I'm preparing a one hour Cocoon Power Trio presentation today, for next week's BeJug Web Workshop. Being a Java non-coder, and presenting in front of a bunch assumably more technical people than me, I'm trying hard not to add buzzwords which could have overloaded semantical meanings for all those people who indulge into closely tracking the ever-changing Terms and Terminology in Java Webapp Land (as featuring on the homepage of JavaBlogs and TSS).
All speakers received a template Powerpoint (bah) presentation, based on the JavaPolis template, presumably based on the JavaOne template from Sun. Smile, Mr. Tufte. I need to come up with a "What you're going to learn" slide, and a "The Single Thing I Want You To Remember From This Presentation" slide. Also, it is suggested to inject a "Thought Provoking Controversial Statement" slide in the beginning of your presentation. Since I'm scheduled as the last presentation of the day, I assume I'll have to be happy if not too many attendees already are sleeping when my time is there, and for sure, I will need to have some Statement to desperately grab their attention. Or do something funny, like cross-dressing like Zorro or whatelse.
Much window dressing required, so it seems, which is a situation I mentally counter with silly jokes. It's good to have a silly sense of humor when you're me. But it doesn't help if people unwillingly add onto my temporary state of persistent irony by putting sentences like "Uncle Bob notes that the Dependency Inversion Principle and the Domain Driven Design concept of Layers seem to contradict each other until you introduce another dimension." on their blog. That's so metrosexual, don't you think? Or is it just me being dumb and getting old?
The only wisdom about Dimensions can be obtained from Calvin, but we knew that already, of course:
"Cocoon Power Trio" - I tend to like this name ;-)
Humm... Had I realized you were a Java non-coder or I'd have given the things you say far less credence. I guess I never researched the matter...yes.. You are now officially less relevant. :-)
Having given such a workshop presentation myself last year, I can reassure you: you can just drop the slides you don't like to fill out. Nobody has told me "hey, you didn't tell us what we were supposed to learn". OTOH, people complained that the presentation was too short. Oh yeah, and that I broke the clip off the wireless mouse-y device out of sheer nervousness...