This article also appears in the Coffee and Code blog.
I’m a bit swamped with work and other things, so the Toronto Coffee and Code events are taking a hiatus for a couple of weeks. Worry not, it’s a temporary thing, and in a couple of Fridays – May 29th, to be precise, Coffee and Code will make a triumphant return, all phoenix-like, to the Dark Horse Cafe at 215 Spadina on Friday, May 29th from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m..
English Russia reports that the test below has been making the rounds in Russian blogs. It is purported to be a test issued by the Russian army “to identify any hidden psychological diseases” in new recruits. They look like standard colour-blindness tests; if you can’t see the number inscribed in any of one them, you might have a problem:
Here’s the key to the tests:
| If you can’t see the number in this circle: | Here’s what might be wrong with you, according to Russian Army psychologists: |
| 1 | “High aggression, proneness to conflict, the recommendation is to add more physical exercise and cold showers.” |
| 2 | “Possible low than average intellectual abilities, can’t serve with sophisticated equipment.” |
| 3 | “Possible debauchery, soldier should get increased daily ration, should get more physical activity tasks, should not be connected to food supplies, etc.” |
| 4 | “Possible inclination to violence, can be assigend as a leader to his unit, as he can preserve discipline.” |
| 5 | “Possible latent homosexuality. Can be light uncontrolled accesses of attraction to the same sex.” |
| 6 | “Possible schizophrenic tendency. Required additional inspection.” |
I can see the numbers in all the circles, save circle 5. I swear, I wore those assless chaps only once!
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
Here’s the presentation I did at WordCamp Toronto 2009 this weekend, Better Living Through Blogging, in which I talk about how taking up blogging has paid off in all sorts of ways, from relationships to career to even saving my bacon.
You’ve probably suffered through presentations whose slides look something like this:
I’m not a big fan of background templates in slides, but at least this one (from one of the themes provided in PowerPoint 2007) isn’t so bad. There are worse themes I could’ve picked, such as this one:
That’s just downright ugly.
I find that a plain black background with white text works best. The plain black background is simple, doesn’t interfere with or overpower your content, and works well with all sorts of room sizes, lighting conditions, projector types, projection surfaces and so on.
Whenever possible, I avoid putting the company logo at the bottom of every slide. It’s not a fight I’m always going to win, but I do my best to convince the guardians of corporate identity that the audience won’t forget the company name if we don’t beat the audience’s head with it on every slide. I think that it detracts from the presentation by drawing attention away from the content; I think that it also reeks of branding desperation. I think it’s enough to show the logo at the start and end.
Your slides are not cue cards. The purpose of standing in front of an audience is not to read aloud a document written in point form. You’re there not only to communicate an idea, but to engage the people in the room as well; the slides are there as support. That’s why slide presentation software has “presenter mode”, where the slides are displayed on the projector and your notes are displayed on your laptop.
Here’s what my audience saw instead of the “Who Am I?” slide above. I’ve included a rough paraphrase of what I said along with the slides…
“Some of you already know me, some of you think you know me, and some of you are wondering ‘who is this Microsoft Guy and why is he speaking at a WordPress event?’. So I guess a proper introduction is in order.”
“Yes, I work for Microsoft. The Empire. I’m still new, having been working there for just over six months. I’ve had a blast so far – it’s a fun place to work, and in my particular job, they give you a wide degree of latitude.”
“As for my job, if I could pick the title, it would be…Sith Lord.”
“But the company, being what it is, prefers to give me the slightly less interesting title of Evangelista.”
“Actually, that’s not true. The title is Evangelist. It’s a relatively new kind of job in the big scheme of things, which is a combination of…”
“Super-smart hottie with programming skills and…”
“Dapper, intelligent and quick-witted communicator of ideas. I’m kind of like a marketer. But with a brain. And a soul. [Looking at wincing marketers in the audience] Oh, I kid because I love.”
“The concept of a technology evangelist was pioneered by the The Esteemed Competition over at Apple by Mike Boich, but it was Guy Kawasaki who popularized the position. He’s since gone on to do other tech-related things in Silicon Valley, but a lot of what he does can still be considered to be evangelism.”
“Microsoft also has technology evangelists. The one you probably know is Robert Scoble, who was with the company for three-ish years, and like Guy, although he doesn’t have the title or work for Microsoft anymore, a lot of what he does is still evangelism.”
“And yeah, I know the guy.”
I’d much rather see a presentation done in the style that I used rather than seeing someone simply grind through a deck of items in point form, acting as a narration service.
If I were to post a more detailed version of my presentation online, would you rather have it…
Let me know.
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
I started my presentation at WordCamp Toronto 2009 yesterday – Better Living Through Blogging — with this slide, which got a lot of laughs. A number of people have requested it, and I’m only too happy to oblige. Here you go: share and enjoy!
Click the photo to see it at full size.
The image comes from a Worth1000 Photoshopping contest – here’s the original.
Adam Schwabe took this photo of me playing a request at the Drake Hotel’s rooftop bar early Friday evening:
I’ll admit it: I like typing out the phrase “assless chaps”. Here are a couple more photos of me showing off said assless chaps in the speaker’s room at Saturday’s Toronto Code Camp (which I wrote about in this post).
Here I am holding up the assless chaps prior to donning them:
…and here I am modelling them for the nerd paparazzi:
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
Before I begin, let me state that yes, I know that chaps, by definition, have no seat and that the phrase “assless chaps” is redundant. By adding “assless” to chaps, I am simply following one of the golden rules of comedy, namely that adding butt-related humour to anything always makes it funnier.
How I came to end up wearing assless chaps on Saturday started innocently enough. I wrote an article about Toronto Code Camp in which I talked about the sessions I was thinking of attending. One of the presenters, Bruce Johnson of ObjectSharp, saw that I didn’t mention his presentation and tweeted that I’d snubbed him:
Actually, learning WPF was on my “to-do” list, so I let Bruce know that I actually was coming to his presentation. In my tweets to him, I fired off this jokey reply:
I figured that I was at very little risk at having to follow through with this promise. Had this been FutureRuby or perhaps some open source conference, I’m sure my challenge would’ve been answered, but I thought: Hey, this is a conference of Microsoft developers! Yes, they’re a bright and talented bunch, and I like them, but they’re an older, corporate, more buttoned-down crowd. They’d never go for renaming a session from “Data Binding” to “Data Bondage”.
But Bruce and the Toronto Code Camp organizers surprised me:
I was actually impressed. I was even a little ashamed that I’d brought some prejudices about Microsoft developers from the open source world with me, thinking that they wouldn’t be cool enough to handle slightly edgy content. Live and learn.
“A promise made is a debt unpaid,” as the narrator in the classic poem The Cremation of Sam McGee says, so I made arrangements to get my hands on (or more accurately, ass into) some assless chaps. Luckily, Toronto has Malabar. It’s a great costume shop located on McCaul Street just of Queen West, and they’ve been a great source of costumes for years. That’s where the Ginger Ninja and I got our outfits for Cory Doctorow’s steampunk-ish wedding back in October:
Getting the chaps was easy. I walked into Malabar and simply said “I’d like to rent some chaps, please.”
“What kind?” the woman behind the counter asked.
“The S-and-M-ier, the better.”
“I know just the pair,” said one of the guys. “Let me get them from the basement.”
Malabar rocks.
At this point, you’re probably saying, please Joey, for the love of all things holy, tell me that you wore something under the chaps.
To which I’ll answer: “Yes. Yes I did.” I wore my loudest pair of jeans, a pair of striped jeans in crazy colours that I’ve had since my days at Crazy Go Nuts University, back when I used to go to raves. They went well with the chaps, as you can see in the photo below:
I did promise that the assless chaps would be Microsoft-branded; this was fixed thanks to Colin Bowern giving me an “I’m a PC” sticker that he happened to have in his knapsack:
Later in the afternoon, I ran to the store to get a Diet Coke and saw my reflection in the mirrored windows of a neighbouring building. “Damn, I look good!” I thought.
And as proof of their asslessness, here’s a photo of the chaps from behind. Ladies, please control yourselves; I’m already spoken for!
I walked into Bruce’s presentation moments after everyone was seated and regaled them with Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, spiced up with a little extra butt-wiggling and ending with rousing applause:
…after which I sat down in the front row to catch Bruce’s presentation. It was quite good, and I did learn a lot about data binding in WPF – certainly enough for me to start exploring that aspect of Windows and Silverlight programming. Just as important – if not more so – I learned that the Windows developer community is cooler than one might be led to believe. Both were good lessons.