Jordan]

> Yes, I just downloaded Snapz Pro X . . .

I also used powerpoint's audio and movie fuctionality in my powerpoint to create a QuickTime for comparison.

The audio of my voice over sounded fine. However, the graphics in my powerpoint as a looked terrible in this version. Maybe there's a way to fix this.

A big problem with both the Snapz Pro X- and powerpoint-to-Quicktime movies is that they're quite large, both over 15MB, which is way too big for the Web.

[jetxee]

> I believe the best methods will
> allow the viewer to see the person
> speaking as well as hear them, and
> be able to see the slides in sync
> with the narration. Seeing the
> presenter is important.

I don't agree that this is the best for the web. I never have the patience to listen and watch all those presentations with video and audio. Online presentations should be always, always come with written and scrollable narative. Video and audio just do not have a visible structure to navigate.

It's the web. Let the user look through and skip to the most important part.

And I don't care how the voice of the presenter sounds, what color his jacket is, or what facial expressions are. On the web, just let me get to the content. Quickly.

It's the worst trend on the modern web to make video presentations. Even if I am interested in the topic, in 90% of cases I just stop the video and go away. May be later, I think sometimes, but never come back.