Tip: Stop sharing your desktop for PowerPoint presentations

A very common scenario today is for a person to present a PowerPoint presentation to one or more remote attendees using some sort of web conferencing tool such as Live Meeting or Lync or Lync Online.

As a presenter, a quick and easy way show your presentations to participants is to just share your desktop…

Please don’t do this!  (For PowerPoint presentations, anyway)

Why Not?

I’ll address that, but first let me introduce the (better) alternative.  Now your tool of choice may not have this option, and sharing your desktop may be all you have, but with Lync you can upload the PowerPoint presentation into the meeting space…

Nice, but again, why not share my desktop?

OK, OK.  There are a number of reasons why I think sharing your desktop for PowerPoint presentations is not the best approach:

Privacy – Email alerts and Instant Message popups are all on display for the world to see when you simply share your desktop.  You may inadvertently reveal confidential information, or at best be embarrassed by something becoming public that was otherwise meant to be private such as “Hi Pumpkin-face, I miss you,” or the like.

Unprofessional Presentations – We often need to refer to other material or switch to different slides during the course of a presentation.  When your desktop is on display, these efforts are viewable to all.  As you drop back out of Presentation mode attendees see your slides and possibly speaker notes.  They see you browsing your file system looking for something.  You’re on display and feeling exposed so invariably it takes longer than it otherwise would and your mouse is hovering directly over the file in question but you can’t see it – everyone online is quietly pointing out the obvious and politely waiting for you to catch up.

Scrolling, Scrolling, Scrolling – When you share your desktop your screen resolution may not match those of the participants and therefore, without you realizing it, they have to constantly scroll to see your presentation.  This is very annoying and altogether unnecessary, as you’ll see later.

These are just a few of my thoughts on the experience of sharing your desktop for presentations.

So give me a better way!

Happy to.  With Lync, for example, if you upload the presentation instead of sharing your desktop you not only solve the problems noted above but now also enjoy the following benefits:

Annotations – Lync allows you (and optionally participants) to annotate the presentation adding a whole new dimension of real-time collaboration to your session.  You simply can’t do that if you are sharing your desktop.

Thumbnails – Need to jump ahead in your slides?  Instead of advancing through them in sequence or stepping out of Presentation mode, as you would have to do if you were sharing your desktop, you can see the list of thumbnails during your presentation and simply advance to the exact slide you want – the participants only see the slides you wish to share and don’t know if you are skipping slides or not.

Speaker Notes – What if you had speaker notes with important points to share?  Well, you could print them out or use some split-screen technology to hide them.  But with Lync it’s much easier as your speaker notes are available to you right on screen, and again, the participants do not see this.

Other Rich Content alongside your Slides – With a tool as powerful as Lync your online meetings may often include more than just a slide-sharing session.  If you share your desktop you must show only the presentation.  If you use the uploaded PowerPoint method you can continue to have access to the Instant Messaging conversation, Video, and the Visual Roster of participants.

Summary

So all in all you have a more controlled and feature rich experience as a presenter when you upload your PowerPoint presentations instead of sharing your desktop, and your participants enjoy a more professional and streamlined presentation.

Don’t get me wrong – sharing your desktop, or specific applications, is a powerful feature and should absolutely be used to its fullest potential but not, in my opinion, for presenting PowerPoint presentations.

Quit staring at that conference phone and change the dynamic of your meetings

Have you ever been involved in a conference call where one or more participants are in a meeting room and one or more participants are not?  Those of you in the room were likely sitting around a conference phone that looks something like this…

Those of you who were not in the meeting, dialled into an audio conference bridge.  Perhaps you called from the car.  More likely you called while sitting next to a PC (more on that later).

Whether you were in the room or not, chances are you experienced some challenges.

Challenges while in the room

When you’re in the room, you tend to forget there is someone “on the line”.  You remember when one of them finally tries to get a word in edgewise.

When someone does speak who is not in the room, you struggle to first identify who is speaking and then to fully comprehend what they are saying.  This becomes more of a challenge if the person speaks softly or with an accent with which you are not familiar.
You try to overcome these challenges by looking really hard at the conference phone on the table.  A quick glance reveals that everybody else in the room is doing the same.

Oddly, this does not seem to help.

Challenges while not in the room

If you are not in the room, and have dialed in using a phone, you face a similar challenge identifying the speaker, but the problem is often much worse because there are usually more people in the room.  You have no idea to whom comments are directed – it may be that the speaker is targeting someone directly with what he/she is saying, but you have no way of knowing this.

You have a lot to offer...you’ve got something brilliant to say...you put up your hand! 

Nobody notices.

You wait patiently to jump in, but in the end, you can’t help it.  You go against everything your parents ever taught you about manners – you cut in.  It’s the only way, sorry, Mom.

The Problem

The fundamental problem in this scenario is not being able to see who is speaking.  Right now you don’t have much of a choice, though, do you?  People can’t always be in the same room at the same time.  There are geographic boundaries to consider and management has cut business travel spending to combat the economic downturn and to reduce your company’s carbon footprint.  Talk to me, you say, when that phone magically allows me to see everyone on the call as well as hear them.

OK, let’s talk.

The Solution

I’d like to introduce you to the Polycom CX5000, powered by Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

This wonderfully futuristic device takes the audio conference to the next level by adding immersive video to the experience.  The bottom circular platform is similar to your existing conference phone with an integrated dial pad and directional microphones and speakers.

The stem holds on its top 5 cameras arranged in a circle.  These cameras collect a real-time 360 degree panoramic view of the room.  It looks like this…

This view allows participants to see everybody in the room, and the dynamics between them.  Now we can see if someone is directing his/her comments to someone in particular!

The CX5000 also takes care of automatically displaying the current speaker.  So while you always see the full panoramic view, you also get to see the person currently speaking.

No more trying to figure it out based on what you hear, and with the visual you have a much better chance of understanding what is being said.  One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. (More)

I mentioned earlier that most of the time, those who are joining from outside the room are sitting at their PC, be it a desktop in an office or more likely a notebook computer while on the road at a customer site or in a hotel room.  This is where the game really changes, because again most of the time you are gathering on this call to review something tangible such as a budget spreadsheet or design layout.  You need to look at a document or screen during the session.

Add Microsoft Lync to the equation and we have finally reached utopia!

Turn a basic conference call into an Online Meeting

Microsoft Lync Online Meetings provide the rich collaborative experience you’ve been looking for, including a real-time view of the active speaker whether they are in the room or not, a full view of the people in the meetings rooms involved, and an integrated document and screen sharing environment . When you pull it all together it looks like this…

This is all accomplished with a single client on the desktop (Microsoft Lync) and a combination of standard webcams and Polycom CX5000 devices.  And you can join from anywhere in the world with a standard internet connection – no Virtual Private Network (VPN) required!

Summary

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and the Polycom CX5000 combine to provide an immersive and empowered collaboration experience.  Gone are the days of struggling to understand what someone is saying on a call and emailing around documents, or worse, printing multiple copies for participants to review in a meeting.

Warning!  There is no turning back from this experience.  Once you’ve lived the good life, you will find yourself asking “where’s the video” and “show me your screen”.
Please feel free to add your own stories and comments, and if you’re interested in learning more, drop me a line!