4 ms·

The worst is when someone derails their own talk by putting up pics of their dog or cat and saying "oh yeah, there's my cat, Marbles, he's super cute and thinks

The worst is when someone derails their own talk by putting up pics of their dog or cat and saying "oh yeah, there's my cat, Marbles, he's super cute and thinks he's helping". Of course they can't just do it one time, so they have to sprinkle Marbles the cat through the entire presentation. The audience gets distracted, everyone says "aww", and by the end you realize you didn't absorb any value from the last 20 minutes.

rpmisms 5y ago
This annoys me too, especially since you can add a pet as fluff (pun intended) to a talk, while also integrating them as an example. I use my dog to demo things all the time. "here's our sample user, Lucy. She's not too smart, so let's see how she navigates this UI". That's just a good speaking tactic.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Yeah at least that's more clever and legitimately humorous.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    And more importantly, it's on-topic. Adding flavor to a presentation can be tricky, you can't just toss unrelated information in there and keep the audience focused, you have to integrate it into the data you're presenting. We're engineers, social intelligence isn't our specialty, but this is pretty easy to codify.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  And that is incredibly effective. You're using your dog pics to anchor ideas in people's heads! When people remember your preso, they'll remember the dog images, but those will all represent some meaningful take-away from the talk.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    Exactly! Brian Holt did this effectively in his (excellent) React course for Frontend Masters. He started off by introducing his dogs... And then built a pet adoption app. Brilliant, lots of hooks (literal and figurative) involving cute puppies literally built in to the project.
- ryanmcbride 5y ago
  Yeah this is a great example of how to do it. Just enough of a change up to refocus attention on what you're saying.

rpmisms 5y ago

This annoys me too, especially since you can add a pet as fluff (pun intended) to a talk, while also integrating them as an example. I use my dog to demo things all the time. "here's our sample user, Lucy. She's not too smart, so let's see how she navigates this UI". That's just a good speaking tactic.

ravenstine 5y ago
Yeah at least that's more clever and legitimately humorous.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  And more importantly, it's on-topic. Adding flavor to a presentation can be tricky, you can't just toss unrelated information in there and keep the audience focused, you have to integrate it into the data you're presenting. We're engineers, social intelligence isn't our specialty, but this is pretty easy to codify.
drewcoo 5y ago
And that is incredibly effective. You're using your dog pics to anchor ideas in people's heads! When people remember your preso, they'll remember the dog images, but those will all represent some meaningful take-away from the talk.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Exactly! Brian Holt did this effectively in his (excellent) React course for Frontend Masters. He started off by introducing his dogs... And then built a pet adoption app. Brilliant, lots of hooks (literal and figurative) involving cute puppies literally built in to the project.
ryanmcbride 5y ago
Yeah this is a great example of how to do it. Just enough of a change up to refocus attention on what you're saying.