Creating a Creative Presentation

As a lecturer, i gave a lot of presentations on each of my class and i use LibreOffice (previously OpenOffice.org) as the main tool to deliver the material. I often prepared the material long before the class, but sometimes i prepared it one day before the class started.

In every slide i made, i tried to make it as simple as possible, but still gave the complete information to the audience, since i know that the audience http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdoesnhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif't like too much garbage text in it. They prefer more images on it because a word can visualize a lot of things.

Tonight, i just realize that my method is not 100% correct as there are a lot of improvements i can use after i read Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations and slide:ology : The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations.

If you often give talks to other people, i would recommend that you read both of these books. It's worthed and it might give you a lot of inspiration when creating your next presentations.

Malioboro Report

I am lucky to be invited to be a speaker in Malioboro, since i had a chance to visit some places that i think i would never visited before. Let's take an example of today's event in UIN Sunan Kalijaga. It was my first trip there since 2nd Malioboro event was held there. I got there a little bit early, because i don't know the place exactly. I asked some local students there and they gave me pointer to the exact location. Thanks to them

In general, i like the idea of Malioboro. It's basically an event in which the speaker shares their thoughts to the audience. There is no spesific criteria for the audience. It can be anyone. No advanced skill is required to become a participant. Of course there will be some entrance fee, but it's very cheap (around IDR 5000) and you get a free snack. The event will be held not only in campus, but sometimes in cafe also (the first one was held in Angkringan Cafe), so it's so formal.

Today's topic was about Web and there were four speakers today, but there's one speaker who didn't talk about web, instead she shared her experience of using Linux and she invites all people not to afraid of using Linux. If she can use it, why can't other use it as well?

I'm waiting for the documentation of this event to be placed on my collection

Introduction to Linux

Today i gave a small introduction about Linux to new students. There were about more than 80 students who went into my session (actually there were two sessions and the other one is about Flash and animation) and some of them were not from computer-related faculty.

At first, i was kinda worried that new students won't get too attracted, but after looking at the first ten minutes, they were kinda interested so i was relieved and quite happy with it. Some students asks for questions and i think some of them are willing to try Linux on their new laptop/PC.

Introducing Linux as early as possible is an important step for students, since they must realize that operating system is not just limited to Windows. There are other operating systems which are better than Windows and Linux is one of them. What's good about it is that Linux is free (not in the context of price, but freedom). I have also expressed this to my students, so they don't get a wrong perception about "free".

We will have more event in the future related to Linux and Open Source, so stay tuned guys

Presentation Call

Finally i had my presentation call this morning. Mr. Sugent, the administrator for my master degree program called me this morning asking whether i can give my presentation tomorrow. I actually have some activities tomorrow at my office, but i can leave that to my other colleagues, so i had to take this chance. If i missed it again like early this month, i don't know when will i get this opportunity again.

Well, i think all the preparations are done here tonight, but we will see about the results tomorrow

Project Management Workshop

When i got home, i got a phone call from one of my senior colleague. He asked me whether i'm able to give some small internal workshop about project management with Microsoft Project this week (it's very tight schedule). I used to use Microsoft Project while i was working as a project leader to help me schedule my project, but not too deep in knowledge. Also, i'm used to work under Linux most of my time currently, so switching to Windows again is not a good idea

So, i offered him the presentation about MS Project, and i will give talks about BaseCampHQ. It's an online collaboration tools which can be used for project management as well, but in different style. The idea behind BaseCamp is that we can access our schedule anywhere, anytime without having to install specific application (MS Project in this case). It's a web-based application, so all you need is just a web browser. It's very easy to use, even for people who haven't tried this application before. In less than a 2 hours, i'm sure you will be able to use this tools by yourself.

The presentation is now finished. Probably i will add more things tomorrow, but let's see about that.

Last Class

Tomorrow is my last class for this semester and also for my master program. I will have an exam at 9 and 10 of August (or probably 2 and 3. It hasn't been decided yet) and after that, i will focus on finishing my thesis. Right now, i have finished the first two chapter and i'm working on the third one. I hope i can finish it this year and i will start next year with new title

By the way, i will have two (or probably three) presentations tomorrow. One of them is about elgamal algorithm for cryptography and the rest is about communication media (socket and AT command). Let it be.....