Nick Cowie » presentations

Why use CSS Zen Garden for CSS3 demo

Nick — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:18:29 +0000

For those who have not seen my Edge of the Web CSS3 demonstration I used the CSS Zen Garden HTML. Why, because I wanted to use somebody else’s HTML, mainly because I wanted to show it works with any HTML and that most people would be familiar with the site.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

There are no hacks in the CSS just lots of browsers specific declarations like:

-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.66);

And even worse Microsoft specific declarations, which break the W3C rules for CSS

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=5, OffY=5, Color='#AA666666', Positive='true');

As I said in my presentation, the important thing to know about validation, is why your code does not validate, if you know that, then validation is irrelevant.

CSS3 presentations at EOTW09 and WebJam11

Nick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:57:44 +0000

I really enjoyed developing my presentation for Edge of the Web. The research and experimentation was a lot of fun. Explore the demo using CSS Zen Garden HTML and seriously try it in IE6, the WebJam presentation with some even more outrageous transitions needs Safari4 ~~or FF3.7~~ and a little exploring with a mouse.

Progressive enhancement with CSS3

View more documents from Nick Cowie.

What I learnt is enough from probably a dozen blog posts, so hopefully I will be writing lot in the next few weeks.

Presentation Planning the Presentation

Nick — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:11:13 +0000

Direct from BarCamp Perth2.0, here are the slides, the presentation plan and introduction I used.

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presentation plan — excel format (11kb)
presentation plan — tab delimited text format (1kb)
slides — PDF format (1283kb)

As I said during the presentation and in my plan, you should script the introduction and conclusion, here is the introduction. The conclusion is unscripted, not because I am too lazy, but if you look at the plan you see why.

Introduction

Hi I am Nick Cowie and I am going to talk about presentations, particularly planning presentations.

Those people who have seen me present before, know that I can do a reasonable job. A few friends where suprised when work sent me on a full day training course on presentations. I tweeted a few times during the day I was bored and not learning anything, then the course moved onto session planning. I tweeted that I did learn something interesting, and a couple of my twitter friends asked if I would give a presentation at BarCamp on what I learnt.

This may seem an odd topic for BarCamp, but BarCamps are about presentations and I want to convince people that it is easy to give a presentation with good planning, so hopefully more of you will give a presentation at next BarCamp.

For those of you give presentations, I want to convince you that planning makes things go easier. You know that horrible feeling in your stomach before you step on stage. Planning does not stop it, it does calm it down quickly as you know if something goes wrong it is easy to get back in step.

One of the most important things I want to pass on to you today, is that you need to break your planning down to the granular level.

The social network in your pocket - the video from Podcamp Perth 2007

Nick — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:01:19 +0000

Stewart Greenhill aka the GreenGuy has posted the video of my session the social network in your pocket on viddler.

So if you have an hour to spare (and I thought I would struggle to fill 30 minutes) , you can watch me talk about how people are using social networking and the mobile web. If you have not got an hour to spare, go grab the slideshow from slideshare.net, see the stats on the first three pages, check out the personas and then head to the references and go download the Consumers and Convergence report created by KPMG.

The social network in your pocket

Nick — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:35:57 +0000

If you wondered why it has been quiet around here lately, I have spent the last two weeks researching and preparing for my presentation at PodCamp Perth 2007.

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While I enjoyed the research and probably did too much. I strongly recommended anybody interested in mobile web usage read Consumers and Convergence (PDF) a worldwide survey carried out by KPMG. I did a decent job of the slides, I don’t think I spent enough time preparing the talk, as a result I wandered off message. However, I delivered the information I wanted to, but probably not with the emphasis I wanted, that:

mobile web use is rising rapidly
people are visiting social networking websites on their mobiles regularly
people in different cultures used their phones and services differently

As usual the presentation ran over time, but that was to be expected. I had hoped for participation in the second half of the presentation. And with Sue and Frances just back from a m-learning conference, it became more of a discussion than a presentation.

WebJam Sydney

Nick — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:26:36 +0000

My second WebJam was interesting event. Held after WDS07 on a Saturday evening, in front of a couple hundred people. What was interesting was the line up of speakers. The biggest surprise for me was the limited number of local speakers, there was three international speakers Andy Clarke, Aaron Gustafson and Chaals from Opera, add to that the WA contigent of me and Myles and you had I think 9 locals.

The average quaility of presentations was a little more polished than in Perth. None was truely stunning, I had hoped Andy would walk on stage to the theme from Ocean’s eleven. The content of presentations was interesting Dimitry deserved to win with Optimus. Myles Eftos answered some Ruby on Railers prayers with AJAX based frontend to the Ruby on Rails debugger and finished second, just ahead of the guys from Digital Eskimo and their community campaign about changes to the NSW licensing laws Raise the Bar!

My presentation, 7 ways to improve your WebJam presentation was conceived a couple weeks before WebJam, written on the flight to Sydney the week before, with the polishing up and slides creation done while sitting in the pub watching the AFL grand final a few hours before WebJam.

I convinced Lachlan that due to my reputation as a WebSledger, I needed to go on first, I didn’t want to sledge any of my fellow presenters, plus I didn’t want to break rule 1 don’t drink before going on stage. Though I don’t know if was a good idea, as Laurel took my advice about humour and added a really bad joke to her presentation. The aim of my presentation was to get people to think about how they present a little more and get some new people WebJamming, because it is fun and addictive. Now to think of something to present at the next WebJam Perth. It is December, Lachlan?

Websledge the improved version

Nick — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:28:29 +0000

Sue of Mobile Technology in TAFE of has taken my WebJam slide show added audio from Greenguy’s video and combined them to produce a much improved version of my presentation without me bouncing around the stage. The resulting discussion is interesting.

For the latecomers to this series of posts

This was the presentation I gave at WebJam Perth. If you haver never heard of WebJam, it is slam down version of a BarCamp, anybody can speak on almost any web related topic for a maximum of 3 minutes in bar in front of 100 or so web geeks just after happy hour finished, At then end of the evening, everybody gets to SMS vote for their favourite presentation/s. ie it is great fun

The talk which was far from serious. It was aimed at getting the local web developer community to think about how the websites they build are rendered by mobile devices. The examples used, where either created by members of the audience or the event’s sponsors websites, And it was successful, with the feedback I got on the night and the next few days.

Web-sledging now on YouTube

Nick — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 05:16:42 +0000

Thanks to GreenGuy, my moment of glory/infamy from WebJam Perth is now on YouTube.

Rumour is the slides and audio from video will be combined for better looking presentation.

The great websledge

Nick — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:44:20 +0000

aka the art of the 3 minute presentation

The websledge presentation is on slideshare, it has had a couple of minor additions (ie what I should of added earlier). But it really needs an audio track, because the words are far more important than the slides, plus you miss the cheer from the staff of one web design company when they find the have not been left out. I will let you know if the video goes online.

Creating a 3 minute presentation for WebJam is harder than creating a 30 minute presentation for another event. Your presentation can not any fat, it has to be tight, slick and without any extraneous material or slides. Mine was far from perfect, but compared to the others on the night, I think it was one of the best in terms of presentation, content well that was another matter.

Ignoring the fact that stunning content should win, and Scouta definitely deserved too, I expected Myles to do better with CTR because that really interested me. I want to discuss a few ways of improving your presentation for the next WebJam. And yes you need to present at the next WebJam:

It is a great learning experience.
Once you presented to 100 of your beer drinking peers, any other presentation is a piece of cake.
Even if you managed to stuff up, it is only a maximum of 3 minutes of disaster.
You learn the art of stripping down your presentation to the bare minimum.
If you thought the atmosphere was electric in the crowd, it was intoxicating on stage.
Trust me you just need to do it for the buzz.

Pick your topic well in advance, be it a cool project, something you are passionate about or some crazy hair brained scheme. Research it well, collect screen shots, look at different ways to present the same material.

Look at ways at injecting a little humour or a little crowd interaction into the presentation. Because that what works, well at least in gathering votes. I am sure Scouta would of won by a bigger margin, if Richard said that dot represents my (or somebody in the crowd) recommendations and make a fun comment. Then picked another dot and explained it was a podcast or video that people knew, explained how popular it is and why it was or was not linked to a particular person, in a humorous way.

Visuals, as a presenter you are stuck behind a desk you need something to keep their eyes occupied, so unless you are dancing the best way is with a demo, slides or video. You don’t want complex slides, with a lot of text. Keep the simple, keep the relevant. My slides had way too much text, one was irrelevant (the opera mini settings slide). But overall, I was happy with my number of slides. Yes I had three slides on one menu system, but that effectively demonstrated my point that the menu was so big.

I think Megyn’s Website Planner presentation would of had more impact if she borrowed some elements from the Wedding Planner movie. Like making use of the movie poster, opening credits or intro music. Adding additional humour and some visuals that where missing, from an interesting presentation.

You also need to rehearse as many times as possible. I thought I had a good 3 minute presentation, it was close to 5 minutes for the first couple of attempts. I cut it down to 3 minutes, rehearsed it a couple more times, only to find it disjointed. Changed it again and found ran more smoothly and ran 2 minutes 45 seconds. I also found myself not sticking to the script which was good, because

Be prepared for any possible problem, I almost won by default because Scouta’s presentation relied on using their laptop which had major problems connecting to the only projector. I had the presentation on my laptop, on a USB key in keynote, powerpoint and PDF format as well as a copy on Slideshare on the web.

Be ready to start as soon as you step on stage, make sure the browser or file is open, the URL is ready. I cringed every time a presenter got up on stage and wasted some of their precious 3 minutes, starting an application or browser, typing in a URL etc.

Most of all have fun.

So start getting ready, the next WebJam in Perth is rumoured to be happening in December possibly in conjunction with ByteMe.

How not to be prepared for a presentation

Nick — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:20:42 +0000

I had a visit from our venues coordinator this afternoon, needing a Macbook Pro to VGA connector, I was happy to oblige. This was shortly followed by a phone to help the presenter get the projector to display properly. Arriving at lecture theatre I found:

In addition to no Powerbook to VGA adaptor, luckily the Macbook Pro one fitted.
The presenter had not idea how to use multiple displays on their Powerbook.
There was minimal battery charge, (it was showing 10 minutes when I arrived) and the presenter did not bring their power adapter with them. A MacBook Pro power adapter will not fit a PowerBook.
The presentation consisted of a bunch of JPEGs (a very strange choice) stored on the PowerBook hard drive only.
The presenter’s only portable data storage was a USB stick that did not have enough free space for all the images that was required to be retrived from the PowerBook. And before I manage to get my USB stick the Powerbook’s battery was flat.

Luckily for the presenter there was some time before the presentation to begin and they were last seen heading to their office to get another copy of the images which where going to have to be presented on a PC laptop.

I would not think of doing a presentation without all the cables, remotes, power adapter etc. that I might need and a copy of my presentation on a USB stick in both keynote and pdf format.