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@Michelangelo: have you thought of making a screencast? That would allow you to do as much live coding as you need.

@Lorna: agree, stage design (or lack thereof) is always a problem. We’re trying a few new things at TEK·X this year… we’ll see how those go

@Tommy: unlikely you’ll see me doing more than goofing around at TEK (I’m always hesitant to speak at our own conferences because I can’t go through the same CfP process as everybody else, so I usually end up doing just a quick opening intro), but look forward to seeing you there!

http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

One thing I really struggle with is moving about on stage. Left to my own devices I wander all over the place but stages are rarely designed for this and I find myself walking into spaces where the mic starts to feed back, where I’m not lit, or where I end up becoming the projector screen – none of which really work but in many venues I’m stuck with one of the above or standing at the lectern the whole time which is way too formal for me. I’d love to hear how others deal with this – many people seem to just get projected onto or stand in the dark regardless!

But as a developer I want to share knowledge using the medium of presentation slides. I know the topics, but find it hard to use extensive code blocks just to prove a simple concept. Often I switch back to short example codes that only display the essentials, but these trigger the response of being too simplistic. Kinda like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Do you have good suggestions on how a developer can share his knowledge using the medium of a slide show ?

Cheers,

Michelangelo

@Ivo: I’m afraid we’ll have to disagree. If people wanted content, they’d be reading a book. They want content delivered by someone they can respect. Your presentation is as important as your content, because people won’t care about what you have to say unless you say it well.

One more thing which comes to my mind straight off – in line with your excellent advice – is:
“know what you are talking about”

And I don’t mean that in a “you must have written the manual”-kind of way, but in a way that you feel comfortable with your subject matter to not be throw off your ‘oh-so-well-rehearsed’ presentation stride when someone happens to pop a question halfway.

I find that having casual interaction with the audience during the presentation often heightens attention levels and therefore makes the message stick better.