Synopsis: I got out of bed for this?

I like Haiku. I like Michael Phipps. I really like Michael he’s a nice, genuine guy, and I feel privileged to personally know him. He’s a great engineer, a bright intelligent person, and a great guy to hang around with. Michael is a lot of things. A salesman, he is not.

I understand that the B.O.F. talks are somewhat informal. That doesn’t mean they have to be. Many corporate presences were giving talks where they were walking developers through tutorials, answering questions, holding panel discussions over technical direction, etc. Many of them were widely publicized before LinuxWorld, during LinuxWorld, and across mailing lists with similar interests. The night of the Haiku talk, the presentation rooms were mostly empty. They seat around 100, and most of the other BOF talks had between 5 and 20 people in the audience. Keep in mind, my observations were also made around the time of the Haiku BOF talk — 6 to 7 (iirc) on Weds. evening. When most people are craving dinner.

Haiku’s BOF had three people show up. Two of them left early, one made it to the end of the reserved time… and that was only after we sucked him into a conversation when he initially got up to leave early.

Unlike sCALE, Michael decided to wing-it on this one. We had a laptop with a nightly build of Haiku running in VMWare, and Michael was just going to sorta riff, demo, talk, and answer questions. That’s exactly what he did. He demoed, answered questions, and demoed some more.

I’m by no means the worlds best public speaker, demo-god, or public-relations guru. I have, however taken a lot of classes on public speaking, interaction with audiences, and learned a lot from my time as a consultant (a.k.a. I.T. whore). So while I was sitting in the BOF I made some observations I’d like to pass along. Here’s an unofficial list of things you should keep in mind if you’re giving a demo or presentation on anything, especially Haiku. As a presenter, the reputation of the project and it’s developers rests in your hands, so PLEASE keep these things in mind!

Go in with a plan and an outline. Assume that no one in the audience will have questions. Plan as much engaging content as you can to fill as much of the time as you can. If you start getting interaction with the audience, think on your feet and trim out the bits you had to fluff up to fill the space. Mark those items with big *’s on your notes so you know what to skip.
If you know what the speaking term “side-lining” is. Do that to eat time instead of fluffing up your outline.
I gave a Haiku tech-talk at E-Gineering, LLC. in Indianapolis a few months back. I spent six hours prepping for a one-hour talk. It went fantastic, and I’ve got quite a few new people interested in Haiku. They’re watching from the sidelines, but perhaps someday they’ll jump into the fray.

Rehearse. No matter how informal or small the group is, REHEARSE your presentation! You’ll get a feel for the flow, be able to time things to see what takes time and where you’ll want to spend the majority of your time.

Don’t just answer the question, Elaborate! If you like to answer questions directly, then by all means do so. But then elaborate on the topic. Give people more information than they’re asking, then re-state your simple answer at the end. This will normally lead people to feel as if more of a conversation is taking place, and lead to a higher rate of follow-up questions. If you’re giving a presentation, chances are you’re fairly knowledgeable on the topic. Flaunt it.

Don’t let the room go silent. Even in the worst case scenario, a computer crash on stage, or a more common problem — feeling like you’ve nothing to say because you’ve got no plan — NEVER let the room go silent. That one moment of “gee, uhh.” undermines your presentation, the product you’re displaying, and your credibility as an authority on all things related to the topic. If you don’t have anything to say, or you’re out of topics, scan the room for questioning faces. Call people out. If someone has asked you a question earlier, revisit it – call on the individual and ask them if they’d like more information on that topic.

If all else fails, make the attendees present! People don’t just wander into a BOF talk for their health. They’re there because they’re interested! Ask them why they decided to attend, what they’re looking for, etc. The most common questions we got asked should have been immediately followed up with questions to the individual asking the question. They normally weren’t. Turning a simple query into an exchange will liven up an audience (especially a small one!) like nothing else. Take the opportunity to explore the attendees reasons for attending, think about how Haiku fits with their interests, and then lead the discussion in that direction.

Haiku is exciting. It embodies exciting technology that even Microsoft hasn’t been able to reproduce for over 10 years. There is absolutely no reason for any Haiku presentation to not ooze with excitement, lack substance, and generally be ‘dead’.

Walk-outs are a red flag. If people are walking out half-way through the time limit, something is very wrong with what you’re doing. Change it immediately. Find something that works. Jump-start the dialog. Do something. Don’t just sit there with your teeth in your mouth and ten 3-D tea-pots on screen. If it’s a small, personal sized crowd, why not ask them what they’d like to see more of, or offer to go over some of the finer points of the OS with them?

Every person counts. One, One Hundred. It doesn’t matter, every person counts. If you can sell one person on Haiku, that one person is going to go tell three or four other people about it. Everyone has heard of pyramid schemes. The number theory in those schemes works. Every one person you talk to is a potential Haiku developer. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually even normal people can learn to code, and some can be quite gifted at it. Keep that in mind, and don’t ever let someone leave thinking, “This guy doesn’t know what they’re taking about or doesn’t care.” or “That project sucks.” or “What a waste of time.” What you’re looking for is, “Wow. Cool.” or “I don’t know if it’s quite relevant, but it sure is interesting.” Interesting is good. People share interesting things with others. Boring things, stupid things, uninspiring things? Haiku is none of that, and if anyone gets that impression, then you’re failing as a presenter.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Core Dump, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.