Overview

A recurring task in my day job is to organize technical conferences (most recently, DuckCon #4 and #5), and to run the event from my laptop. To this end, I configure my laptop to ensure the best experience for both speakers and attendees.

Most of the events I organize are free, so there is a limited budget available. Additionally, there is a limited amount of time prepare. For example, it is not possible to conduct rehearsals with speakers. Therefore, the question I am trying to answer in this post is the following:

How to do the best job at running a technical conference with minimal equipment and a few hours of on-site preparation time?

In the following, I document the configurations I use for my laptop. These configurations can be useful for organizers of other events organizers as well as individual speakers. Note that I’ll only cover live, in-person events – recording and streaming talks are different (and more complex) problems.

Table of contents

Hardware setup

The laptop is use is a 2022 MacBook Pro with the latest stable macOS installed (currently: macOS 14.6.1 Sonoma). MacBooks seem to be the favored model by most speakers, so in this guide I assume a MacBook laptop.

Cables

Most venues have HDMI cables available. Passive HDMI cables are subject to attenuation: with long cables, this can cause connection problems and flickering on the projector. It’s worth asking the venue whether they have an active HDMI cable. For passive cables, the shorter, the better.

MacBook Airs do not have an HDMI port: they can only connect to displays via USB-C. Therefore, bring a USB-C to HDMI dongle.

Some level of cable management is necessary both to ensure tidy looks and to make sure cables don’t slip out during the presentation – even small movements can cause the projector to flicker. Therefore, it’s worth taping down cable on the floor and near the lectern.

Clicker

Wireless presenters or clickers are popular presentation tools. Most presenters are happy to use one if offered.

Most clickers from recent years support Bluetooth. However, most also have a USB dongle that can be used with a USB-C to USB adopter. If the presenters need to switch between laptops between talks, I recommend this approach instead of trying to re-pair the devices.

Batteries

Modern laptops shouldn’t have a problem lasting during a 1.5-2 hour session even if some CPU-intensive applications are running. That said:

  1. If possible, plug in the laptop during the talk.
  2. Make sure the laptop is charged to 100% prior to the event. macOS often only charges to 80% to prevent battery aging, so you may have to force this.

In my experience, the batteries of microphones go flat during events way too often. There is no good way to avoiding this – just keep a spare nearby.

Electric plugs

If you are organizing the event in a different country, have travel adapters available.

Software setup

macOS configuration

Create a new user

If you run the entire event from your laptop, it’s worth creating a new user. This avoids awkward situations such as when you open the browser app on the same iOS account on the phone and the counterpart app jiggles in the macOS dock :-).

While macOS has a guest user feature, avoid using it for presentations. Upon logout, its files are deleted, so if there is a crash or someone accidentally logs out, you lose all your preparation.

Disable application rating prompts

In macOS, applications may prompt you questions such as “Enjoy X? Click a star to rate it on the App Store.” This feature is called “In-App Ratings & Reviews” and it’s of course the last thing you want during a presentation, so turn it off using the following command:

/usr/bin/defaults write com.apple.appstore InAppReviewEnabled -bool false

Launch the App Store, navigate to Settings and uncheck In-App Ratings & Reviews.

The same setting is available on iOS, so you may as well turn that off on your phone / tablet.

Cursor size

Increase the size of the mouse cursor by going to Accessibility, Display, Pointer and adjusting the Pointer size.

Applications

During the event, you sometimes have to move windows around on the screen and between screens. By default, macOS does not have hotkeys for this. To define hotkeys for this, install Magnet (this is a paid app) Then memorize the hotkeys such as ctrl + cmd + option + left / right (basically, slam the 3 modifier keys left from the space bar and press left / right).

SlidePilot

You can install SlidePilot for presenting PDFs via:

brew install --cask slidepilot

This has a presenter view with the next slide and the time elapsed, and it works with clickers1. To make things streamlined, I usually associate all PDF files with SlidePilot. To do so, right click any PDF file, selecting Get Info, Open with, pick SlidePilot and click Change All….

Unfortunately, SlidePilot seems to be abandoned and may prompt for donations when opening the app.

Updates

Modern computers are constantly updating, meaning that there are several updates that can trigger:

  1. Operating system
  2. App Store
  3. browsers
  4. Homebrew

Ideally, these wouldn’t start mid-way through the presentations.

Mirrored vs. extended displays

A recurring dilemma is between using presenter mode (great for speaker notes) or mirror mode (great for demos). It’s unlikely that you’re speakers will agree on a single display mode – just change it with a hotkey when needed using cmd + F1.

Additional operating system configurations

  • Activate Do Not Disturb mode for the day of the presentation to avoid notifications.

  • Disable sounds: go to System Preferences, Sound. Go to the Sound Effects pane.

    • To turn off UI sound effects such as screenshot sounds, untick “Play user interface sound effects”.
    • To turn off the startup chime, untick “Play sound on startup”.

  • Make sure the laptop doesn’t turn off: System Settings | Lock Screen | Start Screen Saver when inactive.

  • Make sure battery saving mode is off: System Settings | Battery | Low Power Mode: Never.

Custom fonts

Some presentations use custom fonts, which have to be installed on the computer or they have to be embedded into the slide deck. Most presentation software (e.g., Apple Keynote) display a warning when the fonts are not embedded. Check the slides beforehand and make sure you have all the necessary fonts installed/embedded.

Backup laptop

With all preparation, issues can pop up on the laptop. It’s good to have a backup laptop available, which is at least partially configured: it’s connected to the internet, has the necessary presentation software installed, has “Do Not Disturb” mode turned on, and has been tested with the projector.

Footnotes

  1. Most presenters have never heard of SlidePilot but readily accept it and are grateful for it. ↩︎