MultiPresenter: a presentation system for (very) large display surfaces

We introduce MultiPresenter, a novel presentation system designed to work on very large display spaces (multiple displays or physically large high-resolution displays). MultiPresenter allows presenters to organize and present pre-made and dynamic presentations that take advantage of a very large display space accessed from a personal laptop. Presenters can use the extra space to provide long-term persistency of information to the audience. Our design deliberately separates content generation (authoring) from the presentation of content. We focus on supporting presentation flow and a variety of presentation styles, ranging from automated, scripted sequences of pre-made slides to highly dynamic ad-hoc, and non-linear content. By providing smooth transition between these styles, presenters can easily alter the flow of content during a presentation to adapt to an audience or to change emphasis in response to emerging interests. We describe our goals, rationale and the design process, providing a detailed description of the current version of the system, and discuss our experience using it throughout a one-semester first year computer science course.