Demo presentations on iPad

I just returned from London and it was my first international business trip without a lap top in my bag. I used an iPad to demo my slide decks to potential clients.

In a (still) imperfect world, here is what I did:

• Rely on different applications for different types of documents. Keynote presentations in Keynote, PowerPoint presentations with standard font in SlideShark, and PowerPoint presentations with non-standard font in Adobe Reader.
• Ensure that you can find your decks easily, that they are all pre-loaded with good title descriptions and first slide icons.
• Go through every single presentation start to finish, to make sure that there are no glitches in fonts, animations and fix them if necessary (there were a few).
• Make sure you operate the device smoothly. All the presentation apps that you need in a meeting together on one blank home screen. Know how to get in and out of presentation mode in each of the applications (sometimes you tap, sometimes you pinch). 

The result was great and much more personal than having to open a laptop, browse through the file directory and fire up Keynote or PowerPoint. The demo was much more informal and the best features was that I could go through slides randomly, making my own story as I go along.