[PLUG] Conferences, Powerpoint, and freedom - Status and Apology

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Mon Jul 29 02:59:55 UTC 2013


On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 12:04:12AM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I am scheduled to speak at the IEEE Sustainable Technologies 
> Conference at the Lloyd Center Doubletree on Thursday morning
> August 1, next week.  This morning, the conference chair sent
> out an email saying that all presentations must be Powerpoint,

And the chair, seeing my plight, has worked with me to relax the
constraints.  I must make sure that I don't screw up the tight
transition to the next powerpoint presentation, but the session
chair and I are working out alternatives.  

I may be able to run my webslides from the conference laptop,
assuming that version of Firefox (or Internet Explorer) is
configured to run javascript, flash animations, and local files. 

A better alternative is me bringing my own projector, putting
it on a platform above the conference projector, and show slides
using my own laptop and cabling, while shuttering the light output
from the conference projector with a black box surrounding the
lens.  I will bring a libreoffice generated PPT, one slide,
full screen black, for the conference projector.  

Hopefully, this will allow the next presenter to set up their
slides and start presenting the moment I finish with Q/A . 

I am still looking for help with the setup, just in case something
glitches the windoze machine or projector.  I'm trying to contact
the AV contractor for the conference, perhaps I can pay one of
their people to hang around and fix unexpected problems.

We still need to smash the Powerpoint monopoly, and replace bullet
point list slides with more humane and effective presentations.
But that is a long term problem to solve separately from the
environmental problems we will address at the conference this week.

I apologise to the conference and the chair for making protest
threats and to this list for my rant. 

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993



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