What do you usually do on weekends? Relax, spend time with your family, drink beer... I like all of that hat, but on Saturday, October 24th I spent at Microsoft Office in Iselin, NJ attending
NJ SQL Server User Group. It was the first time when I went to such a group, but I carried out a lot: new ideas, new people, new things to do, new links, and a book (Pro SQL Server 2008 XML by Michael Coles) . I was the last one who came in, but got lucky when organizers pulled my name in the first raffle. I made a couple notes on how to present better for myself and want to share them now.
1. you samples should work, ideally they should have 3 parts: cleanup, initialize, run - demos should be runnable multiple times in random order
2. have shortcuts for your demos, they should be quickly accessible and categorized
3. be extremely simple in demo examples, there should be nothing related to the topic, if you are showing tables have only 2-4 column if possible
3. your colors should be in high contrast with background
4. use
ZoomIt by Mark Russinovich while presenting. it extremely useful and you should try it
5. do small presentation before large one, present to your wife/husband before your show it to 10-20 people, explain to 10-20 before you show it to hundreds or thousands
6. you will have small resolution on your laptop while showing demos, try to go through your demos with 800x600 at home
7. it may sound obvious and stupid, but focus on the topic your are presenting
8. if you don't have an answer to the question, redirect it to the auditory
9. interactive presentations are amazing, they are beautiful - prepare simple questions to your auditory
What are your tips?
