1 files changed, 38 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/_posts/2014-12-14-showoff.md b/_posts/2014-12-14-showoff.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d84352
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2014-12-14-showoff.md
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Using Showoff for Markdown Presentations
+description: >
+  Use Showoff to make slideshows and presentations in Markdown with awesome
+  audience interactivity.
+---
+
+Recently, I had to give a presentation and decided to do some research on using
+Markdown. By coincidence, I had also been looking into
+[Puppet](https://puppetlabs.com), a flexible and powerful configuration manager,
+when I stumbled across [Showoff](https://github.com/puppetlabs/showoff), another
+Puppet Labs project.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+Showoff is a Ruby application that takes a Markdown file with some [special
+formatting](https://github.com/puppetlabs/showoff/blob/master/documentation/AUTHORING.rdoc)
+and transforms it into a web-accessible slideshow. As expected, you can open up
+a presenter view in your browser. You can also easily open up a second window to
+use on your projector in full screen. You can even give your audience the
+address for the server so they can follow along on their own screens.
+
+There are also some nice audience interactivity features, like the ability to
+ask questions through the web interface. These questions will be shown on the
+presenter's screen. Audience members also have the ability to indicate whether
+the presenter is moving too quickly or too slowly so that an adjustment can be
+made accordingly.
+
+Finally, Showoff is designed with software presentations in mind, with the
+ability to dynamically run Ruby, JavaScript, or Coffeescript code included in
+your slides. You can attach other files or labs to your slides, so audience
+members following along on their own devices can easily access reference
+materials at the appropriate time.
+
+For a small presentation like the one I was doing, a lot of the more advanced
+features of Showoff would have been overkill, but it still made an awesome
+presentation method. It was also really neat to be able to say that the slides
+were available on Github if anyone wanted to look at them afterwards.