{"id":3301,"date":"2015-05-04T09:33:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T08:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=3301"},"modified":"2015-05-04T10:51:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T09:51:35","slug":"presenters-tools-and-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/presenters-tools-and-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenter&#8217;s tools.  And stuff."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">I\u2019m a professional speaker and presentations trainer. And author. And father and husband. My life isn\u2019t structured, but it\u2019s full on. Really, really full on. As a result I rely on a number of bits of technology to help me stay ahead of the game. Some of them you\u2019ll have heard of, some you might not have: I hope it\u2019s useful to you.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Skype and stuff. Everyone knows <a title=\"Skype\" href=\"http:\/\/www.skype.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\">Skype<\/a>, right?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s how my team chat when we need to interact. And when we need to work together on documents we use google docs. Sometimes we use them together, so that we\u2019re talking to each other at the same time as working on a document together &#8211; the result is a big boost to productivity, when we use them together.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Evernote. Lord, I love <a title=\"Evernote\" href=\"http:\/\/evernote.com\" target=\"_blank\">Evernote<\/a>. If you\u2019ve not used it, where have you been?!? It\u2019s a great note-taking app that works on any computer, so that you can have things available anywhere &#8211; and the list of tricks it has up its sleeve is truly remarkable. It takes recording, images, text and so on, and has a damned good guess at optical character recognition in those images, too. In fact as far as I can figure it, the only thing it doesn\u2019t do is make me cups of tea. Speaking of things being available everywhere, I use <a title=\"Dropbox\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dropbox<\/a> and <a title=\"Google Drive\" href=\"http:\/\/www.google.co.uk\/drive\/\" target=\"_blank\">Google Drive<\/a> a lot, for storing files and making them accessible on any computer (after a wifi sync, of course!).<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Insightly. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3329 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/insihgtly.png\" alt=\"insihgtly\" width=\"75\" height=\"75\" \/>A lot of what I do as a speaker is based upon relationships with people. <a title=\"Insightly\" href=\"http:\/\/www.insightly.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Insightly<\/a> helps me keep track of what I\u2019ve said to who &#8211; and it\u2019s a handy (though by no means cutting edge!) project management system. It\u2019s one of the best Client Relationship Managers around, beaten only by a couple of cripplingly expensive ones, but it\u2019s far from the best Project Management software around. The reason I use it is the ability to have one package do both is worth the compromise, for me. Oh, and it plays nicely with google\u2019s mail and google calendar.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">My iPhone. I\u2019m not surgically attached and I\u2019m thinking of moving to a Fairphone next time my contract is up &#8211; but I love the amount of tech packed into one tiny little box &#8211; particularly Siri. It\u2019s a great way of grabbing ideas on the go and of making diary entries etc. Speaking of diaries, I use the built-in calendar apps on my Mac and iPhone. And, of course, they\u2019re linked to each other using Google Calendar &#8211; enter on one machine and they\u2019re all magically synced. As you can imagine with dozens of disparate projects (not to mention family responsibilities) a smoothly running diary is an absolute must!<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3226\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/30-days.png\" alt=\"30-days\" width=\"160\" height=\"156\" \/>One particularly handy trick we\u2019ve used recently as a family man is to give my wife access to my calendar. Not only does she know where I am but she can also make appointments on my behalf. No more making provisional arrangements with friends pending checking with me &#8211; she can just find out if I\u2019m free immediately! We use different calendars for different bits of work (one for delivery, one for administration, another for my charity work) and a different one for household\/domestic arrangements, so we can see what\u2019s what immediately.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/bluetooth-logo.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-3327\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/bluetooth-logo-228x300.png\" alt=\"bluetooth-logo\" width=\"121\" height=\"160\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/bluetooth-logo-228x300.png 228w, http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/bluetooth-logo.png 382w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 121px) 100vw, 121px\" \/><\/a>I have a new car. It\u2019s lovely. It makes driving to gigs a pleasure. Obviously I use public transport whenever i can, for ethical and environmental reasons but some venues just aren\u2019t reach-able by train and bus. That used to be wasted time. It\u2019s all well and good to say I could listen to podcasts and so one while I drove but my old car didn\u2019t have a way of connecting to my iPhone and driving with headphones on is a really, really bad idea! Now, thanks to the magic of bluetooth I can not only listen to podcasts but also make phone calls. Either business or personal &#8211; all I have to do is push one button on my steering wheel and say the name of who I want talk to. ohhhhhhh lovely!<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Staying in hotels (or even friends\u2019 houses) is okay as far as it goes but they don\u2019t always have good exercise facilities. Now\u2026\u2026.. what I use <b>isn\u2019t<\/b> as good as a proper gym, but it\u2019s better than nothing &#8211; it\u2019s an exercise band. Essentially it\u2019s a few feet of latex to provide resistance. For example, to simulate the effort of a bicep curl with a free weight in the gym I simply stand with one foot on one end of the resistance band and hold the other &#8211; doing a curl stretches the band, so it feels like I\u2019m lifting weights. With a session of my personal trainer dedicated to showing me how to use it, there\u2019s very little that can\u2019t be worked on, at least in part!<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Oh, and finally a quick shout to my trusty MacBook Air, loading with Pages and Keynote. If you\u2019ve never used Mac, try it. If you have, i don\u2019t need to tell you how far ahead of PowerPoint Keynote is in terms of productivity and interface.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m not as fast in a hotel room as I am in the office on the big screen, but the loss of productivity isn\u2019t as bad as I feared.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By the way, a bit of inventive use of iTunes (on any device) and you\u2019re got access not just to podcasts but to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/uk\/education\/ipad\/itunes-u\/\" target=\"_blank\">iTunesU<\/a>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019ve never heard of it? No? You\u2019re missing out &#8211; check it out!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So that\u2019s it &#8211; a quick rush-through of the things I\u2019m using at the moment. It\u2019s not comprehensive but it\u2019s hopefully useful.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>What\u2019s your poison? :)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m a professional speaker and presentations trainer. And author. And father and husband. My life isn\u2019t structured, but it\u2019s full on. Really, really full on. As a result I rely on a number of bits [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3334,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions\/3334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}