Clojurians Log v2

morning

Good Morning!

👋

Morning

Morning!

Morning

morning

maanz

I have been fearing my presentation tomorrow a bit more than I have realised. I’m really not built for the stage. But I have also been preparing, which has kept the worry at bay a bit. And during the weekend the pieces fell into place in a way that eased the fear and even gave room for some anticipation. I mean, maybe I can make the story I’m about to tell to make sense? Haha.

Morning

@pez if there’s anything you want to talk through beforehand I’m more than happy to help.

Morning

I find giving talks is scary. But I also enjoy it quite a lot. My ambitions are low, but quite important. If I manage to give my presentation without boring the audience, I’m quite happy. A couple of other tricks: 1. This is your story/presentation No one can do it but you 2. Noone knows how your story/presentation could have been told. Noone knows what you wish you have said 3. From https://presentationpatterns.com: Don’t go meta. Don’t talk about all the stuff that you didn’t have time to do nor all the things that you could have done differently. Audience doesn’t care.

Off to another meeting…

@pez This is fine. https://twitter.com/borkdude/status/1303727446299152384

@pez usually a community – and especially the Clojure community – is super happy for having people giving talks. You can even ask the audience for feedback. "This is my first talk" will and shall not be held against you. :hugging_face:

Good morning!

I don’t rehearse my presentations much, but I tend to have one test-run at the office for my colleagues before I do the presentation at a conference.

When I say I don’t rehearse them much, I meant that I don’t hold my presentation a bunch of times for myself in my basement. I do however work a lot with my slides, both in terms of visual, but also in terms of messaging. I also (have spent) a lot of time collecting tweets around subjects I might be interested in giving talks about. I also spend a fair bit of time working on formulations in my head, and some times I even write them down. And, lastly, I do have a fair amount of presenter notes, which I try not to read from, but have as a backup if I should get lost.

I recently did a presentation at a "big" Java conference in Russia (online). I didn't feel much like it to be honest, because it was a non-Clojure crowd and I was talked into it a bit by a GraalVM developer... but I still did it without much preparation and just "winged" it by having some slides and improvised the rest in the REPL, driven by questions from the audience / co-host...

All in all it still went pretty good I think ;)

And, to get your nerves down @pez, noone knows Calva like you do. You’re the subject matter expert. It’s just a matter of choosing what story you want to tell to that particular audience.

But I'm reluctant to do another presentation before a non-Clojure crowd about Clojure tools, since I usually don't get the feedback that wants me to do another one

I’m very curious about the non-IRL presentation thingy, fearing that it wouldn’t do much for me. Speaking at a conference is an event for me, and I’m fearing that non-IRL presenting would be like just another zoom meeting.

I have done several of these during the pandemic. Some of these I was talked into (because I was enthusiastic about WSL, a WSL developer asked me to do a presentation at WSLConf for example), but after doing a couple I realized I missed the interactivity. So after that I did a couple where I invited one or two co-presenters to ask me questions during the presentation, to keep it more conversational instead of a monologue.

Online, doing a presentation in a smaller group I find usually more fun

because of the interactivity

Thanks for all the tips and encouragement. friends! I love this channel.

Indeed. This talk is about Clojure and ClojureScript though. Thanks for trying! 😃 Jokes aside, I am not really an expert, and certainly not the expert on this subject. But I think I have managed to get something together that keeps it inside the particulars that I happen to have a lot of experience. Certainly more than the target audience.

Interestingly, since I am also preparing for two talks on the subject of Calva, it both gives this sense of solid footing – there is really no-one else knowing more than I do about it – and at the same time makes it oddly tricky. Finding out what of all the things I know about it that could possibly interest someone else. Making it a story from opening to closing that can be comprehended and worth listening too… Hmmm, but I have a ton of ideas and will need to sort and experiment a bit.

Certainly this non-IRL part of the meetup on wednesday makes it weird. It will be from a studio, so looks a bit like there is audience, but the room is empty. I wonder how that will feel…

@jasonbell what a wonderful offer! I don’t think I will be able to find the time to take you up on it for realz, but I just might get back to you for my preparation for two Calva presentations that are due soon. 😍

@pez Any time.

Gotta help each other