We replaced our Leeds and Autumn Kidlington meetings this year with virtual events. These featured video talks available on the HOS website. It is likely that in the immediate future we will need to adopt this approach as a substitute for further live events. Talks on any hardy orchid topic lasting from 5 minutes up to 30-40 minutes are welcome. Please think about what you can offer for future events and get in touch with Celia Wright if you need advice or further information.
If you are making your presentation as a video, it needs to be supplied to Celia as an mp4 file. We will transfer it to the website in time for a virtual event. Presentations will not remain on the website permanently and will be password protected so that material is exclusively available to HOS Members. The password to access events will be published in JHOS.
You can also choose to write your talks in PowerPoint or other presentation software that will convert them into mp4 files once they are finished. Most of our speakers at meetings use PowerPoint so Celia has done some work on this. PowerPoint presentations are easily saved as a Show where the slides are timed and run automatically. To be useful as an on-line presentation rather than a meeting presentation more information needs to be added. This can be either extra explanatory text on the screen or via a voice recording specific to each slide, a process described by Microsoft as Narration.
Celia has prepared two 'How to narrate a PowerPoint presentation' instruction sheets, one for those using Microsoft Office 365 and one for those using previous editions of PowerPoint. She says "I’m not particularly technically minded and didn’t find the narration too difficult to do. The result is a Slide Show presentation that is easy to save as a video for members to watch. Do give it a try".
Using a brief presentation that Celia gave in 5 minutes in 2007, she recently made simple demonstration videos, one text rich version and one narrated alternative. For the text rich version there are 2 files – a PowerPoint File so that PowerPoint users can see how timings for slides have been set for a Slide Show and an mp4 file. When shown to some of the Committee, all preferred the narrated version, so you are encouraged to have a go at that method.
You may use other software to write presentations. Any that can export a file to .mp4 format is fine.
We suggest that you send files to Celia via the free WeTransfer service. There is a link to Instructions on how to do this (thanks to Steve Pickersgill) and links to all the documents and examples mentioned above on this page. If you’re struggling, do get in touch with Celia Wright.
Thank you all in advance for your help and contributions to this hopefully temporary style of HOS meeting.
Useful Information & Resources to Open, Download or View
How to narrate a PowerPoint presentation and save it as a video (.MP4) file in Microsoft 365
Instructions for using WeTransfer
DOWNLOAD POWERPOINT: 'Presentation - and a happy new year 2007 with extra text'
VIEW EXAMPLE VIDEO: 'Presentation - and a happy new year 2007 with extra text'
VIEW EXAMPLE VIDEO: 'Presentation - and a happy new year 2007 with speech'