aalvz.github.io

Date: February 28th 2015

Lessons learned.

In a previous post I talked about a horrible outcome of the last presentation at EyeO. Here are some things that can be improved and remembered in every presentation:

This was a complicated presentation due to the fact that we had to keep the interest of the business part and the IT part and they need to beintroduced in the ground of what is going on. So:

1. Copy / Paste = Portability

Before the presentation make sure to prepare upfront a virtual text document with useful links, passwords, keywords: (A git gist is perfect for this)

• Link to the presentation
• Link to images
• Link to the project.
• IP’s and ports involved.
• … and whatever that could be useful for the presentation.

This document must be the root of everything that you will present. If it’s not there, don’t present it.

Why is this important? Because most likely you won’t present using your own environment (I hate macs), and the only thing that saves you at this point is Copy and Paste.

It is easy to share, and easy to open in any computer in this planet. And that’s what we want. Portabillity.

1. Time to Talk

Begin with non tecnical stuff and make sure to: (in this order):

- Define WHAT is whatever you are presenting and what is it USED for.

Complete normal sentence: ___________________ is a ________________________________ to ___________ .

The simpliest the better.

Avoid tecnical words as much as possible. (Logs, IPs, DB, …… ).

Make sure to show the benefits of whatever you’re presenting. Make them shine:

- Show a bunch of **screenshots** to represent the idea behind it.

This will save work and it will be easier to explain.

Managers just need to view something. Show the result of the WHAT.

- Explain **HOW it works**. Tecnical stuff. 

Now the business part probably won’t care. But don’t worry. They already know what is useful for them and now they are thinking how can they use what you presented.

1. REMEMBER

   It makes no sense to present somehting that “On my system it works”.

If things are going bad (everything breaks) presenting what you have in your machine may save the day but you already lost in that case.

The system that you’re presenting need to be WORKING on ANY machine. A puppet config is the best in this case or at least know how to configure everywhere.

Whatever it is, it needs to be available remote and accesible to everyone.

• It is better to NOT finish completely with everything but make sure to have the parts that you’re done with complete.
• Show COSTS($) everytime you can. Money is the language that everyone undestand. With this you can put it in relation with something else.
• It’s more important that it runs in the target (remote system) and not in your development system.
• If you’re having troubles, with the keyboard of something, send someone of the atendees to get one.
• If you can’t answer to something, don’t try to ask. Answer with the data that you know.

1. Happy presentation

This should be enough to have a succesfull presentation.. or at least not to fail epically… Have fun and be relaxed! You’re just trying to make everything better.

All this important instructions were thanks to the feedback I gathered from the people who was there (Not everyone…) and especially thanks to Matze and Henning …

Thkns guys. You rock