Watch in mesmerized terror as Damian hacks code in several unrelated programming languages (none of them Perl). Along the way, you'll also discover what's wrong with modern CS education, why programmers shouldn't frequent casinos, the power of Thor's Law, the language of moisture vaporators, C++ mysticism, how to use the three shells, state machines on steroids, programming without variables or subroutines, a cheap and eco-friendly alternative for distributed persistent computation, what the Romans used instead of braces, the ancient probabilistic wisdom of bodkins, and the price of fish.
The best, most effective presentations capture the audience quickly, hold their interest effortlessly, educate and entertain them in equal measure, and sometimes even inspire them. This class explores simple and effective techniques for achieving those goals in any kind of presentation.
The first half of the course focuses on preparation, content selection, delivery techniques, and handling questions (or the lack thereof). The second half of the course is an in-depth tutorial on improving the "look and feel" of presentation materials--especially Powerpoint/Impress presentations. In particular, it demonstrates practical techniques for making your slides not suck.
The optional final day is a workshop, where each attendee has the opportunity to give a short presentation they have previously created, after which we work through it together to improve its design and delivery.
Who should attend?
Anyone who is required to present technical information in front of an audience.
Damian Conway is a well-known member of the international Perl community. A widely sought-after speaker and teacher, he is also the author of several technical books as well as numerous Perl software modules.
He runs an international IT training company - Thoughtstream - which provides programmer training from beginner to masterclass level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia. Until 2010 he was also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.
Over the past decade most of his spare time has been spent working with Larry Wall on the design and promotion of the new Perl 6 programming language.
Other technical and academic areas in which he has published internationally include programming language design, programmer education, object orientation, software engineering, natural language generation, synthetic language generation, emergent systems, declarative programming, image morphing, human-computer interaction, geometric modelling, the psychophysics of perception, nanoscale simulation, and parsing.
