by John Chandler

A few years ago, I wrote about how I use my iPad in place of paper notes for speaking. Tablets and apps have come quite a way since then, and I’ve experimented with a number of setups for this. Scrolling through a Pages or a Google Doc seems to be the most awkward way to do this, yet it’s what I see many people using. I consider it my public duty to explore some options for all to consider.

When I’m thinking about how to use an iPad for speaking notes, there are three criteria I have in mind:

1. Easy Interaction and Navigation – When I’m presenting, I don’t want to distract myself or the audience with cautious scrolls or pinpoint taps.
2. Formatting and Details – I don’t speak from a manuscript, but use outlines with various levels of detail. But, because much of my speaking is preaching, I want the means to include chunks of text in the form of Scriptures or quotes. I need a method that helps main points stand out while also being able to focus in on a longer chunk of verbiage.
3. Multi-device Sync – As important as anything, I want to be able to work with my notes on any device, able to work in depth on a laptop, make changes outside in the parking lot or even as I walk on the stage.

So, with the above criteria in mind, I offer my methods to consider. All of these are written with an iPad in mind, though I imagine you can find parallels for other devices.

• Word Processing Document – This may be Pages, or a Google Doc. I think many go this route because it’s what they know, a carryover of the days when notes were printed. On the plus side, you can format to your heart’s content, whether manuscript or outline, and notes are easily accessed from any device. But I find it too clunky to scroll my way up and down, always having to take care to not lose my place, especially in a document that stretches over multiple pages.

• The PDF Method – This is the method I have previously written about. The advantage was the full formatting of a word processing doc exported to a pdf that matched the dimensions of a screen. It worked better than a word processing document for me, because PDF viewers allow the pages to be flipped one at a time with a swipe. I found easier to navigate sideways through pages than scroll through a long document. The negative is that you can’t as easily edit on the go once it’s published to PDF. (Though this is possible with PDFPen for iPad.)

• Keynote Presentation Mode – The first time I used an iPad for speaking, it was a Keynote presentation on my iPad. I created slides that functioned like index cards, pressed play and flipped my way through them right there on my screen. It works well, but my notes weren’t gathered and formed in Keynote, so it was an extra step to format them there with no easy means of importing them outside of copy and paste.

• Keynote Presenter Mode – Keynote presenter mode is what happens behind the curtain when you have a Keynote presentation broadcast on a screen. You are given the means to see the current slide, plus, either your notes attached to that slide, or the next slide in the deck – but not both. It’s convenient when you are driving the presentation yourself and have the technical setup (ie AppleTV) to do so, but suffers from the same problem of extra steps for formatting described above.

• Dedicated Apps – There are a few iOS apps that are dedicated for the purpose of speaking notes:

  1. Podium Cue is the first that I saw. It seems to have good potential, including the ability to track your timing, but is locked into a format that seems to prevent longer chunks of text. It has a well constructed concept of how to structure main points with connected supporting points in a way that allows for easy navigation to the next main point, though I found this restrictive to how I put outlines together.
  2. Promptster Pro offers a similar means to time your speech and offers more flexibility for longer passages, but I find the extra on screen features and overall aesthetic distracting.
  3. Speeches looks nice, though I’ve only previewed it within the App Store. It seems to have a similar feature set to Prompster, but with a cleaner interface and navigation between notes.
     The problem, for me, with all of these dedicated apps, is the ongoing interaction with your notes. You are either stuck developing your notes within the app, or importing a finalized version from another document. They are not agile enough, for my purposes, to mange both the development and the presentation phase of your notes.
• OmniOutliner for iPad – In recent months, I’ve discovered how handy OmniOutliner can be for presenting from an iPad. Most of my ideas are formed in and out of outlines in OPML format, dragged around within MindNode or coalesced through a fantastic, but under the radar MacOS app called Tree. Thus, they are easily pulled into OmniOutliner, where I can collapse them into main points and expand as needed. The only negative of this is the careful tap required to expand a section.
• Daedalus Touch – In more recent months than the recent months described above, I’ve been using Daedalus Touch. It helps that it syncs with Ulysses III (written up last week), which has become my favorite environment for writing. Everything is updated and ready to go when and where I need it. The layout is a virtual stack of expanding note cards of different lengths, allowing me to develop a point and any required materials on one card, and then swipe to the next when it is time to move on. It syncs between my laptop, iPad and iPhone in a way that I don’t have have to think about. It’s just there.

As you may have noticed, this outline generally proceeds in the same way my own experiences of using the iPad for speaking notes have proceeded. I’m now using both OmniOutliner and Daedalus Touch, depending on the setting and content. If I’m leading a smaller meeting or workshop with more details to track, I tend to favor the unfolding elements of OmniOutliner. When doing something in more of a monologue format which is generally committed to memory, I turn to Daedalus for easy access to longer passages to be read and easy navigation.

Of course, I know someone out there has tried other methods to. I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

A few years ago, I took a good look at Ulysses as a writing app, and even wrote up a review. It was one of those apps that took some digging in to get a handle on, but the more I did, the more I saw how I might put it to use for larger writing projects. But, like many, I was already deep into Scrivener (App store), which served a similar purpose with more apparent access to it’s features.

Last month Ulysses III (App store) rolled out and it is rewritten and renewed in every way. And I just might be all in. (I wrote this review shortly after that, but the app was so unstable I didn’t publish. A small update seems to have taken care of that.)

My recent writing work has split between two app sets. Shorter projects, under a few thousand words, have formed in Byword, syncing beautifully between a Mac version and an iOS version. Larger projects have lived in Scrivener, synced to a dropbox folder and edited via WriteRoom for iOS. It’s worked. But not quite. I don’t like the indecision of choosing where to start writing for a project, and process of syncing a larger project in Scrivener to external folders was equal parts cumbersome and convenient.

With sidebars the allow for easy navigation through documents, Ulysses serves well for both longer and shorter projects. Here’s what I like about it so far:

1. Ulysses is very Markdown friendly. I have never fully jumped on the Markdown bandwagon, though David Sparks and Eddie Smith have me experimenting with it again, and I’m even using it as I write this post.
2. There is a seamless sync available to a companion iOS app called Daedalus Touch. It has a unique, but very usable, way to manage all of your writings and projects. And again, it’s nice to have a one spot of my home screen for both long and short form writing projects.
3. It looks great. I find I prefer having a sidebar with quick access to other related writings, as thoughts about one section often come to mind while I’m working on another. For those who prefer it as minimal as possible, though, the sidebars can be switched off easier than C3PO.
4. There is a lot of flexibility on how to store and move your data via local folders, iCloud or Dropbox. The downside is that all these options can be confusing as well. If you drag folders from Ulysses iCloud to Daedalus, it copies them and suddenly you have two versions. It’s best to choose your ideal sync method from the start and hide the others.
5. Once the words are written and ordered, they can be exported to PDF, HTML, or an .rtf for further layout in Pages or, Lord have mercy, Word.

Depending on whether you are a pessimist or an optimist, there are a few areas of concern or hope:

1. There is a way to connect notes to a document that won’t be visible when exported, but Ulysses still isn’t a match for Scrivener if you are working on a project that requires a lot of research you want ready access to. It’s hard to beat that Research folder in Scrivener.
2. Another thing missing from a comparison to Scrivener is the ability to import and export outlines in an OPML format.
3. I’m not sure how accessible it is for quick access through scripting for apps like Hazel and Launchbar unless you are storing everything in Dropbox as individual files. I’d love to have an idea for a new blog post come to mind and know that I can safely tuck it into Ulysses with a few keystrokes.

Overall, Ulysses is off to a good start as a go to writing app to keep everything in one place. If you spend any amount of energy moving a cursor one character at a time, it’s worth a look. At $39.99 it’s an investment. Though it’s only available for sale in the Mac App store, you can find a demo available on the Ulysses website.

Disclaimer: The app stores links in this are affiliate links, and all earnings will be used for putting food in my kids’ mouths. Or for my not so secret app habit.

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