Winter Meeting Directions

Directions to Bedford Middle School, McMahon Road, Bedford, MA:

From Route I-95/128: take exit 31B and follow Route 4/225 west towards Bedford for 2.5 miles and through six traffic lights to where Route 62 forks left. Follow Route 62 another 0.4 miles to St. Michaels Church on the left. Take the next left onto McMahon Road. The Middle School is just ahead 0.2 miles with a small parking area in front of the building and a much larger lot in the rear. Both lots have direct access to the lobby and auditorium.  Here are directions, with a MapQuest link, from the Middle School website.

Winter Meeting Presentations

From Eddie Giles:

I am really looking forward to this Members Night and working with club members to make it a success!  With all the great photos, trips, and stories BBC members have to tell I hope that we can continue to make it a Club tradition for years to come.

Contact me at egiles@brooklinebirdclub.org if you would like to present at Members' Night.

Please provide the following information:
(1) Title
(2) Format or program your presentation uses (e.g. PowerPoint, Excel, etc.).
(3) Length of time ***please note that since we will have up to six presentations we need to keep each presentation limited to 15 minutes.  If the number of presentations changes, and therefore time, I will let you know .***

Shawn Carey and Eric Smith will be heading up the technical part of Members Night and, as always, providing the BBC with fantastic audio/visuals. To help keep things running smoothly, Shawn and Eric have a set of requests/requirements for you to follow when setting up your presentations:

(1) You MUST name your pictures based on their name, numbering them in the order you want them shown (two digits, please). For example, ericsmith01.jpg, ericsmith02.jpg... and so on.

(2) You should resize your images to 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high.

(3) You *do not* have to fill the screen. If you want to use a portrait/vertical shot, just make it no taller than 768 pixels and no wider than 1024 pixels.

(4) It would be helpful if you put a "cover image" that says at least your name as the first slide. This isn't required, but it will help the audience know whose pictures are who's.

(5) Please bring no more than 40 images if you plan on talking while showing images, but the actual number varies depending on how much you'll say. If you are not going to talk, you can bring a few more. But please be mindful of your 15 minutes.

(6) Plan to give your presentations to Eddie 1/2 hour before the meeting starts on a memory stick/thumb drive/cruzer. Eddie will bring your presentations to Shawn and will coordinate the presentation order. Eddie will let you know the line up once she gets your presentation titles.

(7) Each presenter will have 15 minutes to show their images. You do not *have* to fill the 15 minutes!

(8) You can talk while showing your images or not, that is your choice. You do not *have* to talk (especially if that would keep you from showing!)

(9) If you plan on talking during your images, please practice your presentation ahead of time. Just flip through the images and say (out loud) what you will say. You're presentation will go much smoother, it will help confirm the slide order is correct, and you can make sure you're not over 15 minutes. You'll almost certainly find that it takes longer than you expect!

If you have any questions at all about the above requests/requirements please contact me.  

Here is some additional information from Shawn and Eric that may be helpful:

Most digital cameras come with software that let you edit your images to some degree. If you don't like that software there are several free programs that can do it.

For Windows:
- Picasa from Google is quite good. It is both an editor and an image organizer. http://picasa.google.com/
- Irfanview is a full editor that can crop and resize images. Not the easiest to use, but not "hard" either. http://www.irfanview.com/

For Mac:
- All modern Macs have iPhoto which will let you crop and resize images.

For Linux:
- You can use Gimp, but it isn't the easiest to use
- There is a version of Picasa that is available. http://picasa.google.com/