Friendship, Fellowship, Fun in Westleigh 

Thank you for agreeing to speak at our Probus Club meeting.  Below is information on reaching the Club's venue, our meeting format, and technical topics.

 

Getting here

The Club meets at Thornleigh Community Centre, at Phyllis Ave and Central Ave.  Parking is available under Bunnings, with entry from Central Avenue near the roundabout at Phyllis Ave.  The Centre is about ½ kilometre north of Thornleigh railway station.

 

Club meetings Our meetings follow the approximate timetable below:

General Meeting:       10.00 to 10.30

Tea/Coffee break:      10.30 to 11.00

Guest Speaker:          11.30 to 12.15

Question time:           12.15 to 12.30

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Currently we have around 120 members attend our meetings.

 

Presentation Time

You are welcome to observe the general meeting or arrive by 11.15 to check the presentation devices and have a cup of tea or coffee before your address.

 

AV equipment

The venue we use is the Thornleigh Community Centre, which has a PA system with wireless microphones, a high-quality projector and projection screen.  Westleigh Probus provides a laptop PC (Windows), and that can be used for most presentations.  The laptop connects to the in-house system via a standard (and relatively short) HDMI cable.  Slide changes are facilitated using a laser pointer.

 

We have a wireless microphone, a laptop with PowerPoint connected to a projector, a remote control, and a laser pointer.  Please bring your presentation on a USB stick.  If you prefer to use your own laptop, ensure it has an HDMI connector cable that works.  The 'remote' end must be a standard, full-sized HDMI connector.

 

The presentations are usually a PowerPoint (.ppt or .pptx) file.  This can be created using Microsoft PowerPoint and can also be created using LibreOffice or OpenOffice (both free).  The file must be saved in '.ppt' format if you use anything other than Microsoft PowerPoint.  There are some things to be aware of though, and these are discussed below.

 

Please Note:  The community hall does not have an internet connection.  There is no wired or wireless (WiFi) connection available. That means that any presentation that relies on an external resource (e.g. a video or other remotely hosted media) will not work.  A workaround is for the presenter to use their mobile phone as a WiFi 'hotspot'.

 

In the few cases where a presenter has said that the video is 'embedded' in the PowerPoint presentation, this has not been the case.  What has been embedded is a link to an external resource, and without an internet connection it will not work.

 

Occasionally, a presentation may consist of just a number of photos, named so they appear in the correct order.  This arrangement will not work with the remote control, because like all remotes, it expects a format that allows for forward (and backward) 'slide' changes.  It can be done manually (by the presenter or the club's equipment manager), but that's fairly 'clunky'.  Where at all possible, we recommend using a simple PowerPoint presentation.  We can also show a presentation in LibreOffice or OpenOffice format, but it's not as easy to run as PowerPoint.  We do have a 5 metre HDMI cable that will reach a position suitable for presentations, and that can be used for such instances if required.

 

If you need any further information, please contact the speaker convener.