I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'presentation'

March 19, 2010

“Creatives”

This is video of a 5 minute talk I gave at Ignite Bay Area 2. It’s inspired by the collision of cultures ten years ago at my first job, when they went from a purely tech/business/enterprisey consulting firm to being a cool sexy web firm. (I was worried before giving the talk that the problems had all been solved in the last decade — the reaction I got from the audience suggests not!)

The video isn’t the clearest, so the slides (sans nice fonts) are embedded below. If you hit the Play button on the slides at roughly the time I start talking, it should auto-advance in time with my blethering.

Incidentally, there are a bunch of upcoming Ignite events in San Francisco — at the Chirp, Google I/O and Web 2.0 Expo conferences — and it’s fabulous fun (and a great challenge). I highly recommend submitting talks.

March 3, 2010

I'm a Barbie Girl in a CS World

Fantastic slide deck from Ignite Sydney. Good food for thought on the need for diversity in computer circles, and what effect the “Computer Engineer Barbie” might/should have.

February 21, 2010

Work in progress

Work in progress

Starting to sketch out my talk for Ignite Bay Area 2, a scant 12 hours before the slides are due.

I am apparently no less prepared at 33 than I was as a teenager doing my homework.

March 21, 2009

One Hour in Bacon • BaconCamp SF

The presentation I gave today at BaconCamp. Went over pretty well, I thought, even if it does violate all my usual rules about presentations! (Too many words on the screen!)

July 28, 2008

It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future

Slides from a vintage IBM sales presentation. I might do a presentation some time that *only* uses these for illustration.

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September 18, 2007

Powerful Pointed Presentation (old copy) - Google Docs

Playing with Google Docs’s new Presentations module. This is the result of uploading a fairly complex 7Mb PPT file — the last revision of “Powerful Pointed Presentation” before I switched to Keynote. Can’t seem to find any way of having “notes” or “commentary” appear with your presentation, but the Jabber chat is pretty cool.

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August 30, 2007

Presentationships > Great Presentations Mean Business

Slides for Chris Brogan’s talk on presenting from PodCampPittsburgh.

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August 25, 2007

How I made my presentations a little better | 43 Folders

Good collation of presentation links and tips from Merlin Mann.

August 7, 2007

Apple - iWork - Keynote - Flexible Delivery Options

New version of Keynote lets you record a voiceover for your presentation, then export to YouTube. That’s worth the upgrade price right there!

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July 4, 2007

Blackfriars' Marketing: Dissecting Steve Jobs' reality distortion field

Good breakdown of some of the things Steve Jobs does that makes him such a compelling presenter.

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June 14, 2007

Advice for presentations: It happens!

Good tips for presenting at conferences.

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June 1, 2007

Powerful, Pointed Presentations

In case anyone’s looking for them, the slides and (limited) notes from my talk at Ignite Boston last night.

May 24, 2007

powerpoint presentation humor - information aesthetics

Mildly amusing powerpoint-powered standup.

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April 4, 2007

Research points the finger at PowerPoint - Technology - smh.com.au

“Pioneered at the University of NSW, the research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.”

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August 11, 2006

Presentation Tips For The Technically Gifted

Good tips on how to do your tech project demo. Should be required reading for anyone talking at WebInno meetings.

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June 4, 2006

RandomBrainDump from BarCampBoston

Dell/IBM to Mac laptop ratio seemed to be about 80/20 in favour of PCs.

Monster did a great job of selling themselves. We only saw their “labs” area, rather than the cubicle farm I’m sure exists there, plus a tour of their network operations, to wow the geeks.

glenn’s notes on some of the frustation in the organisation of BarCamp sum up my complaints pretty well. Except I’d also add that the font on the name badges was too small.

Veracode sounds like it will be fascinating. Not sure how much of it is public knowledge, so I’ll keep my mouth shut for now. And I got to meet Dildog.

PB Wiki sucks salty dogs’ cocks in hell forever. Once you saved an edit, no-one else could edit the page for 15 minutes, because you “kept” the lock.

Bil Lewis gave a superb demo of his Omniscient Debugger for Java. He managed a great gotcha moment for the audience when his debugger crashed. “You should debug your debugger,” said a sarcastic audience member. “Good idea!” says Bil, as he shows that he was running the debugger inside a debugger all along. (That this debugger then crashed with a bug only marginally detracted from his showmanship)

The Reddit chaps rock. When the video for their presentation, Ingredients for Web 2.0 Success, is posted, watch it. It got the biggest reaction (and had the most crowded room) of any session of the weekend.

I had the pleasure of giving a ride back to Boston to Eric Skiff of Common Ground, a New York charity, looking to end homelessness. Not put a band-aid over it. End it.

The links I promised that I’d post from my session, Powerful, Pointed Presentations: Creating Passionate Users, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Presentation Zen and Really Bad Powerpoint. And thank you to Larry the Basset Hound for his cameo.

March 9, 2006

Hobbes vs Rousseau on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Best slide of ETech — From Clay Shirky’s talk on internet community behaviours.

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March 1, 2006

Ten reasons why you need to build an API

Very attractive presentation by Shaun Inman (author of Mint) on the benefits of building an API into your webapp.

January 18, 2006

What Works In Software Development

A really good summary of the best bits of Agile, XP, etc. plus some common sense. Turns a bit Perl-centric near the end, but that aside it’s an excellent read for software engineers.

January 5, 2006

Guardian Unlimited | Behind the magic curtain

A former Apple employee gives some insight into the lead-up to a Steve Jobs keynote.

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October 14, 2005

Presentation Zen

Blog dedicated to getting your presentations up to snuff.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.