Tag: conference

Don’t tell your audience you’re ill-prepared

I sometimes hear conference speakers admit they only finished their slides minutes before their talk started. Or I see them the day before admitting that they still have to write the whole thing.

Whether you’re presenting at a huge national conference or a smaller local group, this is simply disrespectful to the people who take the time to be your audience.

The only reasonable explanation I have for why people do this is that they’re trying to manage expectations. Concerned it won’t go well they make as if it was a last minute job, even if it wasn’t. If it does turn out to be a disaster then, well, they didn’t try hard. If it’s a success, even better! They just threw a great talk together without any effort.

But when a speaker admits this kind of thing, all I hear is that they don’t care enough about my time to prepare and for some inexplicable reason, they’re terribly proud of themselves for it. Bragging about it almost.

Not all talks require major preparation but even the shortest and most basic require proper consideration.

Not everyone has time to prepare in-depth talks but if you know that’ll be a problem for you, perhaps you shouldn’t agree to speak in the first place.

If you do find yourself ill-prepared though, might I suggest that you don’t let your audience in on it.

Don’t be proud about wasting their time.

That just makes it worse.

Women in Technology

Dom kicked up a women in technology debate again recently.  I’ve seen a few responses, from one chap who thinks women have achieved equality already to a woman who doesn’t think girl’s brains are generally good for “programming” – and someone else who thinks there isn’t a problem as long as you’re thick skinned enough to put up with a sexually hostile workplace.

The main gripe appears to be with “women only” conferences, such as the Women on the Web conference, organised by a group called Forward Ladies, or the Geek Girl dinners.

I think a fair summary of his, and some other commenters, opinion is that these “women-only” events don’t help the effort to get more women involved in technology. Comparing it to positive discrimination in many ways.

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Euruko Ruby Conference 2008 in Prague

I’m in Prague with Brightbox for the Euruko Ruby Conference 2008 from tomorrow evening until Monday morning. I’ll post photos to the Brightbox Flickr photostream as we go along.  If anyone wants to meet up for a drink, email me at john at johnleach dotty co dotty uk.

UPDATE: Photos here.