I'm Still Learning.... Presenting on things Oracle

I'm in Williamsburg, VA. presenting today. I'm always learning something I think.
I have been terrible about posting stuff here. I need to do better! There is a lot going on in my life right now, and it's Oracle's Q4... so, something just gives sometimes. :)

I've been watching presentations and I noticed more than one presenter do what I used to do, and sometimes find myself doing.

I watched the presenter go through a set of slides ... and the slides were wordy and the presenter was just kind of drilling through the slides. In this person I recognized me and how I sometimes present. I've recognized this before, and I've made efforts to change but this was the first time it really stood out at me that I used to (and kind of do) do things that way.

The other thing was that the presenter was concentrating on features and really forgetting the key thing that people listening want to know, how does this apply to me. Obviously, features are nice to talk about and easy to speak on, but how they apply to you, in your job - that is a completely different thing.

For example, our speaker was talking about product A and it's ability to do new feature b.
 
The speaker was doing a great job and this is a cool feature, no doubt. However, the real opportunity here was not to just talk about the feature, but wrap that discussion in practical advice. When do you need to use feature b? What is the practical benefit and application of feature b?

Lest I be accused of pointing fingers at any speaker and my comments on the presentation don I want to be clear that I have done this very same thing many times, in many presentations. I try very hard now not to do that, but sometimes I find I still do it. It's hard speaking, and hard figuring out what to cover and what not to cover. My problem is usually I want to cover to many things and I find myself fretting about missing something important. Thus, I produce a firehose presentation.
I'll confess too a feeling that I don't want people to think "Hey Freeman, you left this out!", which is really my own mind telling me that I've done that.

Now, I'm trying to mature myself and my presentations. I'm making myself remove verbiage and I'm trying to slow the pace down a little bit and focus more on a few things and add value through not only talking about those things but providing articulation on what the practical aspects of the feature or product are. We will see how this goes.

My presentation tonight is an experiment, so we shall see how it goes. I'm speaking more about human factors related to database management than something technical. It's totally new, but it's something I've been thinking about.

Stay tuned and I'll share more about my experiences this evening and I'll also do a page on the whole idea I'm presenting - DBA 3.0....

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that I might have offended one or more people with the post in it's origional form. When I was told this I was shocked becuase, to be candid, that was not the idea in the least. I appologize to that person in particular, profusley. If anyone else thought I was being crass, mean or conceited, then I appologize to you as well. I have re-written this post and I hope it's not found to be offensive. The point was more looking at my evolution and not trying to point fingers, at all.

I will say, as an aside, I do wish if someone has a gripe with me that they take it up directly with me. I'm easy enough to find, and very willing to talk to anyone. I know I'm far from perfect (my personal blog is proof enough of that) and am always willing to have a conversation and admit I was wrong, as was the case here.


More soon!