Screen Sharing a Presentation

Most web conferencing products allow you to upload a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation which is then translated by the product so that you can then navigate through the presentation and your audience sees the presentation without your having to share your computer screen with them. One of the key benefits of this approach is that screen sharing can be bandwidth intensive. If anyone in your audience is not using a high speed Internet connection, then screen sharing a pitch can cause undesirable latency, i.e. delay between when you advance slides and when your audience member sees the slide.

So, the question is, should I never use screen sharing to show a PPT presentation? I have seen one instance in which sharing the PPT pitch via screen sharing enhanced the conference. Some web conferencing products have considerable latency while switching from presentation display mode to screen sharing mode. Hence, if you know that you will need to share some resource via screen sharing and you don't want to jump back and forth between screen sharing and presentation display, you might be better off to just conduct the entire conference in screen sharing mode.

I have seen this done once recently, and the the transition between sharing the PPT file and a web page from the presenters computer, was smooth as silk. It went off without a hitch and it might actually have been made worse had the presenter used two different modes (display of an uploaded pitch plus screen sharing the web page).

Something to consider when you're planning your webinar. Rehearse your webinar in advance and try a couple of different approaches to see which one works best for you.