The event had 21 presenters, ranging from super geeky (MapReduce from Barry Brumitt) to life style (How to eat out by Hillel Cooperman). The quality of the slides and the presentations varied widely as well.
It made me realize one important thing: Never, ever, over-rehearse!!!
I'm not talking about myself because I don't have time to over-rehearse. I'm talking about some of the presenters that clearly did that.
That quality of a great presentation, IMHO, is flow of information. It means two things: people get the key point on each slide, and slides move from one to another in a progressive cohesive way.
When you over-rehearse, you usually add too much information and says phrases that look beautiful on paper but look 'posh-y' when you are standing up and giving the talk. Nobody talks like that. It also causes a lot of "ah" and "um" coming from your mouth, because you are using that to go to the back back of your mind and remember what is the next thing you have to say. If you have to do that, the flow is not right.
Another one... Reading from a piece of paper... Ummm.... It's bad. The only person that I see pull that of was Jon Roberts from Ignition Partners when he was talking about how you scale a Startup. But he wasn't reading from a paper. He just had it as a reference to remember the order of the ten things. And he had no slides.
Finally, on "screenwriting-world" they say the phrase "show not tell". It means that instead of you writing a character saying "I'm tired", you write a paragraph that once becomes movie will show him tired. Same thing for presentations. Can you do a PPT that doesn't have a single word in it? Maybe that is extreme, but if you are reading bullet points why don't you just sit on the side and let me read it by myself.
I didn't stay for all the talks because I was tired and not feeling well. But here are some points:
Matthew Maclaurin (MS Research) on Programming for Fun/Children/... This was a very interesting topic. Logo was the first language that I learned when I was 11. I think it is super cool what he is doing. The talk was good as well.
Elisabeth Freeman (Author of Head First Series) on How To Write a Technical Book That Doesn't Put Your Readers to Sleep I love this book series. It is very good. She is very smart.
Avi Geiger on Power Consumption of Home Computers and Incandescent Lightbulbs Brady was right. This talk did open my mind to a lot of things. Avi makes lots of good points about how much power computers are consuming in the US and how improvements in perf could save energy. Microsoft should take a look at this.
Ryan Steward (ZDNet's Universal Desktop, Threecast) on The Rich Internet Application Space. It was a good summary of the different types of technology that exist and are coming out. Slides had too much text. I wish he would had given a screenshot of each technology being used on the real-world.
Nancy White on What the Bleep is a Community Technology Steward. I phased out. Didn't get what she was trying to say and by the 2nd minute (remember it is just 5 minutes) I stopped paying attention.
On the second set of talks, we had:
Hans Omli (Shoestring Ventures) on Elevator Pitches. I know Hans and we bump on each other every Entrepreneur or Geek event in Seattle. He had to change his talk last minute because he was going to talk about some real world examples. Turns out that some of the companies are in stealth mode and he couldn't use that so he had to change things. The information on his talk was great, the delivery could have been better.
Sarah Davies (Freedom for IP) on Share and share alike: GPL, Creative Commons, and the future of digital freedom. To summarize her talk she says that copyright prevents freedom of culture. Sorry, I don't buy it. I'm all in favor of GPL, Create Commons et al (even use on some of my stuff), but I didn't buy half the arguments she was making.
Lars Liden (Techtown) on Web Technology to Help Children with Autism and Kurk Brockett (Identity Mine) on A Look at Windows Presentation I missed this two talks because I was the the corner of the stage waiting for my turn to get up.
Then it came my turn, but I can't comment on my performance until I see the video.
Marcelo, Good rundown on the speakers....I agree on the over-rehearse bit. It's good to know you're slides and material but it's not good to just deliver what someone could easily read for themselves. I look forward to any feedback you have on my presentation once it's posted. I could have went with less material and sharpened the message for the 5 minutes...maybe tried to convey too much. Just a little of my own self critique.
Great reflections Marcelo - I'm nodding a lot as I read them.
I'm both looking forward to and dreading seeing the videos. But heck, if you don't take a risk, you don't learn.
I think you did a good job in your talk - you had a good rhythm and great eye contact with the crowd. Interestingly, I can't remember what you talked about. Blame this on my over stuffed brain and less personal relevance of your topic to me. That's part of the "your mileage will vary" with any topic. But suffice, for me your presentation style was what I remember.
I found it a very challenging format. My normal practice is really improvisational, I like to do things that break the wall between the presenter and the audience and I could not figure out how to do that with the constraings (and limited prep time). It was a great experience to try.
I also put myself in a box because I wanted to share a new idea -- and too much of it -- in 5 minutes. An idea I care about. I toyed with the idea of doing a very stripped down, slow bit, but fell into the trap of "cram it all in." My stories got short shrift by trying to pin them to one slide.
I think my recommendations to others is to:
* pick a very clear focused topic - small is beautiful * don't think of the change of the slide as a change of idea, but find ways to build (I knew that instinctively and did not listen to my gut) * use silence and open space to build drama * use story
I'm not sure I agree about the not over rehearse. I think that is very subjective depending on the individual, the topic and how they choose to present. I can be a poster child for under-rehearsing and what it does to you. Requires paper, does not give enough consideration to space and timing.
I'm really glad I stuck my neck out and tried. That's learning. Thanks for the feedback. (And sorry for the 5 minutes of zone out - unless of course you took a micro nap and awoke refreshed!)
I tell you what. They could have been stripping for all I know. My attention span could only take about one and a half segments before I was off to talk to Money the transexual bar-made. She was great - gonna doa show on her.
Anyway, here's the video from the egg-drop: http://peoplegeek.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/ignite-seattles-eggsasperating-competition/
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- 2/14/2007 3:30 AM
September, 2007