I’m Presenting a “Grails Overview” at JavaMUG (Dallas)

By Robert Fischer | Published: April 22, 2009

My blogging hiatus is still on, but I’m just dropping my readers a line about my next event: I’m going to be presenting Grails at JavaMUG in Dallas on May 13th. The event will be held at Sun’s North Dallas Office. More information is here.

This event was arranged and subsidized by No Fluff, Just Stuff. NFJS has its Lone Star Software Symposium in Dallas from June 5th to the 7th.

Related posts:

  1. Presenting Groovy, Grails, BackgroundThread, and Autobase at TriJUG
  2. Scheduled for Greater Atlanta Software Symposium
  3. Agile Practices Overview: Points and Team Velocity
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  • http://blog.lucastex.com Lucas Teixeira

    Excellent Robert! Will you put the presentation at scribd?

    Thanks,

    Lucas
    lucastex+at+gmail.com

    • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

      Almost certainly not.

      I have no problem putting up video recording of my presentations (e.g. Why Rubyists Should Learn OCaml), and I might put up some kind of audio+screencast combo (if I could ever figure out how to do it), but my slides don’t stand on their own. I’m firmly of the opinion that your slides shouldn’t stand on their own — if they do, why am I wasting my time listening to you when I can just read through the slides in 5 minutes and move on with my life? I’m not the only person with this opinion (see Study: Slides As Handouts Fail for just one example).

      Now, I will often share my slides with the group that I just presented to on the basis that they’ve just heard the conversation and might be able to use the slides to jog their memory re: the content. In a sense, they’re doing exactly what I do when I give my presentation — queuing off the slides to remember information about the topic. But in doing that, I drop the slides up onto my server and drop an e-mail to the people I just presented to. I’ll pull those slides off my server after a month or two has past, when the retention has pretty much bottomed out in any case.

  • http://blog.lucastex.com Lucas Teixeira

    Oh, that’s a good point of view, and I agree that the slides can’t stand on their own. But I myself like to share all the talk data (slides, audio, Q&A, and what I can) with the participants and with those that couldn’t get there.

    I think most people can make distinction between the slides itself and the person whom talked about it, giving you the rights and credits of it! Of couse I know there are some ugly villains that wouldn’t do this, but, this is the normal way of stuff….

    :) Sorry about my english, have to practice more.

  • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

    @Lucas

    What language is your native language? I can whip out some rough German and worse Biblical Hebrew if either would be better for you. :)

    I’m only vaguely concerned about people stealing my content. I’m more concerned about people reading through my slides and then giving me crap because the slides aren’t meaningful on their own — that’s happened to me both from slides that got on Reddit and in my one and only foray into SlideShare. When I found myself trying to write slides that stood alone, I realized I was writing slides that didn’t work for presenting, so now I’ve explicitly dismissed the idea of sharing slides.

  • http://blog.lucastex.com Lucas Teixeira

    Hello Robert! I’m from Brazil, and my native language is Portuguese.

    Its very difficult to find a balanced point in this subject. You’ll always have assholes stealing your presentation, some others saying it does not have too much content (that you probably removed to avoid stealing) and others. Like I said, I myself prefer giving the most information I can and spreading it. I don’t know why, probably because this is the way I’ve learned all I know… :)

    It will be almost impossible for me to watch one day one of your presentations living here in Brazil, and this is frustating knowing all the good work you do in the Groovy Heading Development and reading the articles (eg. infoq) you write.

    But yes, I hate when people steal my blog posts, talks and articles… :P

    • http://www.smokejumperit.com Robert Fischer

      @Lucas

      Well, I don’t know any Portuguese, so I guess we’re stuck with English.

      Stealing really isn’t my main concern. My concern is really that my slides don’t mean a lot or offer a lot without someone speaking to them. And I’ve gotten enough negative comments about putting those kinds of slides out that I’ve just given up trying to share slides altogether.

      What I’d really like is for my presentations to be video taped, or for the audio to be captured along with a screen cast. I would be more than happy to share that, because that’s much more of the “whole package”.

  • Raphael Miranda

    I completely agree Robert, most of the time when I’m reading slides in scribed I can understand squat of the presentation. Unless one really suck at making presentations for instance making slides out of essays(and reads out-loud every word from each slide like the audience couldn’t).

    Some slides are interesting even without the presetation, although they usually make me want to see the presentation even more.
    i.e: http://tinyurl.com/couchAudition

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