Rich Web Experience 2008: the Nate Schutta Sessions

Thinking back on the RWE 2008 last week, I realized there were a number of sessions that really stood out as being well presented and extremely informative. In particular, the sessions by Nate Schutta (check out his blog at http://ntschutta/jat) were among some of the best I've seen. They were all clear, well-thought out, in-depth, and engaging. A number of his presentations were introductions to various popular Javascript libraries like Prototype, YUI, and Dojo. These were particularly good because he showed not only why the libraries were useful but also how to use them. He didn't leave it at theory or sales pitch, though; in each of his script library presentations, he coded a number of examples using the libraries in question. And here's the best part: in each presentation, he built the same type of applications (a simple PIM app, showing how to use a date picker, etc) but using the library under discussion. It made for a good comparison of the strengths and APIs of each library. Also, he showed in his examples how the different libraries could actually work together, building on the strengths of each. All in all, the content of his presentations was excellent.

In addition to the excellent content, though, his method of presentation was right up my alley. He did what I consider the best thing to do in using slide presentations: he used the slides to initiate discussion rather than regurgitating the points from the slides. Some presenters tend to read their slides and that's their presentation. That gets old really quickly. As well, I remember one time when I was in the Army and giving a briefing to a warrant officer being told that people can either read your slides or listen to you, not do both at the same time. Nate kept his slides clean and simple, usually just a few words or phrases per slide, which allowed him to emphasize his points and guide his discussion of the topic without the listeners getting distracted by a lot of visual noise on the screen. He actually did something really interesting, too, for his final presentation of the weekend (A Software Engineer's Guide to Usability): he had two different slide decks. The first contained his simple slides described above, and the other had more content grouped in bullet points and images. I guess people had complained that the slides didn't make good take-aways (which is probably true, unless you're an extremely thorough note taker) since they were more for guiding the discussion than posting information. I think it was a good tactic. in fact, I actually found myself referring to his "note slides" earlier today when writing up some notes for some of my colleagues.

I know some people don't like this form of presentation. In environments like this weekend, I tend to be a more audio learner, so Nate's presentation style really worked for me. But for people who are more visually oriented and who want to get their information mainly from the screen, that "simple" form of presentation might cause problems. But overall, I'd say his presentations, from my point of view, were among the best there, and actually were among the best I've seen in attending other NFJS events, too.

Thoughts from RWE 2008 final keynote

Just got finished up with a Rich Web Experience conference today, where the final *scheduled* keynote speaker--Jared Richardson--made some very good points about getting your ideas out there both for earning some name recognition and for being able to get to them yourself some time in the future when you may need them. He suggested blogging (and I wonder just how many blogs are getting started up right now :)) as a great way to start pushing your information out there.

One of the things he suggested is blogging anything that's taken you more than 10 or 15 minutes to figure out. The idea is that if it took you some time to figure out, it'll take someone else some time to figure out, and by posting it on your blog, you'll have access in to it in the future and, if people find it useful, then you'll be getting some exposure. Enough exposure, and it might lead to other things.

He also suggested getting involved in open source projects, not just in starting them up or becoming a leader or main contributor from the get go, but starting small. Pick a bug and fix it. Or, even better, do something no one else wants to do, like write documentation. It's a good way to get involved and to start getting your name out there.

The other interesting thing he mentioned is starting a personal Wiki. Basically, it becomes a repository of ideas that you have, that eventually you can go back and flesh out. When you get an idea for an article (or anything else), you can basically just create a post with a title in it. Then you can go back and fill in the content as you get the time and inclination.

A few other really good points he made:

• if a goal doesn't effect your behavior today, it's not a good goal (my interpretation: do something today to move yourself forward.)
• if you want to write a book, a book is made of chapters, a chapter is made of sections, a section is pretty much an article, and what's an article but a glorified blog post?
• get out there and teach/speak to really learn something (and get more exposure)
• write and post short tutorials as you learn to do things. Those short tutorials also become good entry points for people learning to do something and get you some more exposure.

All in all, it was a great talk, probably the best of the keynote speeches, and worth sticking around after lunch for :).