Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Alan Bell — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:38:00 GMT

Tim,
Apologies - whilst your name is familiar I cannot remember if I have been to one of your presentations, but you get my vote.
I cannot think of anything more boring than listening to a presenter effectively just reading the slides.
As a regular attendee at Microsoft presentations for the last 10+ years, mostly in the UK although I did get to spend a week in Redmond for the Office 2003 beta, I have seen a steady improvement in the presentation because of the increased use of demonstrations - long may it continue.
Personally, having been lucky enough to notice a pre-compile bug, I now find part of the fun of attending is trying to spot them.

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Steve Eadie — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:49:00 GMT

Tim, having seen my first ever Micosoft presentations last year (I've seen 4 now if you include one last week which was given to my company), yours are on the 'must see' list. I do however blame both you and Mike Pelton for me buying a Tablet PC on the way back from a presentation last year!! oh and now I want a SPOT watch (how's it going with that anyway?)... sorry back on track! I fall into the category of more demos please, but it would be nice if these could be made available for download, warts and all.... as I look back at some slides and go 'hmm no how did he code that again?'

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

laurence timms — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:58:00 GMT

Tim, I've seen you present two or three times now. You do it well. Your delivery has a sense of infectious enthusiasm which I only see in those who really enjoy what they do. Your balance between slides & demos at the VS 2003 launch event last year was spot on AFAIC.

However, I don't think there is a 'magic ratio' for presentation content vs. demonstration content. It depends on the audience, the material, the duration etc. Personally I like to have detailed notes to take away from the presentation for future reference *as well as* a good demo that inspires me to cut code.

PowerPoint: 1% good

Flatlander — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:14:00 GMT

Tim Sneath: "My gut feeling is that most presenters rely far too heavily on PowerPoint slides as something of a comfort blanket." The "PowerPoint: 99% bad" syndrome is an easy one to fall into, and Tim is right that canned

.NET Presentations

Extreme RAD from a Trading Desk — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:43:00 GMT

Powerpoint madness

Ramblings by PeterI — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:48:00 GMT

Flatlander has some interesting thoughtson the powerpoint madness piece by Tim Sneath. (Partially this post is also to test

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Richard Blewett — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 21:35:00 GMT

Personally I try to scatter my presentations with demos - it breaks up the delivery and *most* people like watching demos - especially if coded from teh ground up (although you have to be careful not to try anything too ambitious - there's only so much an audience will bear of me and my terrible typing in one stretch). Demo sequences that build on eachother work well too - you can end up with a reasonably sophistcated "thing" by the end - but they take some planning.
Tim is right in that spinning off on an audience influence tangent can be fun (although can be fraught with danger if you haven't been down that direction for a while - but that just adds to the thrill ;-) )
So personally i tend to be relatively demo heavy and use the slides as a backdrop to the narrative.

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Richard Blewett — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 21:36:00 GMT

LOL, obviously Tim's blogging engine is more sophistcated than mine where you have to enter HTML :-)

Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

RoudyBob.NET — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 20:13:00 GMT

Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

RoudyBob.NET — Mon, 22 Mar 2004 20:16:00 GMT

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Dag Konig — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 01:17:00 GMT

Interesting things that you say. I think however that you could be even more creative when doing presentations. I for example have code examples in the ppt and use mouse or pen to make remark in the code while presenting it. This could also be done with graphs and diagrams. You just build the background, use a pen, and make drawings on the slide.

But I really like they idea with off-piste coding.

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Dave Clarke — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 02:16:00 GMT

Tim, I've seen you present a number of times and you have a rare ability to combine demos, slides and humour (oh well maybe not!!) in your sessions. I do not think you have anything to worry about :-)

I think a *limited* number of slides/diagrams etc can often help structure and illustrate a presentation (and keep the presenter on track!), but the demos/coding sessions tend to be the most interesting bits! It of course also depends on your audience and what their expectations are - those attending an MSDN event are likely to want to see you "coding" (and maybe make a cock-up or two, which they no doubt have great pleasure in pointing out!)

One of the most revealing and enjoyable talks that sticks in my mind is one by Don Box when he did a keynote at the UK .Net launch conference, London, a couple of years back - no slides, no visual studio etc... just notepad, the command prompt, csc and some salient points... Nice...

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

Sascha — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 02:45:00 GMT

Intesting post! See my answer here: http://www.corti.com/WebLogSascha/PermaLink.aspx/052b3787-d689-4164-888b-c9a59c3679c9

-Sascha.

re: Presentations: Balancing Slides and Code

James Speer — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 03:16:00 GMT

Like many others, I have enjoyed several of your presentations and I would definitely say you are one of the better (if not the best) UK evangelist?

In my view - yup, you are quite correct - more spontaneous code stuff and fewer slides. I think that the mark of a good slide deck is -

a) to introduce some a concept from 50k feet
b) good enough to remind someone about the concept say 2 weeks later

To digress...During a presentation, you often feel compelled to take notes. What I would prefer is to get hold of the slide deck after and use that for a reference. Then the deck doubles up as a bunch of notes + a concept reminder.

Presentationer: Att balancera mellan PPT och Kod

Dag König — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 08:33:00 GMT

Detta tycker jag är ett mycket intressant ämne. Själv gillar jag verkligen att göra presentationer. Och när man håller på att förbereda sig ställer man sig frågan hur mycket som skall vara slides och hur mycket som skall vara kod?