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Dirty Tricks of Presentors
A reader writes "Perl expert Mark Jason Dominus gave a great talk last month in St. Louis on how to give a good conference presentation.
There's nothing specific to Perl, and a lot of people
said they thought it was the most useful talk at the conference even though they didn't think they'd be doing a conference presenation any time soon. Mark also wrote up some notes
that explain the parts he forgot to put on the slides."
I've always found this site to be useful when preparing presentations. http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/pt.html. It's basically a troubleshooting/tip guide for those preparting a presentation using digital media and/or overhead transparency media.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
..don't bar your fans from coming to your presentation.
Right Apple?
now if only that server wasn't slashdotted ;)
that if you prepare your presentation to rely on some technology, then said technology will find some way to stop working just long enough to ruin you presentation. Mind you hot stage lights can also be damaging... ("Developers!Developers!Developers!...")
If you can do a technical presentation without fancy do-dads and nothing more than your articulate descriptions and perhaps a white board, then you will be able to engage your audience much more effectively. they will listen, rather than watch...
It's effective communication that makes a good presentation, not what media was used.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Examples: "Dirty Tricks of Presentors"
If you've already gotten coffe and made a sandwich and the slides still haven't loaded, here's something to keep you occupied in the meantime:
Google cache of a list of talks the same authour has done
Turn off images before loading this page, as they're taken from the same server that we melted down with slides requests.
Haha.. Kind of reminds me of Jim Blinn's Things I Hope Not to See or Hear at SIGGRAPH. Read it for a chuckle..
Before it starts he says "How many people have taken $OTHER_TUTORIAL_NAME I gave last year?" .... to those who raise their hands he says
"Well, you should go find something else to do, because $THIS_TUTORIAL is the same as $OTHER_TUTORIAL, only the name has changed"
I'm really sorry you were inconvenienced. The tutorial description that I sent to O'Reilly in my proposal stated very clearly (and I quote):
However, the O'Reilly folks, for whatever reason, omitted this from the brochure. I was not sent the brochure for proofreading or correction beforehand. I did send them mail on April 18 to ask them to add the warning back to the description on the web site. I believe this was the first day that the brochure was available online.
I will cheerfully own up to many faults, including that of being a condescending, obnoxious elitist asshole. But this particular problem really wasn't my fault. I understand how annoying it must have been to have to switch classes, but I don't think there was any way I could have handled this better.
Again, I'm sorry you were inconvenienced. If there was something I could have done differently that I haven't thought of, I hope you'll send me email to tell me what it could have been.
Best regards,
Mark DominusSecond, put all of your fucking points on a slide - don't make me click through 5 fucking html pages just so that I can read the contents of one pathetic slide.
Hi. You may not be clear on the idea of a conference presentation. In a conference presentation, a speaker, such as me, stands in front of the audience and shows the slides to everyone at once while explaining the content in detail and answering occasional questions.
These are slides from a conference presentation, which means that the speaker (that's me, remember) would be doing the clicking. The audience members (that's you) typically do not click the 5 fucking HTML pages. So the number of clicks is not normally a matter of concern for the audience.
I hope this clears up your misunderstanding.
According to the slide notes, there are 43 slides in that presentation, which I presume took 45 minutes. That means about 1 slide per minute - wow!
Actually it was a 22 minute talk. (Double wow!) Perhaps you might like to meditate on the difference between a complex technical talk (not this one) and a humorous nontechnical talk (this talk). Here's a hint: After I show the pictures of the happy baby or the unhappy Japanese lady, I don't need to leave them on the screen for five minutes for the audience to absorb the full import.
Hope this helps.