Monday, August 01, 2005

The Conway channel...

OSCON opens with two days of tutorials, and my first is Presentation Aikido by the irrepressible Damian Conway talking about how to talk to people.
If you're really passionate about it, it's mesmerising. Find a way to be interested in your material or your audience won't be... if at all possible, be entertaining. Entertaining always trumps informative, if you're not entertaining people will switch off...
Damian is one of the best public speakers I've ever come across, so I'm sitting here hoping he'll tell me how he does it...

Update: You have to love this quote from Damian,
From then on, whenever they think about the many worlds theory of quantum physics, they think about stoned physicists...
Update: Another great Damian quote with much truth in it,
Having great information on a shoddy looking slide is worse than having shoddy information on a great looking slide...
although I'm a bit unsure about,
...steal from the French!
Update: Damian is recommending that you should neither be arrogant, or nervous, the presentation is not about you, it's the ideas that are important. He admits that this is hard, but...
The goal is not to be there at all... be natural, don't try so hard that it shows...
Update: Brad is also blogging Damian's Presentation Aikido, and he's much better at note taking than I am, although his post comes in two parts...

Update: In closing,
The only way to speak better is to speak...

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