One of the things that just about every consultant is going to do at some point is give a presentation. It could be to a client in hopes of selling them on your services, it could be to other consultants in your area, or it could be at a local geek meet up. Point is, if you’re a consultant there is a good chance you’re going to be in front of people and presenting something, at some point anyway.
For many consultants this can pose a huge problem because consultants, especially programmers are generally geeks. Geeks/nerds by their definition are pretty much introverts. They like the shadows. They are much happier sitting in a dark closet with nothing but the glow of the screen to sooth them. So asking them to get up in front of a crowd can usually have mixed results. You’ll find some that are actually good at giving presentations while others stumble and mumble their way through.
The key here is communication. Usually these kinds of people have to convey very complex ideas in a way that is simple to understand and sometimes, that is just hard to do. But it’s not impossible. Below are some tips to giving effective presentations.
1) Write down what you want to say. So many first time presenters don’t do this. Not writing down what you want to say in some form is pretty much the equivalent of turning in your first draft paper in your college English Composition class. It’s just a bad idea. Writing down your ideas, even in an outline form can really help you piece together an effective presentation. This is the biggest help in find the flow of what you want to say. I usually write up an outline before I create a single slide in Powerpoint. This helps me finalize my points and helps me find the flow i want to have in my presentation.
2) Don’t just stand behind your computer and talk through your Powerpoint slides. This is probably one of the quickest ways to put your audience to sleep. Standing still gives your audience a single point to focus on and can be incredibly boring. Move around a little, put a little presence into your presentation. You don’t have to make huge grand gestures, but just standing there can become dull to the audience. Combine this with tip 3 and you can really engage your audience. Exception, if you are doing demonstrations, you’re kind of tied to your computer. For help in this area, see tip 3.
3) Speak audibly and clearly. Don’t mumble. Seriously, don’t mumble. It really detracts. Even if you’re somewhat unsure about what you are saying make sure people can hear you in the back of the room. You don’t have to yell, but you need to use a public speaking voice. If you are tied to your computer for demonstrations and can’t move around too much, your voice will be how you engage your audience. If you mumble, it doesn’t help engage your audience and encourage them to participate and ask questions.
4) Be passionate about what you are speaking on. If you are passionate and really into what you are talking about it will get your audience fired up. Also, when your audience can see your excitement it helps them to get excited. If the audience is excited, chances are they aren’t going to be bored. If you are speaking on something you just can’t get into and there is no one else to do it, find an aspect of the subject you find interesting and focus on that. Build up to that. Being passionate about your subject will help you be more engaging to your audience. They’ll get into it because you’re into it.
5) Practice your presentation. It’s really that simple. Once you have your outline and your slides made, run through them. Do it once a day for a week before your actual presentation. This will help you really nail down what you want to say, how you want to phrase it, and set your pacing. You’ll need to practice less as you give more presentations so as you get better you won’t need days of practice runs.
Giving effective presentations can help you in a lot of ways as you progress through your consulting career. It is extremely hard to give an effective presentation and not everyone is going to give beautiful presentations. However, with a little practice you can begin to give effective presentations. The more of them you do, the better you’ll get at them (just like anything else).
Michael Koby 
Dark Knight = Dick Cheney Fantasy? WTF?
While reading some articles about how the film "The Dark Knight" is bound to be snubbed at the Academy Awards I ran across this article entitled "The Dark Knight Turns Out to Be a Dick Cheney Fantasy" where in the author turns what is probably one of the best movies of 2008 into a propaganda film for right wing ideology. This caused me to silently think to myself, "huh?"
The author spends some time point out some key points in the movie but fails to understand some very basic aspects of the Batman mythos. For example
To really understand the Joker, you need to have read two very important graphic novels: "Killing Joke" and Grant Morrison’s "Arkham Asylum" both which give phenomenal insight into the Joker’s mind set (and both have been mentioned by Nolan & Ledger as the inspiration for their Joker). These really explain that the Joker really has zero rhyme/reason to his madness. In fact, "Arkham Asylum" goes so far as to say that the Joker represents a kind of "super sanity" in which he reinvents himself on a daily basis. This kind of thinking can be seen in Nolan’s Joker in that the story of his scared face changes each time he tells the story.
The problem is, previous representations of the Joker on screens both large and small, play him as a jokester rather than a crazy clown. The reason for this being that with the popular Fox animated series from the nineties is that it was geared towards children and you can’t have a murderous clown in a children’s cartoon. Even the 60’s Batman series played the Joker as a prankster rather than crazy. However, the comic shows that the Joker is truly crazy and will do just about anything for a "laugh" he really does just want to "watch the world burn" as Alfred puts it.
In the comics, the Joker kills a Robin, threatens to detonate a nuclear bomb, and even eventually kills the wife of Commissioner Gordan in cold blood. He doesn’t really care about money, fame, or his own life. He just does what he does because 1) He can and 2) he wants to.
Also, another aspect of the Joker that the author completely ignores is that he is the chaos to Batman’s control. Batman has to be in control. He constantly learns from his mistakes and ensures to not repeat them. However the Joker is the exact opposite. The yang to Batman’s ying. To completely ignore this aspect of the two characters is to ignore the very essence of each of them.
If you read further into the comments, some reader goes so far as to mention that the Joker "video tapes his victims before he kills them" and that he blew up a hospital. Again, it is obvious these people have never read a comic book and look at movies and television for their knowledge of the Joker character. First off, the Joker used the radio in the early comics to announce his crimes. Usually as a direct challenge to both the police and Batman. You can look at DC’s trade paperback book "Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told" to see many examples of this. The videos in "The Dark Knight" are just simply an extension of this behavior (not to mention a more modern version of it). Also the Joker blows up many buildings throughout his career. Many times for no other reason than just do so. There’s even a whole miniseries where he goes on to hack Gotham’s computer systems and bring the city to a grinding halt (similar to "Live Free or Die Hard").
The thing about the Joker in Nolan’s film is that he is probably the purest representation of the Joker on any screen. And this scares people. There are people out there that commit atrocities for the sole purpose of doing so. They do so without reason. To deny that there is evil in this world is simply ignorance at it’s purest. Also, I think that the author some of the people who commented on the referenced article are just reading way too much into a comic book movie. Really, it’s just a movie folks, its not propaganda.