So another DevTeach, this time in Mississauga, has come and gone.

Previous ones I have been an attendee; this time I was a speaker. I was honoured to be selected and proud to be chosen to discuss a few topics that I have been learning and playing with for me. Overall, I think it was a great event. It was a new venue (was held at the MS offices in Mississauga), so was slightly different than the hotel experience. My first presentation went pretty well; thanks to James Kovacs for selecting me for it as well as providing some assistance during the talk. My second one… not so much.

Some hardware failures immediately before (read: 5 minutes) meant that I started a bit late and some of the features I wanted to show were not working as well as I wanted. So, this leads to 2 things that I have identified for me: First, Windows Updates can kill your machine right before a presentation as you never know what it will do. Second, buy a new laptop. I now have justification.

For those who attended and saw my talks, I thank you. Although I have spoken locally in Winnipeg before, this was my first speaking event to such an audience. I took a lot of the feedback (good and bad – especially the bad) and am working it into an action plan of how to move forward with doing better the next time. More demos, less jumping to the meat but putting the plate out first, that kind of thing. For those that were not as thrilled with my SketchFlow talk because of the issues with the machine (and I am one of them), I plan on creating a few webcasts of what I did. These webcasts I will post on my site (or elsewhere with links from here) to the videos so as to make up for the not-as-great-as-I-wanted talk.

Well, time to board the flight home. A lot of lessons learned, and some new things to consider as I move forward.

Cheers!

Although I write this before the event is complete, my part in presenting is. For those who are learning to present more in public (like me), I write this with some lessons learned for me and for anyone else interested. (For a summary of all sessions at the event, check out http://www.winnipegcodecamp.com )

First, do not trust your computer. It’s a tool and tools break down. Create a fallback plan. This is the 3rd time I have presented on ASP.NET MVC and it’s also the 3rd time that my laptop has died shortly beforehand. At least this time I had several days to recreate everything. I think I did OK, but not as well as I could have. Instead of practicing my presentation I had to begin over again. So as a fallback – always save your work on a second drive or USB key. (I had done 2 other presentations for DevTeach and had completed those mostly so have those backed up but this one I had not moved to my backup drive.)

Second, get some sleep. Because of my tool failure and recovery plan, I got only 3 hours sleep. I also presented at 9 AM. Put those both together and we have a problem. Coffee helps but only in the short term; you still need sleep.

Third, don’t drink the night before. I only had one drink so I was fine. A colleague’s statement holds true, however: “I should NOT have played that much beer pong the night before I was to present.” I have heard various statements in regards to various types of drinks the night before presenting but also quantity which can lead to some serious hangover sessions (“Someone said my presentation this morning was pretty dry… not as dry as my mouth!”). Although I had one drink to calm some nerves, I only had the one and that helped. (OK, there was a shot as well but China White’s don’t count.)

Those are some base learnings I am taking away from here. The last 2 times I have done some public speaking have been amazing learning experiences and I take that information with me to make DevTeach an amazing event.

As a side project, I am helping a friend update and maintain a family website. They want a complete redesign (from scratch), and want to start to add in adding functionality to the site. After a brief discussion with them, they want to begin to lay out the project.

Hmmm… They want to prototype it. Wait a minute! I’m doing a presentation on SketchFlow in a couple of months – what an idea! A practical use of the tool for my presentation AND give these guys the prototype that they want! Sweet!

Oh wait, they also want some cool effects and visualization on their website? Well that can all be done with JavaScript and either Prototype of jQuery… Hold the phone! I’m doing a jQuery presentation as well! Well, look at that! Another merger!

What does this mean for me? That working on my presentations will actually work out better for my friend and his family, but also give me a direct goal with which to work on my presentation! This is perfect – this will give me exactly what I need to move forward. It’s always nice to have a goal. Many presentations with demos are put together to show a piece of the puzzle without an end goal; hopefully this project I am doing will have a “go live” date so that I can refer individuals to the plan during the talks (permission from my friend to use the information, of course).

Ah well, back to working! I just wanted to mention that finding the ability to actually put some reality to concepts is a nice change!