Repost: Visual Presentations – They Aren’t Papers
If you read this blog regularly, you probably know that I am anything but succinct. It may surprise you to know that in my technical writing and presentations, I go too far the other way in many cases: I tend to make the assumption that people have a pretty good idea of what I’m saying. This has, on more than one occasion, left me with someone giving me the deer-in-the-headlights stare. I really don’t mind going back and explaining some of the information necessary to grasp what I am discussing, but I often don’t realize it’s not something that people are familiar with. As time has gone on, however, I’ve gotten better at gauging and addressing areas where my audience may be need extra knowledge. When I’m doing slides or a presentation, my version of being succinct is to create slides that have only a brief outline (2-5 bullet points…
Weekend Journal: Know Your Nerd Audience
One benefit to being part of a large(ish) corporation is purchasing power (not super large, but big enough to turn a head or two). You get lower part costs, you get more guarantees of delivery and you get better support. And sometimes as part of support, you get to talk to some very smart people (hardly exclusive to when you’re an important customer). Well, let me back up a little bit. Sometimes you get to talk. And sometimes you only get to listen. My issue comes up when vendors come in and say they want to talk. That they want to have a ‘conversation with their valued customer’…and then proceed to plow through slides that you have no interest in. This happens all the time and I dutifully sit through them, especially if they’ve bought me lunch (I can be bought with food, doubly so for good food). My problem…