Whether you're just getting started writing a presentation abstract, or whether you want to double-check it, or whether you want to understand why your abstract wasn't picked, it's always the right time to step back and ask some big picture questions about your conference submission. The blessing and the curse of the active database community…
When I'm writing a presentation or blog post, I often start here:
It's a photo of me in my office in Dallas, Texas in 2004. When I look at that picture, I remember everything like it was yesterday. I can talk at length about everything on the bookshelf, on my desk, in my drawers (the desk drawers, that is).
If your New Year's resolution is to start presenting at user groups and conferences, congratulations! You're about to embark on a fulfilling journey that will enrich the lives of thousands of people. It's a blast. Now let's put some thought into the tool you're going to use. You're going to be working on these same…
The four of us were talking about the writing tricks we use, and we thought you might enjoy hearing our styles. How Brent Writes I use RememberTheMilk.com to track my blog post ideas. I can use it from anywhere via a web browser, phone app, whatever. I can tell when I'm in the mood to…
When you're speaking at a conference, try to get the room schedules long before the event day. Right now, the PASS Summit conference schedule is available, and each speaker's room is listed.
Then, check out the building's floorplan - in this case, the Washington State Convention Center's floorplans page. Check out the seating capacity for your room.
I began presenting on SQL Server two years ago. At the time I was a Senior Database Administrator. My workdays were spent getting ahead of the next big performance problem in an environment where software changes rolled into production like gangbusters. I was under a lot of pressure to be super-technical, stay on top of…
Bad news: you don't have any.
You THINK you have the right to all of this stuff:
The conference season is coming - let's get you a speaker slot. Before you submit an abstract, do your research. Here's some of my past posts about presentations and abstracts: How to Write a Conference Abstract - the real goals of a session abstract is to get the right people into your room and keep the…
When I first started submitting abstracts to conferences, I wrote bland, technical descriptions of what I'd be talking about. Later on, I thought being a good speaker meant having lots of people in my sessions, so I wrote spammy abstracts:
"SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! COME SEE THE MOSTEST SPECTACULAREST DISPLAY OF SKILLZ EVER! EVERY SINGLE DATABASE PROFESSIONAL - NAY, HUMAN BEING - SHOULD BE IN MY SESSION! I PROMISE YOU'LL BE AMAZED AND DUMBFOUNDED AND BETTER LOOKING!"
One of our FreeCon Chicago brainstorming exercises was to talk about what makes a good training session, conference session, or keynote speech. I started it by asking a few questions. Does a successful session require a packed room? I was so happy to hear the attendees answer, "No." A packed room has absolutely nothing to…
I just had a champagne moment. Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) blogged about having these champagne moments in his life, times when he was almost-but-not-quite-ready to pop the champagne open because he still wanted to take things higher. My standards aren't quite so high - I recognize certain achievements as being champagne-worthy, and this is one of 'em.
Buck Woody (Blog - @BuckWoody) and I did a presentation at the PASS Summit called, "You're Not Attractive, But Your Presentations Can Be." The audience asked a lot of good questions, and I wanted to recap some of 'em as blog posts. The first one - and one of the most frequent questions I get - is, "How often do you really practice presentations before giving them?"
Several hours into Edward Tufte's day-long seminar on visual communications in Chicago, he revealed what he really hates about our communications tools. He briefly touched on the origin of the desktop with the Xerox Alto, a document-oriented computer. He said that users didn't see applications - they saw lists of documents, and they chose which…
Knock the audience out by knowing how to end the presentation, how to use your blog as resource material, why you should avoid sentences on slides, how to get the attendees involved, and how to fire yourself up with inspiration.
