Giving a talk means you put lots of effort into something that might only be seen once by a few people. How do you get more value out of all your hard work?

The Bad Way

Print out your slides. I dare you. Nobody will read them. And, really, if your talk works perfectly well as slides alone, why did you even give it? Why not just email the PowerPoint file to everyone and saved a lot of time? But let’s not go there.) Far better, though, to at least create a web page or blog entry with the main graphics from your presentation and a bit of explanatory text (here’s an example from my research page).

Post Your Slides to the Web

There are plenty of tools like iSpring which can convert your PowerPoint to a Flash animation. You can then post that animation to your web page, and anyone with Flash installed can play it (which is basically everyone).

Other sites like Slideshare, Authorstream and MyPlick let you upload your presentation to their server; they will host it and make it available to others in a sort-of social networking environment. You can also embed the slideshow in your web page or Facebook page.

Prepare a Screencast

Screencasts are a way to create a movie (with your recorded narration) of stuff you’re doing on your screen–great for demonstrating software, but also for showing people your data or walking them through an analysis, or just showing them PowerPoint slides of course. Tools like Jing let you record these. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also broadcast them live, or arrange an online “webinar” using a tool like DimDim or Procaster, which can even include a small video of you talking beside your slides. People watching can type comments in a chat box; it’s almost videoconferencing. You can save these as a file and embed them in your web pages too, naturally.

Bonus Fabbo Tool

If you’re sick of all thjis talk about slides, check out Prezi which creates a giant artboard that you can zoom in and out on. It also allows you to share your presentation over the Web. Potentially amazing, potentially seasickness-inducing; let me know if you try it.