Keynote: Beyond Code

Enthousiastic speaker, however not having any slides or any form of visual aid make the talk hard to follow/digest. Sometimes I was completly lost about the goal of the talk.

As an attendee I want to learn stuff and be entertained. Since talks should address different knowledge levels, learning new stuff might not always be the case. However providing some entertainment value to make your talk more pleasant, easier to understand and enjoyable is not being done by speech only. Normally I fully support the 'less is more' paradigm, but during this talk it felt unprepared and unstructured. Sorry!

The subject is interesting but I found the talk itself boring.
It lacked "energy", it was very monochordic, nothing stoping me from "falling asleep".
People usually can keep focus for 10 to 20 minutes. Then they loose focus. This will always happen, but we can just ignore it and have ppl randomly loose their focus, or we can be in control and break their focus ourselves with a good joke or a funny image or changing the tone of our voice frequently or whatever. The point is that if we can control when they loose focus, we can control when they have focus on the important stuff we want to say.

This talk did not work for me at all. The presentation was in no way engaging, which for a keynote without visual support is essential. Content wise, I did not recognise many of the premises on how soft skills are regarded in companies, it sounded more like advice for IBM in the 80s, I can't imagine any 21st century European company operating that way. All in all it felt well meant but not terribly relevant.

Good advice! Bit long to concentrate for an hour without slides.

What was told was interesting but how it was told can be improved.

The talk kind of meandered over several concepts, which were interesting in themselves, but didn't really add up to a coherent talk. Interesting food for thought nonetheless.

Had a point, but could have brought it across in 10 minutes total

Interesting talk, well brought. I actually liked that there were no slides. Kudos for keeping me interested without them.

I'm not yet sure if I agree with all things that were said but it's certainly food for thought!

Great talk on a very important subject, it's a pitty it seems to be lost on to some people judging by some comments here. Like Joe put it: good soft skills is what separates great developers from excellent developers. Communication is key.

The form of the talk could have been better, the notes on the phone were slightly distracting to me, but for me a great talk doesn't have to be 'entertaining'.

Great and inspiring talk! Absence of slides was plus for me and emphasize skill and self-confidence of speaker.

Very interesting talk - important subject which fits well with a changing focus in the IT world. However, for a keynote I would expect slides!

Interesting at first, but was a bit to long to keep my attention.

Really good message, but I would question the delivery - seemed a little 'stream of consciousness -like', and I felt it could have guided the audience better towards specific takeaways.

Please please please use some slides for the next time. The subject was very interesting but just, and i'm sorry, boring to hear.

Although the message was good I think this could have been done in 10 minutes. I found it hard to keep my focus since there were no slides or jokes at all.

Great talk. I've been thinking about my 'real' skills personally so it came at an opportune moment. I've been in the business for a few years and I've noticed that real solutions require both a technological approach and a human approach. This talk helped me streamline some of thoughts I've been having.

Great inspiring talk, I liked the fact that there were no visual distractions. Nicely done!

Great inspiring talk, thanks!

Good talk about soft skills, but due to a lack of slides sometimes hard to follow and get the full picture.

I found the topic absolutely keynote-worthy, and the content was good enough. Empathy as a skill is so undervalued it deserves attention. From employers, but also developers themselves.

Some talks/speakers can do extremely well without slides, but I felt in this case that the combination was not hitting the mark. Putting a bit more energy into the delivery, or have bit of visual excitement would have done a lot to get me more inspired.

I've missed the visual presentation, which could had give this talk more a boost. Also, if this talk was in a smaller room, it was easier to understand for me, but in the Forum it lost it's energy.

The subject and the story were good but it was presented with quite a low energy. The lack of visual support by slides make the lack of energy in this talk even worse. at quite some points i noticed i lost focas and the message was completely lost to me.

There was a lot of good advice in this talk on very important subjects. I didn't mind the lack of slides.
Though, for a opening keynote I feel it missed a bit of energy. Also, what I found a bit distracting was the checking of the mobile phone you were holding.
Thank you!

Bold move to go without slides. Shows the confidence the presenter has.

As other's already mentioned, you could loose focus sometimes, so Juozas can try to improve this part. But in general the message was communicated very clearly and it would be difficult to disagree with him that "real" skills matter.

nice food for thought, nice to see a talk without slides!

I only caught half of the presentation (had to go set up for a talk directly after), but what I did get to hear seemed a little hard to follow. There are other comments here, about slides and the level of engagement, which sum up how I feel about those. It's entirely possible that nerves sapped energy, which I think slides would have helped to re-balance.

The subject was interesting, but sometimes it was hard to follow. Slides would have helped immensely in conveying the structure of the talk.

Great topic but felt like it was a 20min talk that was stretched to fit in the timeslot.

Nice talk and interesting topic. For me the lack of slides was not a problem at all; it drew the focus to your actual spoken content. The talk felt a bit stretched though and lacked some structure, which made the talk come across a bit incoherent in my opinion. Keep spreadng this important message!

While I was concerned for the first 5 minutes that Joe was unaware that the slides weren't showing, once I realised he was intentionally going without projected material it became much easier to focus.

I personally enjoy distraction free talks, without supporting material; sometimes having slides for the sake of having slides can seem unnecessary. However, I also understand that different people have different learning modalities (visual, auditory, hands-on, etc). Having read some of the other feedback here, I would agree that slides could help those who need them. It could also assist those for whom English is not their native language.

The content of the talk was great, and I loved the way Joe took us through a journey of the mind, and mind-hop of thoughts and issues, and ways we can address them. It was a great way to start the conference. Thanks Joe!