Born Weird

Through a fluke of fate, I’ve spent more time talking in front of groups of people over the last four months than I did during the preceeding four years. Several of those appearances have been work-related, leading all-day (or close to it) discovery sessions where I get to really know a client’s audience, goals and design preferences at the beginning of a redesign process. But two of my recent presentations have been a bit more public.

Ignite

Back on December, I delivered a presentation at Ignite NM, my local group propagating the  20-slides-in-five-minutes “ignite” format. I’d never attended one before (much less spoken at one) so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I also didn’t get much in the way of rehearsal time for my presentation, “What Net Neutrality Is (and Why You Should Care),” but I know the subject well enough that I was still able to put together what I think was a reasonably intelligible piece. Decide for yourself after watching my performance below:

Fun fact: I’ll also be presenting at the next Ignite NM event, scheduled to take place March 2. But instead of Net Neutrality, I’ll be talking about eating green chile. Seriously.

Webuquerque

Earlier this month, I upped the ante by going from 5 minutes to about an hour, delivering a presentation to Webuquerque (technically the web-centric local Adobe Users Group) on the differences between print and web design. Planning an hour-long lecture is a lot harder than a 5-minute one for obvious reasons. Again, I had nothing for rehearsal time but I least put in the effort ahead of time to organize things, which gave me some in-presentation flexibility. Word from the organizers (and some folks that came up to me afterwards) is that it was pretty well received, though of course if I could do it again I’d change several things.

Unfortunately the lighting situation in the room made it nigh-impossible for the video camera to get the proper exposure on both me and the screen — it wound up splitting the difference, making me underexposed and the screen overexposed, so to make sense of the video of my presentation you’ll need to simultaneously follow along with my slidedeck, both below. There’s also a brief recap on the Webuquerque site.

Special thanks to the organizers of both Ignite and Webuquerque (Mick, Chris, Emily and Jason) for letting me babble at their events. And the audience at both events for not booing me off the stage.