Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

Thanks sjgadsby.

Actually I started with your approach and ran into 2 problems. The first was that others asked if I could make the presentation stand alone-- which (arg) meant backing off my original "keep it simple" premise and adding all that text. :(

The other involves my own issues with speaking in public. In a workshop or brainstorm session I can do okay. No problem thinking on my feet and remembering my points. But when I get in front of a crowd I blank, especially if I'm on video. I've always been critically self conscious and no amount of practice or experience has fixed that. A lovely consequence of autism.

There is a theme and micropayments belong (so does augmented reality, gaming achievements, etc): the theme is feedback. Paying a developer tells him/her you appreciate their work, and to what degree. I've already gotten other feedback that made it clear I need to make THAT clear. Thanks. ;)

As for listing resources versus explaining them, I only have 30 minutes and a lot of material to cover. It's also good to leave something for Q&A.

I'm still refining this and at this point more inclined to remove material than add. I'm thinking about stripping down the "walled garden" stuff for instance. The way my crazy ADHD/autistic mind works, I need to occasionally print out the presentation with notes, spread it across the living room floor (my wife loves this part) and hack at it with pens and highlighters. I figure I have 1 or 2 more of those sessions left...

EDIT: as for the hairy diagram: it's central to the talk, and I don't see any way around the detail. But I'll explain it in the talk.

EDIT 2: as much as I want to talk a lot about some of the important related items like walled gardens, I'm pretty much convinced I need to just refer to them rather than make it a subsection. That will help me streamline the talk and focus more on the core subject.

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

I hope I didn't come across badly. I don't hate your presentation. I felt this was a time when "do your worst" was the request. If I offended you, I do apologize.

Can't you do what you've done here? Using the notes area for the content you'll be speaking aloud and including that in a PDF version allows for the stand-alone version.

Everyone always wants "a copy of your slides afterwards", which is a nice idea, but misses the reason why an in-person conference was desired and useful in the first place.

By all means, keep a version of your presentation appended with lots of notes in front of you! I'm not against that. Sure, the best speakers can do without, but we're not them.

I didn't mean to imply they don't. I want you to sell the fact that they, like all the disparate bits, come together in a desirable way.

Understood. I just want to make sure you've clearly identified one underlying focus and then honed all your material to build support for that in an effective manner.

To that end, the following sounds good:

I know, and it's also fairly clear. It's just heavy.

You're doing well. I've looked at a few previous revisions of your presentation, and it has gotten better and better over time.

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

Thanks again sjgadsby, HIGHLY appreciated help. I'll take into account what I can.

One thing I'd like to do is represent certain text details with images instead. Maybe create a simple graph for the stats, or omit them entirely from the talk. The data will be included in a whitepaper and I can mention that.

And if it's getting better, it's largely due to about 4 or 5 people (including you) who have taken such a high interest. This is your talk, too! :)

EDIT: oh, and I took no offense at all. You said nothing offensive. :)

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

Hi Randall,

I would be worried that you will run into the time troubles you had at the summit again - I like the slides, but they definitely feel a little text heavy. I think that they'd benefit by simply having less text on there - slide 7, for example, could have all text completely replaced by a trend line overlayed on your background photo.

Slide 14 could probably go :}

I had trouble identifying your key argument in the first few slides - it can be OK to bring people to a destination they don't know in a presentation, but I usually recommend saying up-front what you want to prove, and then drive towards that proof (so that people can contextualise your arguments). Your key point is, I guess, that companies need to have high-quality feedback mechanisms to empower their user-base? Perhaps that could be front & center in the presentation (without so many words on the slide) and then you reinforce that core point by showing the good feedback that people have gotten, contrast with feedback done badly, address the challenges & nod to the future afterwards, and then circle back to the core point - you need to have feedback mechanisms, you need to integrate feedback into your marketing & product plans, etc.

I hope you don't mind late feedback!

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

I was a bit lost too in the beginning. That reminded me of a hint that got a few years back from a teacher about presentations: "First tell the audience what you are about to tell them, then tell them and finally tell them what you just told them. Use slides to support your speech not vice versa - You want the audience to listen, not read."

I'm also thinking that the presentation is too heavy for a 30 minute time slot. May be you could shorten the beginning of the presentation? Don't get me wrong the presentation is good but it needs to loose some weight.

Looking forward in seeing this presentation live.

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

A note about the time slot - do a timing test. Give the presentation to family, your pets or a teddy bear just so you see how much time it really takes (pets and teddy bears are notoriously bad feedback sources, though).

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

Thanks guys.

The Amsterdam talk was different: I had a 20 minute talk prepared and at the last minute had to go to 5. I tried to get it down but I knew there was too much material-- in hindsight I should have just explained it could not be done.

I have tested this presentation and even with the large number of slides it comes in at less than 15 minutes.

As to other points, to replicate what I posted at meego.com:

I really appreciate the help!

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

I like your idea on slide 7 and in fact already planned to try something like that. Unfortunately I'm an artist at heart and "sculpt" even my presentations. I start off with text and then replace with graphics as I have time.

Time is my biggest enemy as other aspects of life have been crowding this out. :/

As for slide 14, it's the heart of the presentation so I can't delete it if I wanted to. Instead, I'll refactor it as I just posted. I think most will be agreeable to what I'll do, and in fact the approach I'm taking will solve other problems. Win-win.

As for identifying the key argument-- you're right, the beef isn't quite there. I have a good idea how to fix that. I worked so hard on bolstering the main premise and propping up strawmen that I neglected key details. BTW, the strawmen will be torched. I don't need to focus on obstacles-- the audience will do that on their own. I need to focus on the goals and possibilities. ;)

And the key is not about companies per se so your guess there tells me I really do need to work on the message. I'd like to go into the detail you suggest but I just have not turned up anything usable in my research and just flat don't have much free time-- so I'll have to build around what I have and hope that will suffice.

My main problem with presentations is that I'm highly intuitive and tend to connect dots mentally that are hard to translate to paper. But I think I can pull it off. I have to.

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

Alright, I have already made many of the suggested changes tonight. Here's how the flow will look:

1. Introduction
2. Define feedback
3. List feedback values (per presentation theme)
4. Build case for the importance of context (and how feedback relates)
5. Build case for mobility (replace some text with graphs)
6. Build feedback ecosystem (breaking previous slide 14 into parts)
7. Mention challenges
8. List solutions and resources
9. Briefly describe future possibilities
10. Summary
11. Close

sound good?

Re: Akademy 2010 Call for Papers
 

The flow of the story looks good.

Edit: You should have time to answer some questions at end or are you the kind of presenter that allows questions at any point?

This presentation should cause some discussion. At least I'm hoping it does. Good thing the audience isn't just Finns - we are not usually a good audience when it comes to questions :)