The Big iPad Project

No, it isn’t a project to make a big iPad. 10″ seems to be plenty for now — and for anyone caught up in the ‘but we should have a 7″ model, I’m here to tell you that the less than 1% of the population that meet the venn diagram overlap of ‘road warriors’ and ‘tech junkies’ is not enough to sustain the manufacturing costs.

This site was launched with of a desire to collect a couple types of data: detailed tips, tricks and workarounds for people who take their PowerPoint (and related business communication tools) seriously and more broad based conversation about design as it occurs in the world — business, education, the public sector — basically anywhere good design principles can improve communication. Oh, yeah, and to get some clients along the way.

The introduction of an updated Keynote tied to the announcement of the iPad would seem to have a significant impact on people who work with presentations on a regular basis. Along with the expansion ePub and the many readers supporting it, it seemed as if there might be a legitimate sea change in ‘presentations’ for the first time in over a decade.

Having been a critic of Apple for some time (borne out of the frustration of maintaining a studio full of OS9 machines for many years) meant that I was predisposed to look askance at the iPad as a professional, or a consumer. Expensive, likely limited in ways that I couldn’t see the logic of or a way around, and something that could be easily done by other devices.

Well, six months after introduction, and rumors of a update already on the horizon, I would have to say I was correct on just about every point except the last. I’ve been living with an iPad as a consumer for a couple weeks, with some intensive time in there as a professional as well. I have a number of posts that will address strengths and weaknesses of the system as I see them, culminating with what I hope to be a pretty concise workflow for the serious user who hopes to leverage some of the exciting possibilities of the iPad for presentation purposes.

That’s not a whole lot of meat, I know, but I will tip my hand on one point: don’t throw your PowerPoint away. It’s not going anywhere soon.