[IndiChix] [Suggestions] Online Slide sharing service

[Atul Chitnis]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Runa Bhattacharjee wrote:

> I have been trying to upload the .odp slides for the presentation thats 
> being discussed in the other thread with slideshare.net. But after 
> multiple attempts and failures, I am really tired. Are there any other 
> alternatives available that one could check out?

At the risk of invoking our listadmin's wrath, I'd like to put in a 
suggestion:

The most standard and guaranteed-to-work-across-platforms format for 
documents (text, slides) is pdf. It is now near universal - I honestly 
cannot think of any PC (or even mobile device) that doesnt have a pdf 
viewer available for it, and the format is now truly open.

At Linux Bangalore/FOSS.IN, we used to make slides available in various 
formats, but we watched the downloads over the years since 2001, and it is 
clear that the most downloads happen in pdf format - it just works. All 
required fonts are embedded, everything sizes correctly.

Added advantage - we don't get into unnecessary flamewars about putting up 
ppts for windows users. :) PDF works everywhere, with the pleasant side 
effect of a lot of Windows users beginning to check out our stuff.

Over the years, I have even stopped using ooimpress (or any other 
presentation tool) to display slides - I may use an app like that to 
create my slides, but eventually export as PDF and that is what I use for 
my talks, share on my site, etc.

And pdfs are easy to distribute - just upload somewhere or email, the 
person who wishes to see the slides clicks (or runs "evince filename.pdf") 
and there you are.

The added advantage is that you can make the slides available off your own 
site (in this case linuxchix.org.in) instead of sending traffic elsewhere. 
Hopefully, it will cause the visitor to check out the rest of the site as 
well.

Of course, sometimes people need the editable slides as well - for that 
one can make the source .odp files available for download as well, but you 
will find this to be a rare requirement. And in some cases you may not 
even *want* the slides to be editable (legal documents, sensitive 
slideshows, etc.), in which case you dont make the source available. 
Simple.

Atul

-- 
Atul Chitnis
Bangalore, India
http://atulchitnis.net