Archive for 'Other'
those beautiful trees
Posted on November 19, 2006, by admin, under Blog, Other, Web.
TheFairest.info is a project to try to find the prettiest image in the world, using voting and some (hopefully clever) algorithms.
All images are user-submitted and so far it’s looking quite good.
I recommend taking a look because some of these images are breath taking and also make beautifully desktops.
So check out the images here.
Meanwhile, these are my two favourite images.
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how to make a (good) presentation
Posted on October 3, 2006, by admin, under Blog, Other, design.
During the course of the Shift conference I managed to see a dozen presentations and although most of them were pretty good, a few others seemed to struggle to grasp the people’s attention and a very tiny percent were fighting to keep people inside the room untill the end. Nasty.
So why is that? what makes a presentation fun to watch and another bad enough to make you wish you could just dissapear or master a ancient art of meditation.
Well, here’s my 2 cents on the subject:
1) Don’t fill your slides full of text
I assumed this was a basic rule and that everyone would follow, I was wrong. There were some geniuses who decided to include almost half of the wikipedia into their slides just in case we missed anything during the talk. This is not good, it’s information overload and it makes people desperate looking at all that text, plus, it makes it harder for people to focus on a particular topic.
You can use images instead of bullet points to show ideas. Or even comics, there’s more than one way to express the same idea without using two or three paragraphs of text.
2) Don’t read the slides as if they’re handouts
This is a follow up, don’t read the slides as if they’re handouts, people haven’t gone to a conference to see you read. They can do it themselves, you might as well save the work, in other words the slides should help you present material and not do it for you.
3) Slides shouldn’t have all the colors of the rainbow
Because it’s so irritating to see 8 colors in the same slide or 3 in the same paragraph as if every element in the slides are fighting for your attention…and losing. You should use colors carefully and use them to accentuate some important point, not pretend to be Benetton.
4) Don’t talk like a zombie
Or a half-dead person, you’re supposed to capture people’s attention, make them think, discuss with people, call them names, use funny expressions or jokes. If you talk with a half dead tone, the result will surely be a bored audience, especially if you combine with points 1 and 2.
5) Don’t exagerate on animations
Don’t use too much “woosh”, “squish”, “woof” and so on. Too many animations will distract your audience, focus more on content instead. You can use animations to focus on single points but use them just once, don’t put the animations in repeat mode.
6) Prepare your presentations
Seems simple enough, right? I’ve actually seen people deviate from what they should be presenting very easely. You should take a few minutes before writing your presentation to think on what you should put on the slides, what kind of information is the user interested, is it too technical, does everyone knows the subject?
For example, if I were to make a presentation on a linux distribution I could talk about the advantages over other platforms, how easy (or not) it would be to switch from Windows, what applications wouldn’t be compatible and so on.
7) Learn from the pros
I regulary visit some sources on the internet, like presentation Zen, they have great techniques explained there and I try to get feedback from people after my presentations, there’s always room for improvement so I always search for advices on what could be changed or what went wrong.
8) Work on your own style
Not every style of presentation suits your own personality, it’s important to work on a style you feel comfortable with and at ease. For example, Steve Jobs has a completely different style from Bill Gates but both are good speakers.
And that’s it. I think there’s still space for more good advices, so if you agree or disagree on some of these points (or all of them), post a comment and speak your mind.
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Shift conference 2006
Posted on October 1, 2006, by admin, under Blog, Events, Other, Programming, Web, design.
On the 28 and 29th of September, Lisbon was the host of the Shift 2006 conference, focusing on Social and Human Ideas for Technology.
The event was held at rectory building (or the Chancellor’s Office) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and had the presence of many international speakers to discuss all about emerging technologies, whether they’re the latest internet trend or the latest social or psychological development. There were also Workshops and open spaces where people could present product demos or discuss other topics.
It was a fantastic event, an opportunity to meet some innovative products being made in Portugal like Goplan, Mingle, Virtual Sightseeing or even weSpendMoney (*wink* *wink*) and the awesome people behind all this stuff. There was also international projects like coComment, Plazes and Vizta, all awesome.
I had the chance to discuss alot of ideas, think of technology in new perspectives and gain motivation to invest and continue working on some of my less known personal projects.
Amongst the several talks (over 55 in 2 days) there was the opportunity to meet and see the presentations of Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, creator of the Reboot conference (which I’m really looking forward to go next year), Bill Scott Ajax Evangelist and Manager of the Design Pattern Library at Yahoo which I recommend everyone who does web development to check it out.
David Galipeau (Web Manager of UNAIDS) and presented a very inspiring presentation (and somewhat scary) at the future of technology and man, Kevin Cheng Senior Interaction Designer at Yahoo Local had a very funny talk about using comics to present ideas.
Luke Wroblewski (Principal Designer at Yahoo and Principal of “LukeW Interface Designs”) and Peter Merholz (Director of Practice Development and Partner of “Adaptive Path”) both aproach the topic of design in products and the web, lots of inspiration here and great fonts of usefull information, don’t forget to check their site.
There was still time for a little workshop in Ruby On Rails, teached by Joshua Sierles and with the presence of Fred from WeBreakStuff, it’s nice to see Rails being talked here in Portugal, I’m hoping next time there will be time to talk more.
I guess I’m problably forgetting a bunch of other people but there was really so much to see there that I’ll give just this small glimpse of what went through. As a last note, also check the photos at flickr, you can search for the tag shift06 and I guess I’ll see you there next year.
