A number of people have asked me recently “what is it you do again?”. When I tell my friends and family that I’m giving a presentation at some conference or another, they very rarely have any idea of what I mean. So, if you’ve always wondered what sort of nonsense I’ll stand up on stage and spout at a captive audience, here’s your chance to find out.
This week I was at Serious Virtual Worlds in Coventry presenting ‘virtual worlds for corporate collaboration’ where I mostly talked about social networking and why it’s important.
If you have 29 minutes to spare, and if SlideShare is feeling friendly, you can hit the play button to start the audio and, thanks to the magic of technology, the slides will progress at pretty much the right time.
Sorry about the audio quality; I captured it myself by placing an mp3 recorder in front of me, so it’s picked up a bit of noise from the laptop. If the audio (or my voice) is too tiresome for you, open the slideshow itself, click the “Comments on Slide x” tab and click through the slides to see a brief text overview of each one.
I was updating it right up until the night before, so I added some things that have been on my mind this week. Twitter and Dunbar’s number both get a good mention, while slide 20 shows the recent mini-controversy around productivity and Facebook, citing Dennis Howlett and Luis Suarez on the topic.
You’ll notice there are no bullet points. Over the past few months I have been gradually evolving this “Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds” presentation, but I’m frankly tired of PowerPoint and sick of bullet points. Encouraged by seeing people like James Duncan Davidson and Mark Stephen Meadows blend their photographic ability with their speaking talents, I’ve gone for a photograph-heavy presentation, text-light presentation. Some of the photos are my own, but by no means all. The best ones are Creative Commons licensed photos I found on Flickr. Each is attributed. There are a few screenshots thrown in too, and even the introductory slide is a selection of screengrabs from the conference website and my LinkedIn profile.
Enjoy. Feel free to ask any questions either here or on the individual slides.
Update: Andy Powell was kind enough to share the video he captured from his point of view as a participant, joining remotely in Second Life.
Update:All presentation materials are now online via the Serious Games Institute.
Thanks for sharing that with us Roo, you’ve inspired me to give Twitter another try.
What a beautiful presentation. You’ve done a great job at making that company you work for (ahem) appear glossy, sexy, and on top of the game.
On a side note, flickr is amazing – and I’m awed every day by how many accidental photogs there are out there. The world is a talented cesspool.
Thanks John, hope you enjoy it.
Cheers Smack. You’re right about Flickr. It’s a fantastic place.
I loved this. The no-bullets, image-heavy style has really grown on me recently.
I’ve tried it myself for my last couple of presentations, but I haven’t got the portfolio of photos to choose from or the eye for flickr pics to really pull it off! Not yet anyway… gotta find an excuse to do another presentation to give it another try. :-)
Wow. Both Luis and Dennis have mentioned the presentation. My thanks to both of them for their kind words. “a very nice intro to the overall topic of how social networking tools are changing the corporate landscape” and “Not a single bullet pointed Powerpoint slide to be seen (yay.)” indeed! Thanks guys.
Another very, very good presentation Roo. Thanks for sharing. I picked up a number of ideas and directions for my thinking.
+1