How can we improve MoR?

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Carl Mercier

não lida,
15 de jan. de 2008, 23:36:4315/01/2008
para Montreal on Rails
I want to hear what you think! How can our monthly meetups be
improved? What do you like, dislike?

Say it all here!

jfcouture

não lida,
16 de jan. de 2008, 11:05:4016/01/2008
para Montreal on Rails
I personally quite like the format.

What I'd like to try is having a bunch of quick 5 minutes
presentation. Not every subject needs a full hour. It could be a
plugin presentation, a single cool ruby trick, etc.. It would give
more people a chance to speak (which is a lot of fun BTW). We would
get to know more people. It would add more variety in the
presentations. It's a lot less intimidating to try your hand with a 5
mins presentation.

If we were to try this, I'd love to present the has_finder active
record plugin. It's really great, and 5 mins is more than enough.
Jean-Francois Couture
http://jfcouture.com

Carl Mercier

não lida,
16 de jan. de 2008, 11:07:5516/01/2008
para Montreal on Rails
As you already know, presenters are free to present in French or
English. However, some MoRers do not understand a word of French.

It was suggested that presenters should have English slides regardless
of what language they present in since everybody in the crowd is
(should!) be able to read English.

The goal here is to make MoR interesting for everybody. Do you think
that makes sense? Do you have better suggestions?



Mathieu Martin

não lida,
16 de jan. de 2008, 12:16:0116/01/2008
para montreal...@googlegroups.com
I agree with the english requirement for the slides, even though I'm french :-)

I also think JF is on to something here. Making a 30-60 minutes presentation is a lot of work, as I found out when I prepared for my JRuby presentation :-). So allowing quickies may tempt more of us to make presentations. (It's worth it)

Also, as someone mentioned at the pub yesterday, the resulting hour long presentations can drag a little bit. (I hope my JRuby presentation wasn't too bad, last November :-)

5-10 minute presentations showing little snippets of code, Ruby idioms or small Rails plugins could also be good interludes between two beefier presentations. Or we could even go crazy once in a while and have 5 or 8 different 10 minute presentations :-) This may involve too much overhead, however ( e.g. setting up the equipment).

Cheers,

Mat

Gary Haran

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16 de jan. de 2008, 12:37:3816/01/2008
para montreal...@googlegroups.com
I offer a few recommendations for presenters, not really as rules we must obey but guidelines to improve the presentation.

It has been 6 months now and we've had some really amazing presentations.  

Guidelines for better presentations.

- set expectations; present yourself to your audience, tell them what the purpose of your presentation is and let them know if you happen to have assumptions about the audience(should they understand REST, be familiar with controllers, etc...).
- KISS.   It is better to present easy concepts with the option to explain more complex ones at question period (or at a following presentation).
- people love seeing others coding in front of them; it's no surprise that railscasts.com is so popular.  Showing others how you code is a great way to let them pick up on valuable habits and shortcuts that you use.
- come prepared! don't decide to present something thinking you can wing it.  Doing a practice run is a great idea.  (That being said remember that the screen resolution of the projector is not the same as your monitor so if you plan to code adjust yourself on your practice run)
- post a follow up blog post about your presentation with any code/slides

ps: I should be capable of doing a March presentation if it is prior to March 17th.
--
Gary Haran
-----------------------
phone: 514-934-3603

Carl Mercier

não lida,
17 de jan. de 2008, 14:39:1617/01/2008
para Montreal on Rails
I'll come back here next week. We're pretty busy cranking out some
code here!

On Jan 16, 12:37 pm, "Gary Haran" <gary.ha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I offer a few recommendations for presenters, not really as rules we must
> obey but guidelines to improve the presentation.
> It has been 6 months now and we've had some really amazing presentations.
>
> Guidelines for better presentations.
>
> - set expectations; present yourself to your audience, tell them what the
> purpose of your presentation is and let them know if you happen to have
> assumptions about the audience(should they understand REST, be familiar with
> controllers, etc...).
> - KISS.   It is better to present easy concepts with the option to explain
> more complex ones at question period (or at a following presentation).
> - people love seeing others coding in front of them; it's no surprise that
> railscasts.com is so popular.  Showing others how you code is a great way to
> let them pick up on valuable habits and shortcuts that you use.
> - come prepared! don't decide to present something thinking you can wing it.
>  Doing a practice run is a great idea.  (That being said remember that the
> screen resolution of the projector is not the same as your monitor so if you
> plan to code adjust yourself on your practice run)- post a follow up blog

Carl Mercier

não lida,
25 de jan. de 2008, 13:10:4825/01/2008
para Montreal on Rails
Gary,

these are good guidelines! I agree, everybody should follow those.
Seeing some "code" or "demo" is what gets me excited.

From what I understand from this thread, people want:

- English slides regardless of the language of the presentation
- Not necessarily just 45 minutes presentation (we're trying that out
in Feb btw)
- Simple yet insightful presentations
- See some code

It all makes a lot of sense to me.

Oh... MoR will be on the 18 in March so it's a bit too late for you I
guess. I won't be able to attend either as I'll be in Austin, TX for
SXSW.



On Jan 16, 12:37 pm, "Gary Haran" <gary.ha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I offer a few recommendations for presenters, not really as rules we must
> obey but guidelines to improve the presentation.
> It has been 6 months now and we've had some really amazing presentations.
>
> Guidelines for better presentations.
>
> - set expectations; present yourself to your audience, tell them what the
> purpose of your presentation is and let them know if you happen to have
> assumptions about the audience(should they understand REST, be familiar with
> controllers, etc...).
> - KISS.   It is better to present easy concepts with the option to explain
> more complex ones at question period (or at a following presentation).
> - people love seeing others coding in front of them; it's no surprise that
> railscasts.com is so popular.  Showing others how you code is a great way to
> let them pick up on valuable habits and shortcuts that you use.
> - come prepared! don't decide to present something thinking you can wing it.
>  Doing a practice run is a great idea.  (That being said remember that the
> screen resolution of the projector is not the same as your monitor so if you
> plan to code adjust yourself on your practice run)- post a follow up blog
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