Non Linear Presentation using SketchFlow

by justin 10. February 2010 23:16

I’m giving a talk tonight on MetaSharp and I’ve decided to use SketchFlow instead of Powerpoint to present my talking points. The topic is complex and I want the audience to be more interactive and I want to be able to be flexible in how deep into a topic I can go without having to skip over slides. I’ve never done this before, or seen it before so I have no idea what to expect but I’m going to give it a try.

The people at the TCLangUG tend to be more interactive and fun than your typical straight presentation crowd anyway, so this should be a good forum for experimentation like this.

Anyway, I thought the map that SketchFlow makes of all the screens is pretty neat so I thought I’d put a snapshot of it here.

non-linear-presentation-map

The white screen is the starting point and the various colors and layers are screens going deep and depper into a particular topic. The blue lines are connections between concepts.

While running the SketchFlow player I can use back and forward browser like buttons to navigate as well as use this exact map to jump to topics. I also have a list of all connections available and even some interactive controls on the screen itself that allow me to jump directly to a subject. This should be interesting!

Tags: , ,

MetaSharp | events | SketchFlow

Comments

2/8/2010 1:19:33 AM #

I don't like using PowerPoint slides for code talks because of the linear nature that just doesn't match up with how we want to talk about a subject.  A good presentation generates discussions and questions that cause you to bounce around your topics and areas.  I really like this idea.

Nick Olson |

2/9/2010 9:12:57 AM #

Thanks david! Hopefully someday, using MetaSharp, creating your own parsers and templates will be second nature.

@Nick. It was pretty fun and I think it turned out pretty well. The only thing was that I was still working on it fairly last minute and I don't think I remembered how to navigate around as well as I could have. So the only advice is to take some time to practice, haha. But using the map in Blend to layout all of the ideas before even creating anything... now that was extremely useful. I had laid the whole thing out before I even started filling in the content. A few things got added after that though.

justin |

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About Me

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I'm a software developer from Minnesota and this blog largely focuses on various technical concepts I am thinking about at the moment. I currently work for Microsoft in the St. Paul office of the Expression product group.

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