Extreme Presentations

Moved from MyMindKeepsWandering:

I find that I wander when I'm not feeling confident about something. Take tonight as an example. I'm speaking at a major Australasian software development conference next month. The presentation slides are due in on Monday for publishing (it's now 04:32 on Saturday morning), I haven't even decided on a real title, let alone written the presentation.

So, what have I done tonight? Well, as the topic is XP, I started by coming to Wiki (at about 20:00 last night) to look up the spelling for Ron's surname (I don't know why I didn't just look in my email). I've been here since.

This is not good. If anyone has a pill I could take, I'd be grateful. Techniques to avoid this are okay, but basically people don't change. Pills are easier.

-- BryanDollery

In layman's terms, what's the presentation about?

Here's a suggestion for a 2-minute job to get you started. Think of some one piece of content that you would like to communicate - something that you would like the audience to know when the presentation is over. Don't think about how to present it, just think of what you want them to know. Now write this down as concisely as you can. Don't worry if only you can understand what you've written. Don't worry about the title. Don't worry if you also want to say other things, too. Just get this one thing done.

Now, screw around on Wiki for a while. You've earned it. When you get tired of that, the next task is to think of some way to communicate that one piece of content and only that. Make one slide, or the fewest that you can make that get across that one point. There you go, you've gotten some real work done. Screw around on Wiki for a while. You've earned it. Go back to step 1 for the next piece of content, and repeat.

Don't worry if you might want to delete content later or rearrange things later. Do those things later. First get some barely passable slides done. It is much easier to structure and organize and edit material when you have some.

-- BenKovitz

Right. Just like WritersBlock, the solution is to simply start writing and not worry about whether the writing is good or bad. See StreamOfConsciousness -- WylieGarvin

I'm learning to be a jazz presenter. Slides are too much like work: the monotony of preparing them wears down my enthusiasm for the subject.

When I think I need slides, I like to draw them with a felt-tip marker and scan them:

The "PowerPoint" look impedes communication, unless glossy slickness is what you are communicating. -- WayneConrad

The FrameworkForIntegratedTest web site has some effective use of hand-drawn illustrations. See http://fit.c2.com/wiki.cgi?ParsingTables for example.