Today’s entry was submitted by a (the?) faithful reader (and no, it wasn’t mom). While shehe did not wish to be identified, I thought it was good enough for publication, and submit it for your edification and enjoyment (and don’t do this!).—–Attended a technical meeting tonight. The guy presenting did a decent job and I found the presentation interesting from a technical standpoint. But there was room for improvement.He opened his talk by apologizing for the slides, which had “Some Other Conference, 2006 — Some Other Town” imprinted on the template. He said he was looking for a template and this was the only one he could find so he went ahead and used it. The impression? That he didn’t care enough about presenting to us to even remove the stupid icon from the slides.Second mistake: while demoing the software, some bugs showed up. He apologized for them, of course, and then explained that he had just synched with the the latest changes the developers made today and that was why the bugs were showing up. This immediately causes us to wonder why he had synched up with the new code if he knew he was going to be presenting that evening?And last, but not least, he had a habit of trailing off volume-wise as he would finish answering a question. So I would hear the first part of his answer, but it would start getting less and less distinct until I couldn’t hear anything, and sometimes couldn’t even tell that he was done answering.—-All great points, and three points in one post. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Customize everything for your current audience; script and crash-proof (as much as possible) demos; use inflection and end strong.
