powerpoint / keynote feature request

I've always found that presentations are infinitely more useful when you know when they're going to end. You can parcel out your attention appropriately when you have a sense of how long there is to go. So why don't powerpoint or keynote let you stick a timer on the screen? (Or do they? Have I just missed it somewhere?) You can get a timer in the presenters tools but you can't seem to let the audience see.

It can't be that hard. Could we have that please?

Comments

[Ben]

Until then, something you could do quite easily is number the slides. 1/10 etc.

[Jonathan]

what about switching the dual monitor so the audience gets the presenter screen? or is that a silly idea?

[Guy Dickinson]

Hi,

I took a similar approach as you describe for the micropresentations slot I ran in Reboot last year - http://www.reboot.dk/artefact-466-en.html

There's a link to the template (PPT and Keynote) near the top of the comments.

Based on Pecha Kucha (but 15 slides, 20 secs each), I added a 20 sec countdown movie to each slide...and the slides automatically changed at the end of the countdown.

It really added to the theatrical nature of the presentations, as the audience is 'in on the joke', so to speak.

I tried it recently in a client's office, it does add an air of participation to the audience's view of the presentation, plus allows the speaker to move on with a kind of implicit permission, as the counter moves down and the slide moves on!

It's probably a lot more constrained in terms of time, etc. but a bunch of countdown timer movies (15s, 30s, then in 1m increments to 5m?) would be pretty useful.

My template's movie was a terrible hack - I screencapped a webpage's countdown timer...I'm sure there must be a more elegant (and configurable) way to create the timers?

[Reuben]

Another feature I would like is a graphical bar showing how much of the presentation is left. So you know whether or not you are facing Death by Powerpoint!

[karim]

why not put a negative page number like -20, -19, 18...???
it makes more sense since the time of the presentation depends from many facts but the number of slides can't change (ok I know you can skip...)

[Mark Hadfield]

Good point Russell but surely if we did that we'd have to have a tickbox for the last slide too? You know, you're on the last slide and the drums fro mthe end of Eastenders pipe up? That'd be pretty cool.

Or, after the first slide that sets the scene an overly-elaborate musical graphics presentation featuring some silhouettes of naked women comes before slide 2 - like in James Bond films?

That'd get my vote.

[Meryl K. Evans]

Sounds to me that if the audience is watching the clock, the presentation isn't worth watching. I think the clock distracts from the message unless the message is no where to be found and the presenter is a sleeper.