Presentations for Fun and Profit

The .NET masters students got to present their projects to us today. We made them all stand up in their teams and talk about what they have been doing for the last few weeks.

I was very impressed by the way that they all got into the spirit of the occasion; I think there were some who managed to surprise themselves with how well they did. I made some notes during the talk, which I'll pass on to the whole wide world (or at least both my readers....) They don't reflect any particular person, just my general impression.

• At the start of the presentation it is good form to introduce the people in your team who are going to be talking. But as the person being introduced it is important that you acknowledge this presentation by nodding at the presenter, and then at the audience. It helps in building up a bit of relationship between team members and the team and the audience.
• During your team presentation, if you are not talking you should be looking at the person who is talking, and at least giving the appearance of paying attention, even if you are not actually listening. It is distracting for the audience if you look at the floor, shuffle your feet, whisper to the person next you about plans for tonight or whistle (nobody actually whistled though). From a planning point of view it is a good idea to put "idle" team members on seats or stools, to stop them swaying in the breeze as the presentation continues.
• The presenter must make eye contact with the audience. This is hard but necessary. Just about everyone did, but some didn't, and it makes an amazing difference. Remember that if you are more than 10 feet or so away it is impossible to look at just one person directly so if you just look at empty seat in the audience that will work fine.
• Nobody used flashy slides transitions. Good on you people. Some folk used bullet by bullet drop down of points. This is OK, but you need to be careful that you pace these bits, otherwise the audience spends two minutes with just a slide title to look at.
• Nobody actually read off the slides. Well done. Never do this. The slide content re-enforces the message and gives you hooks to talk around. It does not tell you exactly what to say. You should/must know that already.

For more links to good presentation content and some very funny videos you can go here.

TechEd here I come

I'm on the road again. TechEd 2007 in Orlando is beckoning. I'm doing some stuff about the .NET Micro Framework including promotion for the book, helping at a press launch of the Micro Framework, manning an exhibition booth and giving a lunchtime session and webcast.

If you are going to be at TechEd be sure to come and see me at the .NET Micro Framework stand or at the talk on Thursday lunchtime. If you are not at TechEd you can join in with the fun at the webcast above. Signing up is free and I'm going to tell a new joke - so it will be well worth a listen.

I'll also be taking the medium sized camera and blogging like crazy. Well, you have to do something when you are wide awake at four in the morning....

Wonder of Webguide

Some time ago I bought a thing called a Slingbox. Then I sold it. Never used it much and it was too fiddly to make it control the TV. And if I did do this I got into terrible trouble with the family for switching channels from a hotel room in India. (I didn't want to watch anything, I just wanted to prove I could do it).

The underlying idea (get at your recorded programs from anywhere in the world) is a great one, but it relies on fairly kludgy technology, with the Slingbox digitising an incoming video signal before sending it off down the network.

Things are a lot easier now I've got my Sony media PC sitting under the PC, with a hard disk full of recorded TV. Because everything is networked I can navigate my way to recorded programs and view them over the network. But it is a bit of faff to find the program files, and I still have to go to the Media PC itself to set up my recordings.

That is I did, until I installed Webguide. This is a smashing little program that runs on the media centre and serves out web pages that let me set up recordings and stream media around the house (and onto the web if I open up the firewall and sort out IP address discovery).

It even works to mobile devices too. The idea is very simple and it works a treat. There are versions for Vista PCs and also Windows XP Media Centre edition machines.

If you have got a media pc you should (or even must) get a copy of this program. The installation is a tad fiddly, but it does most of the hard stuff for you automatically.

The price for this is only 18 dollars, or less than ten pounds. Well worth it.

Don't Answer the Phone

Went out to see a real, live, play tonight. Dial M for Murder, made famous by the Hitchcock film staring Ray Milan and Grace Kelly. We had "that bloke from Taggart" and "one of the girls from Steps" instead of those two, but the play was great nonetheless. Faye Tozer as the heroine (can you say that now - or does everyone have to be a hero?) was just right, and the role of the evil husband was excellently taken by James MacPherson. Everyone else played their part very well too, although I was initially a bit taken aback by the detective with the comedy brummie accent (unless of course he actually comes from Birmingham, in which case I apologise).

I love going to live theatre, even if someone on the front row treated us to a first class display of freestyle coughing (even going as far as the "triple whoop with a double gurgle finish" which I don't think has been heard since we had smog) for most of the first half.

I was pleased to see that the theatre was pretty full, and gave the players a well deserved round of applause at the end. The show is in Hull for the rest of the week and is on tour around the country.

Evil Weather and and Hungry Robots

Bank Holiday : like a normal day, but with much worse weather.

We had all kinds of plans for today. We were going to drive out into the country, walk round some rocks and eat scotch eggs in the car. And maybe even drink coffee from a flask whilst sitting on a piece of cloth on the grass.

As if.

After practicing on Sunday with a horrid display of freezing wind and rain the weather gave us a full on "Bank Holiday Experience" today with a pretty much perfect display of nastiness, even down to the hint of sunshine around teatime, when it was too late to go anywhere.

We stayed at home instead. We turned the robot vacuum loose in the bedroom and it ate my headphones. Not good. After spending a few minutes untangling the wire from the wheels I managed to get the robot back on the road (although I gave it a stern telling off) but the headphones looked to be a write off, with part of the earpiece missing.

So we went out and got a replacement set. At which point of course, the earpiece turned up and the original phones were found to be working fine. Wah.

I love bank holidays.