Virtual Handouts

Instructions for Presenters

You can easily set up your workshop handouts for electronic distribution amongst PDA users.

Overview

Use the Contacts address cards to beam information about your presentation, (as well as about yourself as presenter) to your audience. Set up a business card with your contact information and include a short note on where to find your presentation online. Beam this to a few members of your audience and then encourage them to share this around the group as the workshop progresses.

Why bother?

Firstly this may save a tree or two. Seriously, how many of us actually refer to workshop handouts after a conference? For sure, you will make use of one or two but most go in the bucket. Why go to the expense of printing all these out, lugging them around etc if they are not going to be used.

Secondly, how many of us change the actual content between the time the handout is created and the time that the workshop is conducted. Most conference planners require handout material months ahead of time. In the rapidly evolving world of Info Tech, many developments arise in this time span - presentations are bound to be updated, sometimes at the last minute.

This sounds like it is quite complicated and has quite a few steps to it. However, once you have set it up, all you need to do on subsequent occasions is to create your real handout and upload it to the web site. You don't need to change your Virtual Handout each time because it is setup to work the same for many presentations.

Why not the actual document?

The way this is set up, participants are directed to a web site from where they can download the information. Why not just eliminate one step and distribute the actual handout by beaming it to the users?

Firstly, there is not much in the way of a truly common document format that is easily shareable. One might argue that Palm Docs, PDB files, memos etc are all reasonably ubiquitous. But they also require novice users to know something about how to load or read them. While many do know this, many more do not, or do not have the software needed.

This is even more true when you are dealing with an environment where there are mixed device types. PocketPCs and Palm users can beam a few things to each other - the Contact address card is the medium that is most commonly used and understood and requires the least learning.

Lastly, using links to a web page gives the author some flexibility. One can provide simple text information or the whole presentation file (which can sometimes be huge!). One can publish the stuff in different formats and give the user a choice of which to download. Also it means that the author does not have to change the Address card each time a new presentation is given. Keep a fixed link to where you store your presentations.

What about different platforms?

The beauty of using this technique is that it can be made to work in a cross-platform environment - you can beam to Palm and Psion devices. With the new PocketPC2002 interface, this is now very easy because cross-platform beaming is now integral to the OS.

With older PocketPCs, this is still quite feasible using PeaceMaker, a free utility from Conduits. With Peacemaker installed on the PocketPC, one can beam Contacts to/from PalmOS & Psion devices - the latter do not need any additional software. So even if the presenter is the only one in the room with PeaceMaker, this can still work - simply start with a few users from each platform - then after that, groups from each camp can propagate the information to fellow users.

(For the technically inclined here is some more information about beaming between different device types.)

Setup Details

1. Setup a contact card in your Address book with your details as usual - remember, you don't know how far this will propagate so be careful what contact information you include. You can use a copy of the PocketProf business card as a template if you wish.

2. In the Notes section of the card, include some simple text about how to access the web site where you have stored a copy of your presentation or handout. Remember that the Notes section is quite small and narrow on a PDA so format your text accordingly. Click here for more information on how to do more extensive text editing of this Notes section.

I suggest that you simply place a URL to the page where you store all your presentation material, without any specific link to the presentation of that day. This means that you will not have to change your address card each time you do a new presentation.

3. If you are using a Palm OS device, make this address card your default business card that is beamed when you exchange cards. To do this, open the address card then click on 'Select Business Card...' and click on Yes to confirm.

If you have done it correctly, you will see a small Rolodex icon at the top of the Address Card.

4. On your web site, create a page with links to your presentations and the dates of the workshops where they were given or you can upload it to the PocketProf web site here. You can then upload as many different versions of your presentation or handout material as you want and allow the user to choose. This means that you do not clutter up your PDA with several different large files. It also speeds the beaming process during your workshop.

You can take a look at our PocketProf web site for a look at how we have set this up.

5. It is still good to make some brief paper directions to be included in the conference workbook that is distributed to attendees. You can use this sample document as something to print out and distribute ahead of time so that attendees know what to expect.

6. During the presentation, you may find it helpful to display some directions for users on how to beam address cards. If you have a web connection, you can display this page from the site or you could save it to your laptop and display as an offline web page. Some may find it easier to use this simple Word document instead but it has less detail.

Download

You can grab this zip file which has most of the documents and templates that you need all in one package.

Feedback

Page last modified on October 31, 2005