Method in the mayhem...

Back when I worked for Gene Wang at Borland, the company coughed up some extraordinary sum of cash - I heard $5K per person - to have Jerry Weissman come train Gene, me, and someone else (I can't definitively recall who, though I have my suspicions) in the art of public speaking. As coaches go, Weissman was, and continues to be, a heavy hitter.

I still remember one of his basic principles for constructing a PowerPoint slide:

4 x 4

Meaning: a "body" that contains no more than 4 lines, with no more than 4 words on a line. No word wrap allowed. (Notice how the summary of this principle would itself qualify as an excellent example of a line on a presentation slide!)

The idea is to give the audience (and you, the speaker) a set of tags with which to remember key points and gauge overall progress. In a way, it's like the way airlines flash those dandy little maps that show where you are along the route... every once in a while. It also keeps the audience from getting ahead of you, since there's not much to extract from the bare bones shown on the screen.

For some reason, technical people think it's okay to use PowerPoint as a kind of ersatz word processor, which kind of defeats the purpose of doing a presentation (after all, the audience can read the slides silently a lot faster than any speaker can do so out loud). And one of Weissman's points related exactly to that: If your slide conveys your entire message, what are you doing, flapping your gums up at the front of the room?

The item I am almost finished with right now basically consists of chunks of the original document that have been shoehorned onto individual slides. I can now see why the presentation differs from the original: the level of detail in the original document is so high, that even the presenter felt obliged to abridge the text, requiring some wordsmithing to remove the more serious scars.

More later. Time is of the essence.

Cheers...

The daily pile is complete...

Both outstanding assignments have been completed; one has been invoiced.

Despite the arrival - and deposit - of the last part of my Kazakhstan check, I feel no elation. This either means I'd really have been depressed if the check hadn't come, or... I don't know what. I'm just tired.

To break the monotony, I signed up with Skype's beta "SkypeIn" program, which allows folks to dial an ordinary number - mine's in Connecticut, go figure - and have the call routed through the 'net to one's computer. I see the major advantages of this arrangement as two: First, once the company gets its act together and formally launches the service, you'll be able to establish a presence overseas fairly inexpensively; second, you'll be able to drag your laptop to the ends of the earth and still receive phone calls (and voice mail).

I had given thought to using Skype for telephone interpretation, but over the past few weeks, I've experienced an unacceptably high level of less-than-optimum Skyping, mostly in the form of strange messages indicating there's something not right. Also, a commonly reported problem - being able to hear your interlocutor, but vice versa not happening - has occurred twice so far.

Of course, in the mood I am in, telephone interpretation is the last thing on my mind right now.

I forgot to put the cat in the garage last night and remembered this only as I drifted off to sleep. I figured it was no big deal, as Baby has a tendency to wake me around 5:30 am, which was acceptable for this morning (a ham breakfast morning), so I made no deviations from the descent into unconsciousness, and fell asleep without incident.

Baby woke me up, but at 3:15 am.  Grrr.

I am currently listening to some very pleasant music tracks composed by LJ friend sebab; the music was well worth waiting for. In fact, I think I will transfer myself upstairs and continue to listen on the system in the living room, so that the fan noise from my desktop doesn't provide unwanted accompaniment.

Cheers...