Pycon disappointment

[atom.anderson at gmail.com]

On Mar 20, 2:53 pm, Erich <sophac... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 20, 12:39 pm, Ed Leafe <e... at leafe.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mar 20, 2008, at 11:54 AM, atom.ander... at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > Number Three:  Too much code, not enough concept.
>
> > > Presenters this one's for you.  I can't count the number of
> > > presentations I attended where the presenter would click through three
> > > slides of pycode just to show us a two or three-line snippet that
> > > illustrated their point.  Worse yet, it was often at the bottom of the
> > > screen so no one but the front row could see it.  This goes for text
> > > two.  I saw some great presentations as well, and they had limited
> > > text on each slide.  The last thing your audience wants to see is a
> > > slide drenched in text of any kind.
>
> >         This is good advice: simple slides serve as organization cues, but
> > the content should come from the speaker. The worst case (only saw
> > this twice at this year's PyCon) is when there is a text-heavy slide
> > that the presenter simply reads. We can all read it ourselves! Your
> > job is to elaborate on the topic.
>
> >         I'd like to see two things regarding slides: first, if at all
> > possible, set a limit on the percentage of the talk that can consist
> > of slides. I would much rather see the presenter show actual
> > demonstrations of what they're talking about than simply talking about
> > it. If that's not possible, then in the session description, clearly
> > state the % of the talk that will be slides. Perhaps there are people
> > who like to sit in a room and watch long PowerPoint (-type)
> > presentations, but I'm not one of them. Let's see some code! Let's see
> > stuff working (and sometimes crashing!), and how changes affect the
> > results. When I've presented at PyCon and other conferences, that's
> > the part that I spend the most time on: preparing demonstrations. It's
> > not easy to do; certainly much more difficult than creating a slide
> > that sums up what the demo does. But it makes for a much more
> > interesting session!
>
> > -- Ed Leafe
>
> I'd like to see code listings made available to download where
> appropriate. That way the slides dont have much hard to read content,
> and we can look at the bits of code we find tricky as we see fit. And
> if we get bored with bits, we can play with code!
>
> Erich.

agreed.

and just to clarify, i LIKE CODE!  i hope we all do haha...  but in a
presentation setting if they could teach/share with us what they've
been doing, allow us to download some example code (and tinker with
it) and remove all those details from the slides, itd be vastly
helpful.

I fully expect anyone who presented this time (who takes time to TRY
to improve) will improve.

-adam