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ExamplesOfGoodPresentations

We've all seen examples of bad presentations, where after the upteenth three-bullet-point slide, ritual suicide starts to seem appealing. But sometimes people rise above, producing interesting presentations with Powerpoint (or one of its equivalents).

Here's a place to give a shout out to good ones.

• Wil Shipley's presentation at the 2005 Apple Word-Wide Development Conference is heavy on bullet points, but they seem to work. Can you tell why? http://wilshipley.com/blog/WWDC_Student_Talk.pdf
  
  
• Jim Weirich's talk at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention is a good example of how web-based presentations can do double duty.

--DaveSmith 2005.08.07

Dave, I like to distinguish between a good presentation and a good handout. I have reviewed Wil Shipley's handout and I like it. I enjoyed his simple and humorous content, which made it work for me.

Although I suspect his presentation of the material was good, I can't be certain. I would need to see and hear his presentation to know for sure.

I have strong feelings about presentations. I have experienced great speakers who had lousy slides. I have experienced great slides and lousy speakers. When I am forced to endure a presentation, if I had to choose between a great speaker with no slides versus a mediocre speaker with great slides, give me the great speaker everytime.

I appreciate you for providing a forward link to this thread from the WhyWeDoNotUsePowerPoint thread. That's a nice touch.

SteveSmith 2005.08.08

• Conference Presentation Judo, a presentation about giving presentations.

Warning: It's rather raw in at least one spot.

--DaveSmith 2005.08.11

I had an email conversation with Mark Jason Dominus <[email protected]>, the author of Conference Presentation Judo. Here's how some of it went, starting with Mark's response:

> >Regarding my "Conference Presentation Judo" talk, you said:

> >> Rather tedious on a dialup line,

> >The materials you saw were never designed for web presentation. They were used to accompany a talk that I gave face-to-face to an audience in San Diego. So there was no issue of download speed or anything like that.

> I realize that.

Really, what I wanted to do was post this on your wiki; I wanted to make clear to the Wiki readers that I would have done something different had it been a web presentation and not a talk. But that option wasn't available, so I sent it to you instead.

> I'm also sort of tuned to the problem of presenting on line, as a number of people have been knocking me up trying to get me to put classes on line. It would be a great idea if it worked, but I haven't seen examples where it worked.

It certainly doesn't work well. And I find that as I've gotten to be a better presenter, slapping my slides up on my web site has been increasingly unsatisfying. "Conference Presentation Judo" wouldn't have made much sense without the extensive notes page, and even then I don't think it works well. And the problem has gotten worse. I gave another talk a year or two later that isn't on the web site, because I decided that even *with* an extensive notes page it didn't work well.

I seem to be facing a similar problem with my book. I promised to put the book's text on my web site. I could do that just but posting the PDF files with the final page proofs, and there's some value in doing that. But it's very hard to read page proofs online. I think that for people to absorb it online, the text needs to be broken into smaller sections than in a book, and they need to approach it differently.

My current idea is to divide the book into smallish sections, and turn it into a Wiki, with a Wiki page for each smallish section. I don't know how well it will work, but I think it's worth a try.

> Actually, I think I can make a blanket statement because I've used similar slides and come away, at first, thinking "the audience loved them" only to find out that a few people in the audience were severely disturbed by one of my tasteless slides.

I'm sure you must be right. Thanks for pointing this out. I should take more trouble to remember that I could be causing a lot of distress to some of the people.

> BTW, in March, when I was keynoting the SD West, I indeed went to the bathroom with my microphone on. I do that all the time, for some reason.

Oh, dear. I'm sorry to hear that.

> >Thanks for your comments and kind attention.

> No, thank you for taking the trouble to make your presentation available to everybody. Even with all the bullshit [;-)], it should prove valuable to other presenters if they bother to take your lessons. I hope they do.

I still think the tutorial speakers at OSCON make the same major mistakes: they don't make their classes dense enough, they waste time with long introductions, and they spend too much time on explanations of subsidiary, prerequisite material before coming to the real point. Audiences are more resilient and better-prepared than people realize.

That was the real point of my talk, and it got rather lost in the other stuff, so in that sense it wasn't a very successful talk.

> Maybe some day you'll come to the AYE conference, we'll meet, and you'll experience an entirely different way of doing presentations (which still will benefit from your Judo advice).

I would like that. I'm always trying to grope toward being a better speaker.

One thing I didn't like about the Confrence Presentation Judo talk was that it assumed the existence of "slides". Clearly, "slides" are a leftover of earlier technologies, and to continue using the "slide" format in an era where conferences don't even have slide projectors available may be missing some important opportunities.

The other problem I have with "slides" is that they are serving three logically separate purposes. They are there to remind me what I wanted to say, to give the audience a handout to take home, and to present illustrations and examples to the audience while I speak. If I could separate these three functions, I think I would be able to do all of them better. I would have one set of private notes for myself, one set of attractive illustrations for the audience, and a dense, informative handout for them to take home. But peripheral technical issues have prevented me from doing this so far.

> BTW, would you like me to post your comments on the AYE wiki?

I would be very grateful.

Thanks for your letter.

- JerryWeinberg 2005.08.14

[mjd]>> Regarding my "Conference Presentation Judo" talk, you said:

[jw]>>> Rather tedious on a dialup line,

[mjd]>> The materials you saw were never designed for web presentation. They were used to accompany a talk that I gave face-to-face to an audience in San Diego. So there was no issue of download speed or anything like that.

[jw]> I realize that.

[mjd] Really, what I wanted to do was post this on your wiki; I wanted to make clear to the Wiki readers that I would have done something different had it been a web presentation and not a talk. But that option wasn't available, so I sent it to you instead.

[jw]> I'm also sort of tuned to the problem of presenting on line, as a number of people have been knocking me up trying to get me to put classes on line. It would be a great idea if it worked, but I haven't seen examples where it worked.

[mjd] It certainly doesn't work well. And I find that as I've gotten to be a better presenter, slapping my slides up on my web site has been increasingly unsatisfying. "Conference Presentation Judo" wouldn't have made much sense without the extensive notes page, and even then I don't think it works well. And the problem has gotten worse. I gave another talk a year or two later that isn't on the web site, because I decided that even *with* an extensive notes page it didn't work well.

[mjd] I seem to be facing a similar problem with my book. I promised to put the book's text on my web site. I could do that just but posting the PDF files with the final page proofs, and there's some value in doing that. But it's very hard to read page proofs online. I think that for people to absorb it online, the text needs to be broken into smaller sections than in a book, and they need to approach it differently.

[mjd] My current idea is to divide the book into smallish sections, and turn it into a Wiki, with a Wiki page for each smallish section. I don't know how well it will work, but I think it's worth a try.

[jw]> Actually, I think I can make a blanket statement because I've used similar slides and come away, at first, thinking "the audience loved them" only to find out that a few people in the audience were severely disturbed by one of my tasteless slides.

[mjd] I'm sure you must be right. Thanks for pointing this out. I should take more trouble to remember that I could be causing a lot of distress to some of the people.

[jw]> BTW, in March, when I was keynoting the SD West, I indeed went to the bathroom with my microphone on. I do that all the time, for some reason.

[mjd] Oh, dear. I'm sorry to hear that.

[mjd]>> Thanks for your comments and kind attention.

[jw]> No, thank you for taking the trouble to make your presentation available to everybody. Even with all the bullshit [;-)], it should prove valuable to other presenters if they bother to take your lessons. I hope they do.

[mjd] I still think the tutorial speakers at OSCON make the same major mistakes: they don't make their classes dense enough, they waste time with long introductions, and they spend too much time on explanations of subsidiary, prerequisite material before coming to the real point. Audiences are more resilient and better-prepared than people realize.

[mjd] That was the real point of my talk, and it got rather lost in the other stuff, so in that sense it wasn't a very successful talk.

[jw]> Maybe some day you'll come to the AYE conference, we'll meet, and you'll experience an entirely different way of doing presentations (which still will benefit from your Judo advice).

[mjd] I would like that. I'm always trying to grope toward being a better speaker.

[mjd] One thing I didn't like about the Confrence Presentation Judo talk was that it assumed the existence of "slides". Clearly, "slides" are a leftover of earlier technologies, and to continue using the "slide" format in an era where conferences don't even have slide projectors available may be missing some important opportunities.

[mjd] The other problem I have with "slides" is that they are serving three logically separate purposes. They are there to remind me what I wanted to say, to give the audience a handout to take home, and to present illustrations and examples to the audience while I speak. If I could separate these three functions, I think I would be able to do all of them better. I would have one set of private notes for myself, one set of attractive illustrations for the audience, and a dense, informative handout for them to take home. But peripheral technical issues have prevented me from doing this so far.

[jw]> BTW, would you like me to post your comments on the AYE wiki?

[mjd] I would be very grateful.

[mjd] Thanks for your letter.