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Badly presented PowerPoint presentations in Sametime

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I am sick of attending on-line meetings, where the presenter does a poor job of considering the poor person watching a presentation presented through Lotus Sametime. Webex and Live Meeting have done a much better job than Sametime in this area, so today I've decided to post a video on how I host Sametime meetings, and present PowerPoint files. I am pleased to say that the upcoming Sametime 7.5 does a much better job of converting PPT files, especially one's that contain graphics or screenshots so IBM almost catches up with the competition on the handling of PPT files. If you look at a PPT file today in Sametime that has Screenshots on the Sametime Whiteboard, they look terrible, so everyone pretty much always resorts to using the Screenshare, which leads to the problem where the person sharing their screen is running a resolution that most IMAX theaters would be proud of, so the poor person watching the presentation on their 1024x768 laptop can see the top left (Live Meeting has a nice option here where the presenter can easily see the resolution of all attendees machines).

Here are a few things to do in order to provide good on-line meetings with Sametime.
  • Schedule the meeting 15-20 minutes before it is due to start, so that any issues can be sorted out before the customer arrives. Also prepare the presentation etc. in this time so that the customer doesn't have to see you resizing screen-sharing areas etc. (other meeting services often have waiting rooms where viewers wait until the meeting moderator starts the meeting. Sadly Sametime doesn't and the upcoming Sametime 7.5 is still missing this key feature, it did exist as a code sample for Sametime 1.5 so it is possible.
  • Create an introduction slide for the whiteboard , so that attendees see that before anything else, put useful information on it like call in numbers etc.
  • Turn your screen resolution down to 1024x768, at least then if you have to share your entire screen, the person at the other end has some hope of seeing it.
  • If you have another machine available, have it access the meeting, so you can watch that when presenting in order to see when slides are completely loaded. Would be great if Sametime offered the ability to visually indicate to the presenter that all the slides have loaded, so they know they can proceed.
  • Don't use PowerPoint in fullscreen slideshow mode, present it in review mode and share just part of the screen. This way the watcher can see the entire presentation without having to resize or use scroll bars in their app.
  • Only present with the number of colours you have to. If you don't have fancy pictures or screenshots in your presentation, consider using the optimize for performance option.
  • Oh and above all else, start the meetings on time!!!!, if you hold regular meetings and don't always start them on time, why would people turn up on time? It's rude to keep those that do arrive on time hanging around. if you need to delay a meetings start, keep everyone informed as to why.
Anyway, If these aren't obvious, download and watch the movie, and you'll see what I mean.

Effective Sametime Meetings - 16Mb

I use Sizer to do the on the fly resizing of windows.

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - Thank's Carl. This is very, very handy! <>tim

Gravatar Image2 - Some good suggestions. Some of these we have been doing forever, but others could certainly help.

Gravatar Image3 - Alas, I am the presenter that inspired Carl to post this entry. I've been on the other end of what Carl is describing, so I know how annoying this can be. This was the first online meeting I ran with new customers - not a good first impression! I get to try again next month, with an enlightened view of the user experience (and using Sametime 7.5). Thanks, Carl.

Gravatar Image4 - Okay, well not to post it originally, but to send it to me for some tips after I made several of the mistakes above.

Gravatar Image5 - Nice tips for Sametime. Thought you might like to try out a personalized virtual meeting tool created in collaboration with RembrandtAdvantage, provider of diagnostics for the corporate world from selection to performance development and teamwork. You can discover your meeting profile here: https://www.rembrandtadvantage.net/auto.php?id=5a0edbe2f6667964832a99801cf42de0.


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