These are topics and ideas that I actively research, share, and comment on.
I had the honor of speaking at a retreat for the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS) at Princeton University on the topic of using social media to better communicate with students and potential students. It was a lively discussion on assumptions, practices, standards, authority, authenticity, and locality. Here is my minimalist slide deck for the 2 hour-long talk.
I was given a great opportunity to teach people how to create great presentations.
TIMES: Jun 11 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm  Jun 18 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm  Jun 25 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm
LOCATION: Â Technology Center
Part 1 – Monday, June 11, 6:30 – 8:30 PM – Design Elements. In this session, we discussed the elements of design, bringing together color, inspiration, fonts, message, and more to create interesting, eye-catching visuals. The presentation I used is here:
Part 2 – Monday, June 18, 6:30 – 8:30 PM – A Focus on PowerPoint
Part 3 – Monday, June 25, 6:30 – 8:30 PM -Exploring Prezi & Google Docs Presentations
Learn how to incorporate design elements to create captivating, memorable, and effective slide presentations. In this three-part series, technology instructor John LeMasney will cover a variety of presentation tools and techniques, including images, colors, fonts, readability, and movement. Skill Level: Intermediate.
Taken from Designing Presentations: Beyond the Basics (A 3-Part Series) | Princeton Public Library at
On June 4th, 2012, I gave a long session on using Inkscape in-depth to the Long Island Library Regional Consortium. We discussed bitmap versus vector images, and introduced all of Inkscape’s main tools, then ran through recreating an illustration. Some feedback I got after the session included:
On May 31st, 2012, I got the opportunity to teach high school students about Inkscape, open source software, and open standards. I went over basic functionality in Inkscape, demonstrated some design techniques, and helped students with portfolio based projects. Special thanks to Mike Harris and Debi Dixler.
On 5/23/2012 I gave a talk to the Newcomers of West Windsor on the benefits and functions of Pinterest, and got a chance to talk about the gentle move towards PNG from GIF and JPG, as well as the increased importance of visual communication skills for the average person. The response from the organizer was “Thank you so much for the wonderful job you did lecturing at Tech Talks on the history of images on the web and Pinterest. Your depth of knowledge always amazes me. You are our favorite teacher.”
Date: Monday, March 19, 2012
Location: Princeton University’s Campus Club
5 Prospect Ave., Princeton, NJ 08540-5299
The Program: Pinterest is an exciting new social networking service that uses visual media to promote ideas. John LeMasney will give a broad overview of Pinterest and explain how to use it to promote your personal and organizational brand. With Pinterest, you can follow others, and others can follow you; pin visual items, like photos and videos, to categorical boards and repin others’ pins that you find interesting. You can collaborate with others to make collective boards. You can like things that you enjoy but that are fleeting or less categorizable; pin things that you find online, or things that you upload yourself. Pinterest takes the best parts of Diigo, Twitter, Facebook, and other networks and gives them a very pretty, unified face. It is a quickly growing network, with phenomenal adoption rates, and users who often say they are addicted to pinning.
About the Speaker: John LeMasney is the Manager of Educational Technology Training and Outreach at Princeton University. He is a father, artist, designer, technologist, consultant, and open source evangelist living and working in New Jersey.