The most necessary feature of any presentation is the information that you need to share. In meetings, conferences, lectures, product launches, seminars, training events, and demonstrations—any situation where your discussion content needs to be distributed effectively to a group of participants—speakers strive to deeply connect their audience to their material.

The three most important elements of any presentation are:

  1. That your ideas are developed.
  2. That you’re prepared for your speech.
  3. That your presentation harnesses the right technology.

There is planning, work, research, development, and money involved. After all these factors are in place and these resources are utilized, the most dangerous scenario for speakers is that this extensive undertaking will go to waste because the audience won’t connect to the material.

According to Guy Kawasaki, “a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points—an idea now universally known as the 10/20/30 rule. All presentation rules and suggestions aim to achieve the same goal—preventing a tragic disconnection between your audience and your ideas.

After developing your ideas and preparing for your speech, it’s time to apply the final element.

Taking your ideas to the next level means utilizing the technology that best distributes your material—literally distributing it in many cases! The following technology suggestions involve hardware and software that can present your valuable ideas in their best light!

 

Hardware that Supports Your Content

Video Walls – at their most basic, presentations need a screen that offers a full, clear view of the supporting text and images. Video walls are simply one of the best, most functional, most professional, most captivating options for displaying the pictures that tell a thousand words (helping you save some of your breath).

Audience Response Systems – one of the easiest ways to keep attendees fixed on your every word is to put an audience response keypad in their hands. Whether you choose to use quizzes, polling, or voting, you’ll increase attendee interaction and engagement, while gaining the ability to immediately gather information from your guests.

 

Software that Connects Your Audience

Speecheo – this award-winning app (crowned as the winner of IMEX America’s 2014 Technology Start-Up Competition) combines your material with the note-taking, sharing, saving, tracking, recording powers of audience members’ own tablets and smartphones. Rather than limiting attendee devices, this app helps to ensure that your audience is able to completely capture your presentation within the technology that is most personal and familiar to them—helping them to encapsulate, adapt, and digest the live material for their own reference.

SlideShare – this slide hosting service is to slides what YouTube is to videos. Users upload their slide presentations through file formats, such as PDF or PowerPoint; the site also supports documents, videos, and webinars. Once the material is uploaded, viewers can easily access the presentations from the site itself, embedded within other sites, or on handheld devices. The website was originally designed specifically to provide businesses with an easy method for sharing slides with and between team members, and it lets viewers comment on the material as well as to share it.

Engage – this custom presentation software, from SmartSource Rentals, distributes your slides directly to a fleet of attendee iPads or Android tablets. The software allows speakers to control their slides and gather feedback across all the tablets, simultaneously. The software also allows speakers to moderate questions and comments, offer surveys, publish up-to-the-minute information and responses in real time, and to gather trackable data from each attendee’s interactions.

 

About SmartSource Rentals

With over 30 years of experience and 20 branch locations nationwide, SmartSource Rentals has the event technology that supports and promotes ideal presentations—from projectors and screens, to sound systems, iPad rentals, and software solutions. Contact us today for a quote!