Trying Prezi at Thinking Digital

Whilst Alex was polishing off what turned out to be an excellent presentation for the afternoon session at Thinking Digital, I struggled on with Prezi . This is a fascinating tool for creating flash based presentations, but I think I need a good deal more practice with it, and a lot more design nous, in order to do presentations that actually look good rather than just weird. It's also quite easy to accidentally get things in the wrong order, and it's ironically quite hard to get an over view of the whole presentation and be sure you've included all you want to (I left out my flickr CC attributions! Web Crime!). And of course like any new toy it's an utter time sink- eating up perhaps eight hours to rehash a presentation I mostly had already got prepared and written an up and have already given a dozen times or more. Still, I will probably persist for a little while longer, and may even splurge on the stand alone version.

The free version is fully functional but you have to be online to use it. In Newcastle free street wifi is currently very widely available (though I'm not sure that'll last forever) and every venue we hung out in was similarly endowed, but on the train up the onboard wifi did flake out from time to time. Side note on the wifi, I shouldn't be churlish, especially not on the free wifi in standard on national express, but its one of those things that quickly evolves from delighting by it's very existence into annoying by it's imperfection (and I suspect I am peculiarly quick in moving things across these categories myself).

Being able to work offline would be a bonus with my commuting needs, but I'm not sure the branding freedom you also pay to get is actually worth it. OK, I get annoyed with D.O.G.s as much as the next person, but actually, using something this new and different it's helpful right now to have a little flag in the corner of the screen so people can see what I'm using- half the questions after my presentation were along the lines 'how did you do that- what software was it?' and I'm sure it would have been more if I hadn't pointed out the Prezi logo on screen.

This brings me in a round about way to the question of whether it worked, as in, did people get the message? In essence, I think it did work ok. My audience seemed attentive if not exactly enraptured, and I got a laugh and a couple of chuckles from three of the five humour points in the talk. It was a 15 minute slot at the end of a long (and late running) session- I was sixth of six presentations, and I was about two hours into the program as it ran. That’s not to say it was a hard crowd at all- they were switched on, all paying, and very intelligent and engaged, and all the other presenters had been excellent, entertaining and often profoundly motivational. So in all this, my tale of a BBC Micro for the 21st Century, as told through a spinny flash animation with a few pictures and a short film clip, worked well.

Another quick sidebar- in the end I didn't embed the video. This is because I only wanted to play a short part of the overall file, and I didn't have the kit handy to edit it down. Putting the whole clip into Prezi, online, would have turned it into a huge file and radically slowed down the whole save and download process. I think, if you're going to embed video, you need proper edit (and transcode) handy, and it's going to be easier to use the stand alone version of the software.

On stage I found it a very different experience to 'drive' compared with the way I usually use PowerPoint. In spite of it being a graphical 'look', the labourious online upload, especially on a flakey web link, meant that I ended up with a predominantly 'texty' rather than picturey presentation. All those text elements, instead of sitting in big chunks per slide, had their own, individual triggers and screens, so the talk bounced along with a new movement (and me clicking it) every 30 seconds or so. And then, when I did 'pop out' into one of my 3 minute rants, that seems a bit less organic to the whole piece (at least to me). I guess I'm just very used to (and bored with) powerpoint- anything else is going to take time to learn, and until I crack it, it's going to be intrucive into the presentations, and the creative process.

Love it though!

Blinking Digital

To my great shame I only spent a half day at this year's Thinking Digital conference, Herb Kim's intellectual gymkhana on the banks of the Tyne. I am profoundly grateful to have been able to join his role call of luminaries for the one afternoon and for the dinner too though.

I actually turned up a little early for the event so spent the morning trying to polish off my presentation at the cafe at Baltic in the sparkling company of Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, co-founder and CEO of Tinker.it. Alex is a profoundly cool and intelligent person, and she's probably forgotten more about the people and places around the digital culture in the UK, US and Canada than I will ever know, and with Tinker.it I think she and her colleagues are making a real positive difference to the world today. I think, hope, this is being recognised- keep a look out for more about Tinker.it on the BBC's technology web site. Whilst Alex was polishing off what turned out to be an excellent presentation for the afternoon session, I struggled on with Prezi (a quick overview in another blog post).

Thence to the Live Theatre to register, and meet our fellow presenters for the afternoon session. The first session was streamed, with Social Media in the main theatre, Practical Wisdom back over at Baltic, and The DIY Gadget session upstairs in the Live Theatre, hosted by the BBC's own Ian Forrester, and with yours truly one of the six presenters.

My fellow presenters are an excellent bunch:

• Alex I've already mentioned- she gave a great overview of Arduino, and her company's role in it, and ran through a load of the coolest projects they're working on, plus giving an excellent socio-philosophical grounding to the importance of the technology.
• Adrian McEwen of MCQN ran through more of the hacker projects he's been working on, including a live demonstration of the bubbleduino, which was reacting live to tweets of the event by spattering our guest of honour with detergent (he took that very well).
• Richard, Stuart and Dave of Jam Jar Collective- aka the Friispray crew- then gave a brilliantly energetic three hander presentation of their project, giving a massive tip 'o the hat to Johnny Cheung Lee, the previously mentioned guest of honour- I think they were a little nervous that their hero was sat front and centre in the audience (slightly spattered with detergent). I've seen friispray a few months ago, and it's great to see not only how they're developing the technology, but also using it in really important and original contexts; club nights are fun, sure, but in education environments for kids with learning difficulties their tech can be a transformative and important step forward, making a very real difference.
• Andy Huntingdon then followed with a spectacular and pretty wonderfully noisy demonstration of his projects that use low power embedded computing to turn everyday objects into rhythm sequencers. His tappity boxes have a great sense of the dramatic built in- the three second lag makes every use an act of knife edge anticipation.
• Ken Banks then presented his revolutionary SMS hub software, FrontlineSMS- I mean revolutionary very specifically. Ken's software allows anyone with a phone and a pc to set up a powerfull SMS communications hub, and it's being used around the globe to dramatic, life changing, culturally and politically significant ends. It is the engine of revolution in many areas, and saves lives because it allows communication and peaceful activism to be more powerful than riot and violence. He's such a sweet guy too- genuinely moved by the way that people worldwide have run with the tools he's made and crafted a better future for themselves and others.
• Me- I did the usual schtick about a BBC Micro for the 21st century- reviewing the old micro, how and why it had come about, and then exploring what the modern, equivalent challenges are, and then exploring the whole culture of makery hackery, the culture my co-speakers had been propounding, to see how today, the best way to acheive analogous goals would probably be to aly ourselves closely with all these guys, to support them, help them and foster a wider cultural uptake of their ethos. (One day I'll do a post about that!)

After our presentations Ian interviewed Johnny and they explored the role of the 4 minute video clip, properly, but not 'over' produced, as a great tool for sharing ideas. I'm looking forward to the video from that chat, and Thursday's presentation, as I think there's stuff for us in R&D to learn there.

Anyway, all in all a great session- thanks so much to Herb, the theatre staff, and all the Thinking Digital crew. That night's dinner was mind blowing too- but that's for another post!