Gentoo Linux Presentation (from Software Freedom Day)

kev009

Hi,

I gave a talk and Q&A on Gentoo at my local Software Freedom Day.

http://www.kev009.com/wp/2010/09/sfd-2010-gentoo-linux/

The target audience is beginning to advanced users, developers, and admins that might have heard a bit about Gentoo but need some clarifications on what it really is and where it shines. Feel free to modify and use for your own purposes!
_________________
http://www.kev009.com

InExile · n00b Joined: 29 Jan 2010 Posts: 13

Pretty nice presentation,

One point I think people often overlook when presenting Gentoo is displaying the ease of the init system.
Personally I think it is alot less clumsy than chkconfig.

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 3:07 am Post subject:

Nice work.

kev009 · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 3:24 am Post subject:

Thanks for the feedback! Several people told me I debunked some of their misconceptions and would consider Gentoo for learning about the inner workings of Linux distros.
_________________
http://www.kev009.com

cach0rr0 · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 3:52 am Post subject:

furanku · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:52 pm Post subject:

For my taste: Way too much text on most of the slides. Try to cut down some details (you still can tell them in your talk) and avoid "full scentences" ("You are likely to get an answer to hard questions rather than “why would you want to do that?” or “just do this that you don't want instead”). Your audience will be distraced by reading the whole slide and you'll be tempted to turn your back to the audience and just read your slides to them, which results in a very boring talk.

Keep the slides much easier, highlight the essential things (maybe using colours), and use the slides just as a "guide" to your hopefully vivid talk. In the mentioned example: Delete the whole scentence from the slide, and simply tell the audience a real example from the forums. Story telling is much more entertaining.

As a general rule: If you have to switch to a smaller font size, your slide is probably overloaded.

kev009 · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:45 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the tips furanku! I agree that some of the bullets are too verbose.

One thing I wanted to accomplish was a useful offline presentation to send to our members that weren't present. I've seen some slideshows that were nothing more than cues for the presenter and they are pretty useless w/o an audio or video of the event.

I think I did manage to do a good job of engaging the audience and filling in on the details. It was over a 30 minute session and I was actively fielding comparisons to other distros and other users' experience throughout the talk.

Any advice on finding a balance between presentation and offline use in future presentations?
_________________
http://www.kev009.com

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 6:45 pm Post subject:

kev009,

Put the extra words in the notes that go with each slide. The slides themselves are just prompts for the presenter.
You can print one side and its notes on one side of A4, so you can do useful handouts. When you email, be sure to tell your readers to look at the notes, if you don't leave them visible.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

furanku · Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:42 am Post subject:

I have no real advices, sorry, some of the things are just a matter of experience. It's always a good idea to give test-talks to friends at least to see if your talk is too long, and how much the audience really understands/is interested in. Sadly this is often much less thant the speaker expects. I've never seen a too short talk, except when the speaker is very nervous and rushes because of that throug his/her slides. Usually talks are too long, and the chairman will be very thankfull if he/she has not to mind you of time limits. But this are just general remarks, as you tell, you obviously gave a good talk!

I usually also start also with overloaded slides, and boil them down after I've got a first complete version, to the point that I get the feeling: One more cut and it's really crippled. That's really a painfull process. But when you give your test-talk you'll see that this "less is more" philosophy pays off, as you can talk much more relaxed and in a free speaking manner about the things you left on the slides. Put things you are not sure if you really want to mention them onto extra slides after the last one. If someone asks you can really shine by being well-prepared: "Thanks, very good question! I have some material on that ...", a simple trick to show a bit off with your competence to the "experts" in the audience

IMHO slides are also not ment to be handed out to the audience. Not after the talk and in really never before the talk, as the audience will unavoidably start browsing in it and discuss details with thier neighbours. The slides should just just support the speaker: You're the show, not the slides! Of course, there's nothing wrong to give them to someone who asks for them or to put them on the web, but if you really want to give something to the audience a separate hand out would be better (which could be based on your first "overloaded" draft).

A IMHO very helpfull set of general rules and thoughts on presentation can be found in chatper 5 (p. 33 -- 37) of the Documentation of the LaTeX Beamer Class.

kev009 · Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:11 pm Post subject:

Awesome advice guys! I appreciate it and will try to use these methods in any future presentations I do -- free software related or otherwise.

I think the combination of NeddySeagoon's suggestion of using slide comments and furanku's suggestion of 'extra' or 'breakout' slides are ideal.
_________________
http://www.kev009.com

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 9:03 pm Post subject:

kev009,

I used to like the 'extra slides' idea in the days of acatate slides. You would prepare your main show (numbered in case you dropped them) then have a few supporting sildes in case of questions.
You could slip these supporting slides in anywhere. Thats a feature I miss with electronic presentation systems.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

cach0rr0 · Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:51 pm Post subject:

honestly, every time I've done a presentation, I've done very generic slides, that make reference to a separate secondary document.
The slides themselves would be a bullet point summary of the highlights of each section in the document, the document more intensive stuff, each attendee receiving a copy of both.
What's spoken is an abbreviated version of what's in each section, but expanding on the bullet points.

If a bullet point piques their interest as I'm presenting, they normally skim through the document, ask any questions arising from their skimming, and so forth.

I don't know if it's proper or what have you, but that's worked for me in the past (normally with either technical training, or product management tripe)

Either way, I still have a special bit of hatred in my heart for powerpoint presentations. Both creating them, and watching them.

furanku · Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 6:50 pm Post subject:

kev009 · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:28 am Post subject:

I think the solution for extra slides is quite easy with the typical dual display setup of laptop and projector.

Use the laptop screen to display your comments or any extra cues as discussed and switch slides in any order using the slide navigator on the laptop screen after the main presentation.

ooo impress supports all this with Slide Show->Slide Show Settings and I remember similar from Power Point.
_________________
http://www.kev009.com