This article originally appeared on the Affinity Consulting April 2013 newsletter on legal technology.

We’ve all sat through deathly PowerPoint presentations. Several times I’ve sat in a darkened room thinking, “If he’s just going to read his slides, I could do that at home in my pajamas.” I expect that you’ve felt the same at times. The truth is that very few people use PowerPoint or Keynote as they were intended. Slides and other presentation aides should amplify your words, not merely repeat them. There are great books on the subject of effective slide presentations.

A good starting point is Yale University professor Edward Tufte’s book, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, $7 on Amazon. Another good book to start you on the journey to more effective presentations is Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen. Both books emphasize the idea that slides serve to bolster the presenter’s message, not be his crutch. Affinity also has an in-house expert to help with presentation design inside and outside the courtroom.

Along the lines of tools to bolster your presentation, assist in its flow, and provide appropriate emphasis, I’ve highlighted some Mac-specific tools to help you. The programs below are particularly helpful if you’re doing demonstrative presentations, meaning changing apps, rather than running through a deck of slides.

Software Tools

The first tool is Desktop Curtain, $5 in the Mac App Store. It’s a simple program that hides your desktop during presentations. If you’re opening and closing apps, or changing between programs during your presentation, Desktop Curtain hides your desktop from the audience. The advantage of this, if you’re like me, is that the audience is spared from seeing your array of files and links, and whatever else normally litters your computer’s desktop. You can choose any wallpaper, or a simple, plain background. Desktop Curtain eliminates the worry about what’s behind your app windows.

The second tool is Mousepose, also $5 from the Mac App Store. Mousepose lets you draw attention to your mouse, its movements, clicks and double-clicks, and even shows the audience what keys you’re pressing onscreen. Mouse clicks highlight with a green bullseye, double-clicks with a red one. You can darken the screen except for a circle around the mouse pointer. The keys you type can appear in a banded area at the bottom of the screen. Mousepose is an excellent tool for trainers or those who want a software method to draw attention to items onscreen.

The third software tool to add to your presentation toolkit is one I learned about from an attendee at MILOfest, the annual Macs in Law Office convention, scheduled this year for October 24-26 at the Disney Yacht & Beach Club in Orlando, Florida. It’s Zoom It, $1 in the Mac App Store. Zoom It creates, with the press of a key combination, a loupe that magnifies the part of the screen over which you hover the loupe. Like Mousepose, Zoom It is an easy, inexpensive, and effective way to “call out” elements onscreen as you present.

Hardware

I have to admit that I’ve only ever used the Kensington Presenter Pro, the presentation remote recommended by Mac legal celebrity David Sparks, of MacSparky and Mac Power Users podcast fame. But, it’s certainly a good one. For $73 on Amazon, you get a remote that works with PowerPoint and Keynote, that offers 2GB of memory on which to store your presentation, works up to 150 feet from your computer, and offers a distinctive green laser pointer. It won’t advance slides on your iPad (look to the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer Mobile Presenter for that trick), but it can do everything a Mac-based presenter needs.

Online Meetings

A final, quick note on conducting online meetings with a Mac: If you’re presenting an online meeting, you’re likely relying on GoToMeeting or Join.me. Both function fine for Macs as a presenter if you’re using a laptop screen or reasonably-sized single monitor. If however, you’re using dual monitors or a 27” display with your Mac, only Join.me offers Mac users the ability to share a single application’s screen, as opposed to your whole monitor. This fact becomes important on the audience’s end if they’re trying to view your 27” display on their 15” laptop screen. Having used both, I tend to believe GoToMeeting is a slightly better product overall, and it doesn’t require the audience to install Flash. However, while GoToMeeting supports single-app display on Windows, it doesn’t on the Mac. And, since I want my online audience to be able to see my presentation, the edge for Mac presenters goes to Join.me

Conclusion

Hopefully these presentation tips help your Mac presentations standout from a sea of slides. If you have any questions, reach out to me.

April 1, 2013