The PowerPoint Conundrum in Virtual Events

Whilst many of us love to hate Microsoft’s time-honoured presentation software, it is a core part of event communication – both in virtual and face-to-face. For virtual events, the issue of getting slides to the audience is a knotty one. Do you ask the speaker to share the slides from their computer via screen share or do you invest in a professional setup where a production crew display the slides from dedicated computers?

There is no question that, budget and logistics aside, having the PowerPoint decks centrally controlled and managed by a production team is preferable. It ensures that slides are available as soon as they are called for, rather than waiting for a clunky ‘share my screen’ process. It guarantees more sharpness in the slides as seen by the participant and you can count on the production team to ensure a stable internet connection.

But there is also a more human dimension: quite often, when a speaker is sharing their slides, they cannot see anything else (not even themselves) increasing their sense of isolation and at the precise moment you want them poised and ready to speak they are having to fiddle in menus to get their slides up. Of course most of them manage it…but it’s far from polished as a process.

In the new reality where virtual events are primarily delivered in-house inside corporates, dedicated production setups aren’t affordable. That’s why we chose a different approach with Livve – deciding to host PowerPoint within our application in the cloud. In our world, there’s no screenshare or dedicated hardware. PowerPoint is uniquely built into Livve natively. Slide decks are uploaded to Livve pre-event, then speakers simply advance the slides using a simple clicker (or even their spacebar) and the producer ensures the slides are visible at just the right moment. Not only does this reduce the technical dexterity for the speaker, it also significantly lifts the quality of the slide detail seen by participants compared to screenshares – and as the slides are already in the cloud there is no risk of them being lost due to the bandwidth restrictions.

Get in touch to try it for out and find out how we could help you rethink the way you prepare and produce your virtual events.