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Do We Need Slides?

Stefan Tilkov,

I did an introductory session on REST at SEACON today – pretty much the stuff I've been talking about for quite some time now. There was a twist, though: The projector (or my laptop, or the connection between them) didn't work, so I fiddled around with it for a minute, and then decided to do the talk without slide support.

Interestingly, I think it went better than usual – I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and I didn't feel the need to get through any material. Feedback indicated that the audience liked it, too.

Maybe I should do this more often. Slides – even if they're not text-oriented bullet point catastrophes – may be overrated.

Update: Here are the slides in case you're interested (in fact, it's only the part that I think I covered).

On June 23, 2009 10:24 PM, Jacek Kopecky said:

Slides are quite overrated indeed, but visual examples are useful. Did you use a whiteboard or something like that in your talk? If not, would you say the talk could be even better if you did?

On June 23, 2009 10:29 PM, /blog/st/ Stefan Tilkov said:

I only wished for a whiteboard once, but there was none available. I got by with hand-waving.

I agree, though, that graphics are helpful.

On June 26, 2009 12:24 PM, Bernd Toepfer said:

Ich hatte das Glück, den Vortrag auf der SEACON miterleben zu dürfen. Er hat mir ausgesprochen gut gefallen; gerade weil der Beamer dieses Mal ausblieb. Herzlichen Dank dafür. Nun bin ich von Natur aus neugierig und hääte die Folien doch gerne nachträglich. Könnten Sie mir diese bitte per Mail zukommen lassen an bernd(a)bc-toepfer.de.

Vielen Dank.

On June 26, 2009 1:26 PM, Stefan Tilkov said:

Danke für das Lob :-) I have updated the entry with a link to the slides.