As I do more and more workshops on topics related to technology, marketing, productivity, and social media, I’m constantly fine-tuning my presentation format. I’ve noticed that the default presentation format seems to be a PowerPoint presentation, or in my case a Keynote presentation because I love my Mac. However, I’ve been playing around more and more with a live demo format.

For example, when I conduct a Facebook workshop, I distribute an outline on paper but when it comes to the presentation I tend to simply log into Facebook on the presentation screen and explore the site as I speak in order to create a live experience. It seems to work well because I can point out real-time updates and display current information by walking the audience throught the site.

I’ve handled my Twitter workshop the same way. I open up a video explanation of Twitter and then open several browser tabs containing various Twitter profiles. I also open up TweetDeck to demonstrate software-based Tweeting and even do some live Tweeting during the workshop.

In all, it seems to go well and I enjoy the organic “live” action provided by just diving into software apps and web sites for the visual aids. I do use Keynote for some of my workshops, such as Email Marketing, and that works well since it’s more presentational. However, I’m still pondering the idea of switching all my presentations over to Keynote. Would this make them more dry? Would it make them smoother? Would my audience have less fun? Am I over-thinking it?

What do you think? Slides or live demos? I’m interested in your feedback.