I admit it. I love public speaking when I’m talking about a topic I’m passionate about. My style is probably unique and not what people might expect from a “Chief Technical Officer,” but for the most part, I’m told it works.
I try to connect with the audience, make eye contact, engage them when possible and might even tell some funny stories. It’s not as hard as it seems given how much “life experience” I have (translate – I’m a boomer) and how funny things always seem to happen to me (translate – I attract the most interesting people).
I’ve often been asked to deliver the same content as a webinar – either live or recorded. But webinars scare me. I feel I have trouble connecting with people when I can’t see or hear them. On the listener side of things, I usually find webinars to be quite dull. I either want to click through the slides myself (much faster than the speaker is going through them) or get bored watching screen upon screen of a software demonstration.
That’s not always the case.
Check out this video from Ed Dale on how to use Twitter for business.
To see the part I’m fascinated with, start to look around 1:50. The content is engaging, which I know is a must. But I also really like how I can see his face throughout the entire presentation, how he can interact with the application (scrolling) and how it zooms in when he wants to show a detail on the screen (around 5:00).
Based on the background, I can see it’s done on a Mac. But when I’ve asked Dale what software he uses, I get no reply. I’ve visited the Mac store hoping they could instantly tell me how this was done, and even their evangelists had no clue.
So, what sorcery is this that can produce a presentation like this?
Can I achieve the same result using a Microsoft Windows based machine? Can I do this “live” and share it as a webinar? And simultaneously record it for folks to play back in the future?
If I have to use a Mac, I might be ok with that – if I knew exactly what hardware/software I needed. Although our shop is entirely Windows based, so I would prefer to stay on that platform. And the software I would probably want to demonstrate runs on a Windows platform.
If you know how I can get to the end state of a live (and recorded) presentation that looks like Ed’s example, I really want to hear from you. Leave a comment or send me an email.
Thanks in advance for your help!
{ 3 comments }


