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Questions During Lectures

An issue that causes some discussion and debate is the number and type of questions that may be asked during a lecture. In a previous post giving advice for speakers I suggested that questions can be used as a mechanism for getting a talk back on track if a nervous speaker starts presenting the material [...]

submissions for LCA and other conferences

In this post I recommended that job seekers not publish their CV. In a comment Gunnar suggested having a special CV for conferences. I think that Gunnar’s idea is good and have started writing my conference CV at http://etbe.coker.com.au/conferences. When I complete it I will make it part of every submission for speaking at a [...]

what is a BOF?

BOF stands for Birds Of a Feather, it’s an informal session run at a conference usually without any formal approval by the people who run the conference.

Often conferences have a white-board, wiki, or other place where conference delegates can leave notes for any reason. It is used for many purposes including arranging BOFs. To [...]

presentations and background color

In response to my last post about using laptops for presentations it has been suggested to me that using white (or a very bright color) as the background color can help some displays synchronise with the signal. I haven’t had an opportunity to test this but it seems likely that as most computers are configured [...]

licence for lecture notes

While attending LCA it occurred to me that the lecture notes from all the talks that I have given lack a copyright notice. So I now retrospectively license my lecture notes in the manner that probably matches what everyone was already doing. The Creative Commons web site has a form to allow you to easily [...]

Advice for speakers

I am not an expert at public speaking. Attending Toastmasters to improve my speaking skills is on my todo list. However having given hundreds of talks over the course of about 14 years and being paid for giving talks (the minimum criteria to claim to be a professional speaker) I think I can offer some [...]

common mistakes in presentations

I attend many presentations and have seen many that had a lower quality than they should have. Some things are difficult to change (for example I have difficulty speaking slowly). But there are some things that are easy to change that many people seem to get wrong and I will list some that stand out [...]