Switching Cow-orkers to Keynote from PowerPoint

[Matthew Yohe]

I love keynote's grace and style and I want to transition other people at work over to it.

My main concerns:

Keynote has an end result in mind it seems. You start off specifying what resolution you want to display in. With powerpoint this doesn't exist (didn't.. I haven't used it in a long time.). I know this can be changed at a later date, and if I personally need to change it and then rework tables/alignment, I would have no problem doing this on the fly. I don't want my co workers to have to worry about this though. Do I just recommend they just begin their work in 800x600? 1024x768?

Other concern, if presenting a Keynote file is not an option for the location they are presenting at (they can't setup their own laptop) what do they need to consider from a design standpoint if they may have to export to PPT? Obviously some of the great transitions/effects will be unavailable, but again, going back to ease of use and ease of transition to this product I don't want them to have to overthink this.

There is desire from my peers to use Keynote, but I want to be sure I can have a complete solution for them.

Any help in transitioning new people who have trenched themselves in PowerPoint for years would be great.

 

[CanadaRAM]

> Switching Cow-orkers to Keynote from PowerPoint

 

[Angrist]

Well ...

Most (recent) projectors that I've seen are 1024x768 or higher, so I'd tell them to make it with that resolution.

As far as design for export to PowerPoint ... My experience has been that the result is never quite as good as I'd like it to be.
Fonts and layouts get kinda screwy sometimes, especially if you have transparency and images on the slides. The first thing to do would be to have an XP Machine (or Bootcamp) to test presentations before running off to the field with them.

What I do when I'm forced to present without Keynote is export to .pdf if I'm in a rush (still botches formatting). If I have some time, I export as jpegs, then insert each jpeg into it's own slide in Powerpoint (preferably on a windows machine) and use simple fade transitions.

 

[killerrobot]

WTH is an orker? I know what a cow is, and orking it does not sounds fun.

If there is seriously a desire to switch, your co-workers will switch over and learn how to use it -- and you will be their go to person for their questions.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

WTH is an orker? I know what a cow is, and orking it does not sounds fun.

If there is seriously a desire to switch, your co-workers will switch over and learn how to use it -- and you will be their go to person for their questions.

This is not my point. I can easily tell them how to do things.

I'm looking for more perspective from people who may not be as technically inclined as myself. People who can't quickly adapt or make a "workaround" right before a presentation if something doesn't go the way we thought (ie. Resolution of projector is lower than "expected", mac not available to present on so we must convert to PowerPoint and quickly make changes if need be)

I'm not working with morons, but I'm trying to make their lives easier, not harder.

 

[Poff]

If I have some time, I export as jpegs, then insert each jpeg into it's own slide in Powerpoint (preferably on a windows machine) and use simple fade transitions.

Actually, there should have been a program that did this automatically..

 

[Cameront9]

WTH is an orker? I know what a cow is, and orking it does not sounds fun.

If there is seriously a desire to switch, your co-workers will switch over and learn how to use it -- and you will be their go to person for their questions.

Unless the OP was not using it intentionally, "Cow-orker" is an old dilbert joke.

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

I convert Keynote to PPT daily and send drafts to clients with various flavours of Windows and Powerpoint.

The simple rules I use are:
- use simple transitions
- don't embed sound or video
- use plain colours and no 3d charts
- use fonts that are common across the platforms (I tend to use Century Gothic and Optima, but even then there is no guarantee that the target PC will have those fonts installed)
- use JPEGs

Hope this helps.