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Report from OFFF 2009

Sitting in an airless, dark hangar with 3,000+ other people, in microwave-like heat, listening to some “show OFFFers”, I was trying to decide whether I should stay here and die or go out to the beach and have a swim...

After being at FITC in Amsterdam last year (a much smaller conference compared to OFFF), and at OFFF this year I have been keeping a record of all the weak/strong aspects of every presentation I have seen (mostly development/programming-related), which I have decided to turn into a short guideline about how to make a good presentation.

Rule One: Intro

The first 5-10 minutes is always the crucial part of the speech – I’d compare it to the very first 10 seconds of contact between two people – if your attitude is good and words interesting enough, people will stay and listen, otherwise they’ll leave shortly, interrupting everyone. How to engage the audience then?

Stand up

Some presenters were sitting, some were standing. Stand up – you’ll definitely make more impact on the audience and strengthen your body language, communicating much more.

Do not talk too much (crap) about yourself

Keep your intro bit as short as possible, do not go into unnecessary details. Some presenters talk a lot about their private stuff or get into their private issues. The audience is not a support group thus it’s better to introduce yourself briefly without getting into personal trips. People really don’t care how cool you’re telling them you are, they will see it themselves.

Speak clearly, slowly and loud enough

It's a good idea to ask the audience if they can hear you well, sometimes the room acoustics may be difficult and you may lose some listeners. It’s best to ask people that can’t hear you to raise their hands and then ask the soundman to adjust the volume.

Rule Two: Have a concept and be prepared

Some speakers started off beautifully but once they got deeper, they got into too many details and then somehow got stuck – and then nothing else happened till the end. People don't really want to see/hear about the same stuff for hours, so try to change the subject from time to time, make it diverse, interesting and engaging. The audience can clearly tell if the speaker has thought his stuff through.

Ask yourself what might be interesting to other people and if/how they can benefit from it

Try to show something more than people can see on your website, show some unedited footage/mock-ups, sketches, "the making of" films etc.

Try to make your entire presentation tell a story, have the beginning and a definite end (i.e. surprise with a sudden ending). If you see you’re running out of time, skip some less important parts in the middle but keep the end bit.

Also try not to repeat yourself too much, saying the same phrase 2-3 times is usually enough.

Deal calmly with technical issues

If it comes to the worst (i.e. you've lost all your data/your hard drive got eaten) – improvise, but never make a fundamental mistake by making excuses (unless you make a joke out of it).

Rule Three: Entertain

Stefan Sagmeister came up onto the stage dressed in a rather funny woman’s polka dot costume. I’ve been seeing Brandon Hall wearing some kind of a chef’s suit. Whatever the outfit was, it always piqued my curiosity. What’s that all about? Entertainment.

By putting on something special you are showing you’ve made an effort to wear something other than a t-shirt. That pays back in the extra attention you receive. Beware though, it’s easy to exaggerate and be too fancy, stylish hats and glasses will make a celebrity out of you. So uncool!

Ka-boom!

Try to surprise audience by showing some shocking/unexpected/impactful imagery (even ones that are in contrast with what you're talking about). Generate a wide spectrum of emotions, from laughter to concern.

It’s important to avoid over-excitement – if you get overwhelmed, you’re likely to lose your clarity.

Interact

Get responses from the audience, ask them to raise their hands etc. Form questions in a way that will give you an immediate estimate on something important, but avoid obvious questions – otherwise people won’t interact.

Reward

You can bring some prizes to give away at the end, throw t-shirts or something else, people will adore you and you'll keep them sitting till the end.

Rule Four: Impress, motivate and educate

You’re talking to hundreds, be responsible and make people amazed. Get them to strive to go further every day.

Gijs Gieskes was showing his amazing DIY instruments, unfortunately some of them didn’t work, so he went online to show the videos of them. That didn’t work either as the network lag was too long for the videos to buffer in a reasonable time. So don’t rely on the internet connection as it may be flaky and you won’t be able to play your Youtube videos, try to have all your files available locally.

Use full screen mode when possible, it’s nicer to view a video without unnecessary context. For the same reason try not to use fancy backgrounds for your slides, it's distracting and takes the focus away from what you're saying.

You can write your own software to handle your presentation, it’s very well received by the audience as it proves that you’re really prepared.

When things go wrong, let it go. If your code still doesn’t compile after the third attempt and neither you nor the audience can fix it, leave it. It’s better to say sorry (weakness is a strength) than desperately trying to attack the frozen beef with the plastic knife.

Make full use of your operating system or application by using keyboard shortcuts, auto completion (coders) and other techniques. There are two main benefits of this approach: firstly, you do things faster, so the audience doesn’t need to roll their eyes when you type SuchACoolFunctionNameWhichIsOnlySeventyFiveCharactersLong; and secondly, you teach people how to do repetitive things more efficiently.

If you show source code, always use monospaced font, dark background and white text usually works better than the opposite, especially in hard lighting conditions. Delete all commented code that you won't use in your demonstration.