G4C Talk: "Top 10 Mistakes People make in ... Production"
[cross-posted from textuality.org]
I recently spoke at the Games For Change Festival's "Games for Change 101.5: A Workshop for Making Social Issue Games" day.
The talk went ... well, I had a catastrophe, but it was one that I planned for. I went into the presentation worried that I'd sent off a draft of my PowerPoint rather than the final version, and that the last slide would be empty. So I crafted a joke to laugh it off, and went in. As I opened the presentation, I established that the final slide was okay. Then, partway through and running late, I came across ... slide #5 duplicated instead of slide #6. I made the prepared joke --"Like I said, you need to test, because you will be wrong the first time. And now I'm back on schedule." Super classy!
Besides that, the talk went well. For my first-ever talk at a professional conference/convention, it was great! I was talking well within my domain, spoke well and was relatively at ease. I've got some high standards for what makes a good presentation, and while I have a long way to go yet to live up to them, I hit a few key points in this talk: I like slides that don't duplicate what the speaker is saying. I prefer slides to summarize and provide a counterpoint or commentary to the spoken presentation. (Did that.) I like slides that provide visual jokes. (Didn't get that.) I like presentations that are grounded in what I know but make me see things in a new way (Didn't). I like presentations that are chock full of 1500 ideas so that a few of them resonate or say something in a lovely concise manner (Did).
The proper final version of my talk is here in several formats:
* (ppt, 332 KB)
* (pdf, 1.3 MB)
I recently spoke at the Games For Change Festival's "Games for Change 101.5: A Workshop for Making Social Issue Games" day.
The talk went ... well, I had a catastrophe, but it was one that I planned for. I went into the presentation worried that I'd sent off a draft of my PowerPoint rather than the final version, and that the last slide would be empty. So I crafted a joke to laugh it off, and went in. As I opened the presentation, I established that the final slide was okay. Then, partway through and running late, I came across ... slide #5 duplicated instead of slide #6. I made the prepared joke --"Like I said, you need to test, because you will be wrong the first time. And now I'm back on schedule." Super classy!
Besides that, the talk went well. For my first-ever talk at a professional conference/convention, it was great! I was talking well within my domain, spoke well and was relatively at ease. I've got some high standards for what makes a good presentation, and while I have a long way to go yet to live up to them, I hit a few key points in this talk: I like slides that don't duplicate what the speaker is saying. I prefer slides to summarize and provide a counterpoint or commentary to the spoken presentation. (Did that.) I like slides that provide visual jokes. (Didn't get that.) I like presentations that are grounded in what I know but make me see things in a new way (Didn't). I like presentations that are chock full of 1500 ideas so that a few of them resonate or say something in a lovely concise manner (Did).
The proper final version of my talk is here in several formats:
* (ppt, 332 KB)
* (pdf, 1.3 MB)