I've been changing the style of presentation that I give and have been moving towards the Lessig method of presenting. He features only a few words per slide and flips through them like the bouncing ball of karaoke. More and more presenters are using this style. In fact I find it very difficult now to follow along with presenters who use the text-heavy slides that I used to advocate in favour of. (I still think there is some value in this style of slide for international audiences who may not be able to follow my speed and accent.)

With the shift in presentation style I now need to be even more aware of what is on each of my slides (a one hour presentation may have 70-200+ slides), and to effectively present I don't want to have to be tied to my computer. This shift is made possible by two innovations (although neither are really that new). The first is "presenter view." Made popular in Apple's Keynote, this option is also available in MS's PowerPoint (the links lead to tutorials on how to enable this mode). Basically it allows you to have a different view on your laptop than what the audience sees on the big screen. It's being worked on in OOo Impress as well (I've tried beta versions and I think they're off to a lovely start). The second innovation that will allow me to completely shift the way I deliver presentations is my new toy. It's a remote control for slide shows on a computer. My new toy is a targus voice recording presenter with laser pointer. Did I mention that it has a laser? I frickin' love lasers!

The Targus is an amazing toy, worked perfectly straight out of the box with my computer -- even though I run OpenOffice.org on Linux. Three thumbs enthusiastically way up. I can't wait for my next presentation to try it out for real.