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At 11:03 AM 6/9/00 -0700, John Posada wrote:
>Do not passout handouts until after you're done speaking...
Well, generally speaking, yes; but that's not a universal. The
sessions I give are very technical and the few times I've tried
to give the session without handouts (or withholding handouts
to the end), attendees were so busy taking notes they didn't
look up once. Much better, if the subject is deep, to give them
the handouts first. Then they know they have the information at
hand and can take fewer notes.
What bothers me most about conference sessions in general is
moving to one boring progression of bulleted lists after
another -- no color, no clipart, no variations on the theme,
just bullet after bullet after bullet until I wish you'd just
shoot me! ;-) Couple that with a speaker who just reads the
bullet points, or even reads the finely crafted sentences
verbatim from a paper, and I'll run screaming from the room!
Another caveat for speakers -- know your subject well! I
remember attending a session on page layout once where the
presenter couldn't remember which font group was serif and
which was sans serif! Aaaaaaaaaargh! No matter how good the
information was, the speaker lost all credibility with me.
