Monday, June 18, 2007

Coherence in 20 minutes or less

I've come to believe that if you can't say something coherently in 15-20 minutes, than you can't likely say it coherently at all. I'm done with my presentation. It clocks in at 16 minutes and change, with time for a few closing examples. I like it. Also got an email this morning confirming the radio syndicate's booking of transportation for me to and from my hotel, for the studio interview we've scheduled for Thursday. I arrive in the UK on Thursday morning (barring any unforeseens). I'll have some time to catch my breath, get to my hotel and take a shower, before I make my way to what sounds like a barren room with a set of headphones, and disembodied voices coming at me from half a country away. This should be a treat.

I prepared the talk in Openoffice Impress, which I'm quite impressed with. I have been using the Openoffice suite of products for about two years now, having switched immediately upon filing my dissertation. The one holdout for me was PowerPoint, since (at the time) the animation functionality was far better than Impress. I'd say the openoffice crew has made great strides in catching up. I still prefer the PowerPoint "dissolve" animation, but that's about it.

If you're not familiar with openoffice, check it out (I've added a link in my sidebar). It's an open source project, freely downloadable from the web. They provide a complete platform-independent office suite of products to replace what you're likely using. I've been quite pleased with all the ones I've tried. I recommend them heartily.

1 comment:

Lilian said...

My husband has been using open office exclusively for word processing (because he can easily import the text to LateX - which he uses b/c of equations, etc), but I haven't really used it yet. I think I thould give the Impress a try since I don't much care for Power Point. I'm all for open source software... if I can help it, I won't send my money in Mr. Gate's way, although we still use PCs here.