Feeling Close to My Remote

I spent the day at the Southern New England SCBWI’s ENCORE session, featuring well-reviewed presentations from the past year. 

Although I was opening speaker (on the topic of “Milestones in an Exciting Plot”), my biggest contribution to the day might have been my remote control for PowerPoint presentations. Novelists Erin Dionne, Karen Day, and Mark Peter Hughes all used it during their sessions. (Mary Lee Donovan of Candlewick, like a good old-fashioned children’s-book editor, used actual books as her props.) 

For people who do presentations in various venues, I highly recommend a device like this. It works on either PCs or Macs, letting a presenter stand several yards from the computer or walk around during the presentation, instead of having to push buttons on a keyboard balanced nearby. There’s a laser pointer built in, and the Kensington version has a nice peanut-shaped design. 

This isn’t a paid product placement; I paid for the little thing like a normal person. But owning one really has made presentations easier for me. I’m glad I brought it along today—and I didn’t even have PowerPoint in my session.