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What Makes and Breaks a Conference Presentation
I went to NCDevCon this weekend and I’ll start by saying that overall it was an excellent conference. My takeaway from the weekend however was something I saw that had nothing to do with web design or development.
There were two presentations that really stood out to me. The first one was a subject matter that I never heard about and frankly will probably never use. The presenter admitted that he wasn’t even an expert in the subject. Despite all this it ended up being one of the best presentations of the weekend. Thinking about why the presentation left me smiling wasn’t hard to pin down. It honestly boiled down to the presenter speaking with enthusiasm. He smiled, a lot. He was animated and he sold his topic with a passionate delivery. It was an unexpected surprise that I could have very easily passed on.
The second presentation that I’ll mention was one that I had circled on my schedule from the beginning. I was a subject that I was familiar with and it’s extremely relevant to what I do for a living. Unfortunately it was the worst presentation of the weekend. I’m sure the presenter was very knowledgeable about the subject but there was no enthusiasm in it’s delivery. He just seemed to be going through the motions. It was extremely disappointing.
Let’s be honest, how often do you learn something at a conference that you couldn’t learn with a simple Google search? Conferences, in my opinion, are meant to inspire. Being prepared, crafting amazing slides and having expert knowledge in your subject set the stage for a great presentation, but it all falls flat if the delivery doesn’t come across with enthusiasm. Sell me on your topic. I want to be inspired.
Show the audience how much you love your subject with the way you speak about it. You are allowed to make mistakes, technical glitches happen and there is always someone in the crowd who knows more than you, but your energy and personality can make up for anything. If you can’t bring enthusiasm to the mic then please, don’t step up to it.
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Tame Your CSS3 with Sass →
Here are the slides from my NCDevCon presentation on Sass. Enjoy.
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Erie, Pennsylvania
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Starting a Meetup →
I’m starting a front end development meetup. There are a couple web design/dev meetups in the Raleigh area but I wanted to start something that was really focused on the things that I want to learn about. If you are in the Raleigh and interested in web design/development then check out pink().
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When we design for me →
What happens when we forget about the end user, make assumptions about problems and design something because it sounds cool.
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Pursuing the How Instead of the Why →
I wrote some thoughts on learning web design, chasing the shiny object and why learning the fundamentals of design make you a better designer.
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CSS Tabs with Pseudo Selectors →
I posted a snap to Forrst detailing how I used ::before and ::after pseudo selectors to create navigation tabs. The snap is locked down in Forrst right now but when the project goes public I’ll make the post public.
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I’ve been busy in the lab coming up with a way to make this site ajaxy and transition with CSS animations. Here is a video demonstrating my first attempts at this.
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The Real Location Mayors →
It started out as an obsession but now I’m completely burnt out on location based sharing. Here’s a post about it over on the Media Two blog.
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What’s your mobile strategy? →
The latest Refresh the Triangle meetup focused on mobile strategy and I wrote a post about it on the Media Two blog.
