Improving the quality of conference talks
The feedback from techies after my talks is often "Less Powerpoint, more IDE", and also that people get more out of a talk the more they can get involved.
So here is my (evolving) plan for how to deliver some killer talks for The Ajax Experience in October.
I like live coding. It's always a bit seat of your pants, but it's honest and open and the risk that the speaker is taking keeps the audience interested: "Can they pull it off".
So the experiment is taking this up a level. The plan is to run a CVS/SVN server and check-in the code I'm writing. I'm also planning on live coding an interactive application so people with a network connection can both use the app we write and can also check-out the code for themselves.
And while we are at it, why not allow the audience to check code in as well?
What do you think? Could it work? Would you come? Odds on me messing it up?
Also what sort of Ajax / DWR application should we write? It needs to be interactive and fairly simple. Any suggestions?