Simon is a hands-on software architect who works within 
Thoughts on "Blog it!"
A short write-up of my blogging talk
A combination of multiple clients, SOA, DSDM vs. RUP, running a training course and other bits and pieces means that I haven't had the opportunity to write about the Blog it! SIG talk I presented last week. I've had some great feedback and it was certainly a lot of fun! Presentation wise, I didn't go the whole way down the Lessig style in terms of pace, but my slides contained either only a few words or simple images, all tied together with a story. Here are a few thumbnails to give you a feel.
When I first started doing presentations, I always felt a certain degree of comfort knowing that everything I wanted to talk about was on the slides. Of course, when this is the case, you do run the risk of starting to reiterate all or part of the slide word for word. With just images and a few words, you really do have to talk around the slide. It's quite challenging to start with, but ultimately it feels more natural and much less constraining.
To remind myself of the important points that I wanted to talk about, I made use of PowerPoint's Notes view, but limited my notes to to a single sentence or short set of keywords. For example, when the following slide was up, I wanted to talk about the benefits of giving everybody within a company a blog.
Incidentally, the above screenshot is taken from the "Presenter Tools" view in PowerPoint 2004 for Mac. For me, it's one of those killer features that I now just can't do without. It shows you where you are right now, where the next click will take you, the previous/next slide and the notes view. A great reason for keeping the notes short (or at least having some keywords before the real notes) is that you can bump up the zoom to 200% and read them from a distance. Also, if you're using Salling Clicker (now available for Windows) to control your slideshow from your mobile phone, you get the same notes (about the first two lines worth) on your phone. Handy if you've stepped away from your computer.
Are there any downsides to this approach? Yes, three that immediately spring to mind.
- My slide set weighs in at 20 meg.
- You do need to consider writing notes (in the PowerPoint Notes view) for people to read after the session.
- I spent a lot of time outside of work just getting the pictures and screenshots together.
Thanks to everybody that turned up, including Björn that posted a short write-up entitled Blogging about Blogging. It was great fun and switching slides with your mobile phone always amazes people the first time they see it!
Re: Thoughts on "Blog it!"
If you're using a PowerMac to do the slides, you can run the main presentation on one display with a second display showing a 'presenter's view', which can include things like the next slide coming up and/or notes.
I used to write training courses with PowerPoint and used the notes to write student-oriented description (not verbatim speech). The formatting kind of sucked, butt with enough effort it was possible to create code samples etc. in the notes.
One trick I learned was to have small icons at the bottom indicating when I had a slide that would involve animations, or fly on elements. For example, a !2 at the bottm meant that there were 2 fly-on elements (so I'd have to click 2 more times before I moved onto the next slide). Given that the icons were fairly small, it was easy for me to understand them but not distract the viewers.
