Paul Lockwood's technical blog
Atlanta ASP.Net MVC Developer/ Architect
How to suck at Presenting
Oct 27th
Presenting involves elements of luck, I think we can rely less on luck…
After a series of extremely well received talks for the Atlanta .Net group I almost bombed last time. Not a total disaster and luckily few were present to witness it. I had given the presentation very successfully twice before, so what happened?
The Excuses
Late notice: I stepped in very late to fill the slot and did little preparation
Lack of Preparation: The only preparation was testing the demos and skim reading slides
Lack of enthusiasm: Lariam still affects me slightly, that was one of those weeks
Bad Luck
No crowd interaction: Advertising talks well in advance gets the word out and brings in people really interested in the subject – just one eager audience member can spur interest for others
Bored Blank faces: Need to learn how to handle this
Problems with my Old Style
Need short 10/15 minutes segments: The Cruise Control .Net talk was pretty technical, each section building on the last. If I lost an audience member they stayed lost. If one demo fails it could destroy every subsequent demo.
Relying on audience interaction: Good interaction makes for killer presentations – everyone learns and everyone has fun. I was relying on it, don’t!
Deja Vu: When giving the same presentation several times it feels insincere, especially when repeating jokes. This must be an experience thing, Comedy School could help too.
UK: DD6 on Nov 24th
Oct 24th
== UPDATE: Registration is full. It took just a few days!! ==
Registration is now live, these free conferences always fill up fast so register right now!
It is on a Saturday at Microsoft’s office in Reading and there are some great looking sessions – some good ones are bound to overlap with my slot 
See you there… Developers, Developers, Developers!
Non Tech: Wagon on the Dragon
Jul 26th
Bit of fun here: last week I headed to North Carolina and Deal’s Gap, aka Tail of the Dragon as I was sick of hearing friends talk about how great it was. 318 curves in 11 miles is their tagline, if you love cars or motorcycles you must check it out. People regularly travel from all over the East Coast to it. You are guaranteed to see a huge amount of exotic motorcycle and cars – more than likely you’ll see a few clubs out there en-mass; we saw 40+ Miatas. Please be careful on your first runs, fatalities do happen and it always seems to be out-of-towners. On the bright side the last motorcyclist to die went off an 80 foot cliff-face, so at least he an awesome view on his way out, much better than piling into an ugly truck like below. Seriously, like the Nürburgring take it easy on your first few runs.
There are many photographers on the route who take photos of all interesting cars and bikes to sell them online, the most popular being Killboy and Dragon Slayer Photos. Police on roads like this are normally semi-tolerant, all biker/ fast car roads I know are Policed heavily on weekends but I have never seen a speed trap; they are pretty lenient but if you start passing on blind bends, ride with a ‘hidden’ tag etc then expect some attention from LOEs.
What about the Wagon? It is my wife’s ’07 328iT and our fifth factory-delivered BMW – for good reason too, small BMWs rock! Normally I’d take my car which has a manual-box and grippy summer tires so expected to be disappointed with the auto-box and stock run flat tires. Surprisingly I was impressed with this stock setup, the tires communicate what is happening very, very well – going too hot into a bend results in modest understeer that is incredibly easy to control. Admittedly I had put a little extra air in the tires to stiffen the sidewalls, and of course the grip level is no where near a good summer tire; still I think 95% of the public will be happy with the handling in an emergency situation. Especially after this ride in the new three series when returning to the US in a couple of years it will be is a hard choice between a 335i with OZ rims/ summer tires/ coil-overs + FZ-6 for weekends OR a Honda Civic commuter + Ariel Atom for weekends. This is the Ariel Atom, I’d start with the smaller engine, 0-60 in 2.6 seconds is surely a total rush but I like Terra Firma…