Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Handcuffed to the desktop computer















Back in April 2008 I gave a talk about Internet Research to the Boise chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. They met at our county sheriff’s office. Fortunately the handcuffs were metaphorical.














The multipurpose room layout where they met is shown above. There was an electronic whiteboard at the front, and a projector and screen for PowerPoint near the front of the right wall. Their desktop computer was located at one side of the room. It had a conventional mouse on a cord. My audience of a dozen people were at tables located at the diagonally opposite end of the room.





















Back then I didn’t have a wireless multimedia presenter (or remote) that would have let me stand where I chose - in front of the audience, or near the screen. Instead I was stuck in front of the computer. Earlier when I asked about the room setup I was told PowerPoint could be used, but not about the electronic whiteboard. 

After my presentation I connected to the Internet and demonstrated some of the sites that I had mentioned. The county had a very effective firewall, so it took several seconds to get each response. A few prepared examples using screenshots would have been far more effective.

That presentation was a learning experience for me. When I gave a similar presentation the next month at the Toastmasters District 15 Conference I had my own laptop, projector, and remote.

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