Re: PGCon 2008 RFP - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 01:47:00PM -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>
> > Standardized slide templates contributed significantly to the boredom.
> > "What presentation am I in again?  Is this Scaling J2EE Servers, or Web
> > Security?   Haven't I seen this slide before?"
>
> IMO, that's completely bogus.  If you don't know what presentation
> you're in, or why you attended it, that's a whole other problem
> altogether.

It's a problem much exacerbated by a cookie-cutter approach to slide
decks.

> No one puts the title of their session on every slide, so the basis
> of your argument, that the slides themselves help you determine
> which presentation you're in, seems bogus to me.

It doesn't seem bogus to me, and I clocked about 200,000 miles last
year doing presentations, the vast majority of which were quite
popular.

> > I successfully fought the JavaOne committee last year *not* to use
> > the JavaOne template because it interfered with my delivery.  The
> > result? My presentation was voted #2 or #3 in the conference
> > overall (out of > 200), even though it had no real Java content.
>
> Hmm, seems like too many variables there to me.  Am I correct in
> saying that you attribute your success solely to your slide deck and
> not your delivery, questions answered, etc.?

No, but a forced slide format would significantly detract from my
ability to make the slides helpful.

> > OSCON, the hardest-to-get-into OSS conference in the English
> > speaking world, offers "OSCON" slide templates.  But we don't
> > force or even harass people to use them; we prefer speakers with
> > their own distinctive  style.
>
> Have you seen some of the PG presentations?  I recall two or three
> at PGCon last year which were difficult to read due to colors and/or
> too much text on a single slide.  If you were at the back of the
> room, you were screwed.

It's up to you to give feedback both directly to the speakers and to
the conference organizers.  Cookie-cutter slide decks solve none of
this.

> Now, could someone jam way too much text into a standardized slide?
> Sure.

Making slide decks is an art with not fewer wrinkles in it than
writing good C code.

> But, it's going to be a bit more obvious that you're doing something
> wrong when your slides stop looking like the templates (such as 15
> bullets at a font size of 8pt instead of 5 or so at a font size of
> 14pt).

If you think the cookie-cutter approach will help fix a problem like
this, you have a *lot* of evidence to present in order to make your
case.  Frankly, you don't have that evidence, and those of us who've
dealt with the cookie-cutter approach have plenty.

> > It's my assertion that people who promote the use of standard
> > slide templates do so because they don't know how to put together
> > a good presentation themselves.  Heck, some really good
> > presentations use *no slides at all*.
>
> That assertion is blatantly false because it's not the presenters
> who promote the use of templates, it's the conference organizers.

Conference organizers can't be expected to have a clue about making
slide decks, and fortunately for all concerned, they aren't usually
asked to have an opinion on the matter.  When a plumber gets asked
about on oil painting, you can only accidentally (or in rare cases of
plumber/painters) get a reasonable answer.

> It all comes down to the experience of the presenter and whether or
> not they know how to give a good presentation.  Standardized slides
> are there to promote the conference itself (as all future references
> to conference material have the conference name all over it) and to
> help presenters focus more on the content than on designing their
> slides, which is what most people are there for... content.

You're just completely mistaken on this one.  Presenters need a very
free hand about their slides, including the decision about whether
slides are an appropriate medium for their talk.  Some of the best
talks I've seen so far have included no slides at all.

> I don't really care about this topic one way or another,

You could have fooled me.

> just that most arguments against standardization seem to be
> preference-related and without much logic.

If you imagine that logic by itself makes for good presentations, I
guarantee that your presentations will suck.

> While the choice lies in the hands of the PGCon organizers, it
> probably wouldn't hurt for JD to put up another poll like he did for
> PG East planning.

Actually, it would.  Those of us that have some experience on this
matter think it's a rotten idea.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

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