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This is sane advice. Lots more sane advice out there in the world. Yet, there is an element of YMMV. Like, I only ever do live demos, including lots of live co

This is sane advice. Lots more sane advice out there in the world. Yet, there is an element of YMMV. Like, I only ever do live demos, including lots of live coding. My "slides" are my org-mode file, with org-babel, and org-tree-slide. My premise is that, in-conference, peoples' eyes will glaze over sooner or later because of information overload from other talks and/or intense social engagement. So I need to land one maybe two engaging moments. Interested parties will engage in the "hallway track", post-talk. At-home viewers will scrub through the recording. All people have access to slides and/or a detailed blog post. Disinterested parties are free to use "the law of two feet" and leave if it's not working for them. My talks have never been polished diamonds --- all elements of serendipity and demofail are embraced. So far, nobody has booed me off-stage, and I've always had fun after-talk conversations. Also, in terms of actually doing the thing, this is what my, ah, "process" ends up looking like [1]. I discovered many people relate to it. [1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-talk/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-tal...

happytiger 3y ago
Mad respect for live demoing in a talk on conference Wi-Fi. There is something to authenticity and embracing potential failure that flies in the face of the well manicured presentation culture we have today that needs to come back. As long as the talk can be done, or there is a plan b, why not? I think a lot of concern stems from wasting other people’s time: which is valid. But presenting is also a deeply culturally engrained performance art that sometimes sacrifices authenticity for appearances.
- adityaathalye 3y ago
  The trick is to assume conference WiFi does not exist and work against an all-local setup. Cache all the things :) The other trick is to make material available to everyone, post-haste. This is especially important for remote talks [1]. Apropos embracing failure. I work hard to set up a smooth path. I don't want things to fail. Yet, I actively chose to be open to it because undoing the failure has a habit of creating a learning moment for someone among the dear listeners (they too try to debug in their head, and arrive at their own insight). [1] In 2022, I gave a talk as a live demo at a remote conference. Three different networks at three different locations in my area flaked on me. My home network because of digging in my area, another mid-way through my talk because of power failures, and an otherwise-pretty-good wireless network because it lost packets exactly over my presentation and was just fine ten minutes after. This was after I prayed to the demo gods at the start. See slide #5: https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-ways-to-fizz-buzz-clj.pdf https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-way... And the talk (the zone was deadpan, laconic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A And the accompanying blog post: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojure/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojur...

happytiger 3y ago

Mad respect for live demoing in a talk on conference Wi-Fi. There is something to authenticity and embracing potential failure that flies in the face of the well manicured presentation culture we have today that needs to come back. As long as the talk can be done, or there is a plan b, why not? I think a lot of concern stems from wasting other people’s time: which is valid. But presenting is also a deeply culturally engrained performance art that sometimes sacrifices authenticity for appearances.

adityaathalye 3y ago
The trick is to assume conference WiFi does not exist and work against an all-local setup. Cache all the things :) The other trick is to make material available to everyone, post-haste. This is especially important for remote talks [1]. Apropos embracing failure. I work hard to set up a smooth path. I don't want things to fail. Yet, I actively chose to be open to it because undoing the failure has a habit of creating a learning moment for someone among the dear listeners (they too try to debug in their head, and arrive at their own insight). [1] In 2022, I gave a talk as a live demo at a remote conference. Three different networks at three different locations in my area flaked on me. My home network because of digging in my area, another mid-way through my talk because of power failures, and an otherwise-pretty-good wireless network because it lost packets exactly over my presentation and was just fine ten minutes after. This was after I prayed to the demo gods at the start. See slide #5: https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-ways-to-fizz-buzz-clj.pdf https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-way... And the talk (the zone was deadpan, laconic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A And the accompanying blog post: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojure/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojur...