Leading, Learning and Living in a Flat World

Web 2.0 To The Rescue!

January 8, 2009

John and I have been collaboratively preparing for a presentation that we will be co-facilitating on January 8th in Seattle.  As luck would have it, the weather couldn’t be worse and John will not be able to attend the presentation (in person).

Spokane was recently buried in snow but is now experiencing a huge warm up.  The rest of the state seems to be experiencing a tremendous amount of rain… so much that nearly all of the roads to and from Seattle are closed either for avalanche control, or due to flooding.

The story becomes interesting when you consider that my trusty Ed Tech partner John decided it would be safer to drive than to fly.    After nine hours of driving from the Tri-Cities towards Seattle, John is still not any closer to his desired destination than when he started, in fact he is actually stuck in Vancouver in a small hotel room.

At 9:00 PM (the day before our 9:30 AM presentation) I began to wonder what it might be like to facilitate a 3 hour session that I was only half prepared for…

Lucky for me John Skyped me tonight  – he found a  hotel and a high speed internet connection – we quickly brainstormed a plan:

1. Use Google Docs Presentation to share control of the presentation – that way we both can control the advancement of the slides (I’ve found that my Logitech USB presenter still works with this).
2. Launch Skype and use an external webcam on the presentation computer,  point that camera at the audience so that John can see who he is presenting to.
3. Pull John’s Skype video into the Google Docs Presentation so that that audience can see John as well as the presentation. http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dfs43kb9_141d3vcfdfq
4. Use a second computer to Ustream the presentation (see embedded video below).
5. Pray for good bandwidth.

Our session will be held in the Seattle Convention Center January 8th from 9:30 AM – 12:45 PM if you want to watch a couple of guys punt.

We will also be recording this session and will post it to the blog following the conference.

Update:

The session is over and it went fairly well – bandwidth was an issue – which was a bit frustrating at times, but we were able to make it work – not ideal, but it worked!  I also want to give a big thank you to Deb Ramsay for attending the session and assisting with technical challenges – she was able to download any videos that we were unable to access within  the presentation.  We also were unable to Ustream the presentation due to bandwidth issues – but we were able to demonstrate Ustream. Instead of embedding Ustream into this post, I have instead decided to embed our presentation for easy access. Thanks to all who attended!  Please join us in a conversation by visiting our blog often and commenting when the mood strikes!

OSPI January 2009 Conference Presentation:

Entry Filed under: Living, Tips/Tricks. Tags: google docs, OSPI, school 2.0, skype, Ustream, Web 2.0.