Who’s Using Your Software?

While I might have a little bias because I really like the blogpost this talk was based on, I did enjoy this talk. The slides covered the topic well, and I enjoyed some of the humorous pictures depicting the different types of users. I also liked the discussion at the end and getting the audience to chime in. Now on for some advice:

While listening to the talk, it did sound like the speaker was a bit nervous perhaps. It seemed there was some short pauses between slides as the speaker would think about what in the flow of the presentation was next. Other parts the speaker would pause as he was trying to figure out how he wanted to explain something. Not huge issues, but it causes the presentation not to feel as smooth and prepared.

The best way to solve these problems is just plain old practice. I like to just run through my slides a few times by myself after my slides are mostly done. Helps train my brain on the words, phrases, and concepts I want to cover. Then, I like to give it to a small group to get some feed back. Over time, your individual presentations get better, and your overall ability to present just naturally smooths out. The important thing is to realize about the flow, and just work on making it better.