This is my evaluation of what went wrong with this session:
- Rattled, and lost confidence (see previous post)
- Sitting down (i should never sit down)
- Tired and Lacked enthusiams (see previous post)
- Never practised this session enough
- Got lost in this session
- Too much code (confused the audience, and me), can't see wood for trees
- I got bored (if I am bored, you guys have no chance)
- Live Coding, and Reference apps were disconnected.
- Flow was wrong
- Not clear what bit of code i was working on
The real problems with this session, was due to the way i had structured this presentation, and how complicated, and ambitious I was.
Without comfort in the tools (for presenting purpose), and with a very different flow, everybody including me got rather lost.
I was boring, and unenthusiastic (due to the events leading upto this presentation).
I have some serious work to do on this, but I am pretty sure this will never happen again.
In future posts, I will discuss how i plan to rectify this in the future.
5 comments:
Crashing and burning is a horrible experience. Almost all speakers have done this at some point and almost all of them are better speakers for having done so. Fear is a great motivator. As you say I doubt this will ever happen again for you.
Guy
I genuinely believe, that this presentation is the worst i can possibly do.
With that being the case, I can take the Crash and Burn, I just feel bad for all the people that gave up an hour of their time for it.
On that note, I don't think I will crash and burn like that again.
You may wish to consider joining your local Toastmasters International club (No, not the Guild of Toastmasters - those are the fat guys in the big red jackets).
TMI are speaking clubs that have a good programme to help people improve their public speaking skills and keep them consistently high once they've gained confidence.
The following link takes you to a map of all the clubs in the UK and Ireland:
http://d71.org/portal.php?page=4
Here is the international link also:
http://www.toastmasters.org/
Hi Chris -
I saw your Silverlight presentation in Chicago 1, and thought that you did just fine. The only problem I had with the session was that I thought that the example you were building was a little too big in scope for an hour. I felt that occasionally you detracted from the Silverlight side of things, which is what we were all there to see. As you have said yourself, this might be down to rehearsal and/or timing.
One thing that was clear in your session was your personality. It was there in abundance, and in my opinion, it is personality that makes a good presenter. I attended DDD6 (which was my first visit), to see exactly what community led presentations might be like - in the hope that one day I might be stood up there doing what you did. It takes a lot of courage to get up in front of a big crowd and speak. I haven't done it since my University days so I can't compare it. If I were to start on the speaking-circuit, I would definitely come to you, Chris, for advice.
As others have commented, the issues you are reflecting upon are all technical and not presentational. These are much easier to fix so chalk the experience up, and stop being so hard on yourself. You got up there and did it. Well done.
- Tim
Tim,
Thanks for the kind words. I agree the scope and format of the presentation was all wrong, which is completely down to how i prepared for this session.
This session was a different type of session than i have done before, and I now realise it needs a different format to pull it off correctly.
It also exposed some technical problems that I already had but wasn't really aware of.
These are the major issues that I aim to resolve. All of these I believe are to do with the mechanics, and with the preperation.
My advice to you Tim, is to just do it, get presenting. When you nail a presentation it is the best feeling in the world. It is a superb feeling to be giving back to the community, and I would recommend anyone interested to just do it.
Contact a NxtGenUG region and ask for a 10 minute nugget to give you a taster, and do your first one. I'm Cambridge coordinator for NxtGenUG and would be happy to give anyone interested in presenting a nugget slot.
Thanks for the feedback on my presentation, as I really believe my next one will be so much better for it.
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