Animals in talks

[Martijn Verburg]

Hi all,

So I'm looking to do an Ignite talk on "the greatest threat to tech
conferences today" at Oscon. Basically it's going to be a very
tongue in cheek presentation where I present 20 slides, each slide
containing:

1. The Speaker + a link to their talk
2. The important point they were making
3. The picture of the (probably cute & fluffy) animal
4. How the animal ruined the message

e.g. Something like "So here's X, talking about Y (note the link!), an
awesome <technology> for <this reason>,
important knowledge right?! Well this particular <animal> came and
ruined that, <mini rant>"

So if you've ever given a presentation with a cute and fluffy animal
then I'd like to grab the 4 points from you + a copy of the
picture. Full accreditation etc of course!

--
Cheers,
Martijn

[Joe Sondow]

I'm curious what your thesis is. Why do you assert that an animal picture automatically ruins the message of a slide, before you've even seen the presentation or slide deck?

In my experience a well-chosen image that evokes a relevant emotional response increases the attention span and memory retention of audience members.

[Jon Kiparsky]

Clearly if someone has emotional responses, they're not suited to programming, and not going to understand the presentation - and probably don't have an attention span or any sort of retention.
Duh.
-jpk


(please insert a smiley face if you require one)

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[Ricky Clarkson]

Learn You A Haskell ( http://learnyouahaskell.com/ ) is clearly completely ruined by its pictures of animals.

[Martijn Verburg]

Hi Joe,

Hopefully when the talk is published on the ignite site my intent will be clear :-).

Cheers,

Martijn

--

[Joe Sondow]

Every audience member responds to a presentation based on their mood, preconceptions, and the style of the presenter. All programmers have emotional responses because all programmers are human beings. For any given topic, a boring presentation is less effective for a large group of programmers than an interesting presentation.

On Wednesday, July 4, 2012 3:11:40 PM UTC-7, Jon Kiparsky wrote:

Clearly if someone has emotional responses, they're not suited to programming, and not going to understand the presentation - and probably don't have an attention span or any sort of retention.
Duh.
-jpk


(please insert a smiley face if you require one)

[Jon Kiparsky]

Okay, being more serious this time, I have to disagree with you on the implicit assumption that pictures of animals make a boring lecture less boring. On the contrary, I find the more time lecturer spends on window dressing, the less confidence the lecturer has in the material - and on this, they're often right. Unless the picture is relevant, leave it out. In fact, you can generally improve a presentation by orders of magnitude by getting rid of the powerpoint and just saying what you have to say. Eliminating distraction helps both you and the audience focus on your talk.
Same thing with jokes - I can assure you, no matter who you are, that comedy is a lot harder than you think it is, and you're not as good at it as you think you are. If you have something to say, say it. If it's worth saying, that's all you need. If it isn't, no amount of clever pictures or bad jokes will help.

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[Josh Berry]

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Jon Kiparsky <jon.ki...@gmail.com> wrote:
> this, they're often right. Unless the picture is relevant, leave it out. In
> fact, you can generally improve a presentation by orders of magnitude by
> getting rid of the powerpoint and just saying what you have to say.
> Eliminating distraction helps both you and the audience focus on your talk.
> Same thing with jokes - I can assure you, no matter who you are, that comedy
> is a lot harder than you think it is, and you're not as good at it as you
> think you are. If you have something to say, say it. If it's worth saying,
> that's all you need.

I don't know. I find the tension between "just say it" and "comedy is
harder than you think" interesting. Not to mention the falsity of
your statement. Consider, the engineers "simply said" that the
Challenger was likely to have problems.

I have no argument against Tufte when he says that Powerpoint is
horrible. My gripe is this idea that public speaking doesn't have an
art to it. If you want to be able to convincingly tell people things,
you will have to practice. There is an art to the practice. This is
no different than public discourse on the internet, and it doesn't
take much searching (specifically my posts) to find that not everyone
is effective at it.

[jon.ki...@gmail.com]

The challenger could have been saved if there had been cute animals in the powerpoint?
I'm pretty sure I'm not buying that.

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[Josh Berry]

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 9:52 AM, jon.ki...@gmail.com
<jon.ki...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The challenger could have been saved if there had been cute animals in the
> powerpoint?
> I'm pretty sure I'm not buying that.

No no. I wasn't meaning to argue for animals in powerpoints. I was
arguing against "if you have something to say, say it." I don't
understand the animals thing. Granted, I think O'Reilly did endear me
to them for a while on books. Not sure how they could be said to have
helped me understand anything, though.

[Kevin Wright]

The problem in *that* sentence is "powerpoint".

Animals of any kind (cute or otherwise) are just fine in Keynote :)

[jon.ki...@gmail.com]

I do have a soft spot for the O'Reilly covers, but that's just good design.
On the other issue,  it seems to me that there's a  difference between explaining and entertaining, and the latter requires a lot more training and practice than the former, and a lot more than most amateurs seem to be aware of.
A bad lecture at least has a point. Bad comedy is pointless torture.

----- Reply message -----
From: "Josh Berry" <tae...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 5, 2012 9:58 am
Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Animals in talks
To: <java...@googlegroups.com>

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 9:52 AM, jon.ki...@gmail.com

<jon.ki...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The challenger could have been saved if there had been cute animals in the
> powerpoint?
> I'm pretty sure I'm not buying that.

No no.  I wasn't meaning to argue for animals in powerpoints.  I was
arguing against "if you have something to say, say it."  I don't
understand the animals thing.  Granted, I think O'Reilly did endear me
to them for a while on books.  Not sure how they could be said to have
helped me understand anything, though.

[Ricky Clarkson]

Cute animals dying in a broken up spaceship would have got the message through.

[Martijn Verburg]

Hey all,

FYI - gave the talk tonight and gave the Posse a Honey Badger shout
out - I think folks got the message :-). Thanks for the send ins
folks!

Cheers,
Martijn

[Kevin Wright]

Video & slides, or it didn't happen...

[Martijn Verburg]

OSCON ignite will eventually put up the talk - Cheers, M