The Nightmare of Doing a Software Freedom Day Presentation

Doing a Free and Open Source presentation on Software Freedom Day could be a nightmare to some resource speakers.  It is similar to eating “Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans” in the Harry Potter series since you would never really know the composition of the audience till you get there. Last year I had to improvised since I believed that the presentation that I prepared was too complicated for the audience to take notice off. I ended up with a 40 minute presentation with one slide that only tells about the title of my topic and my name (well, actually two if you count the next slide that contains my email account so that they could add me to their Facebook account).

The main problem is how to get the attention of the audience knowing that it is actually composed of different kinds of people and each having different reasons for being there.  Its not like a gathering of nurses or teachers that the resource speaker knows the profile of his audience and could adjust the level of his presentation to their needs. Getting their attention and keeping it through the whole length of your presentation is the big challenge so that the short time that would have spent would them will have a lasting impact in their lives.

Reasons Why they are Attending Software Freedom Day Programs

 I've seen some presentation (most especially those doing software presentations) go stale and the audience attention wonders off.  I've seen some presentations that seems to be nothing at all and yet the audience is able to grasp the message and its the only presentation that they could recall in the years to come.  The first rule of doing large group presentations in software freedom day programs is knowing the reasons why your audience is attending the program.

1.It is required – for most part of the audience they participate in the program because one of their professor requires them to come as part of their requirement for passing the course.  It could be that they are required to pass a reaction paper or position paper when they get back to class the next day.  For most they might just get snippets of the various presentations that they could use for their course requirements and spend rest of the time talking with their friends or texting.

2.The Geeks – the techie people whose main interest is more on the technical aspect of the presentations.  Its more on the bytes and bits. Their interest  is based on the amount of technical jargons used by the speaker in his presentation.

3.The FOSS Wanna Be Advocates – these are people who keeps on shouting that they prefer to use FOSS because it is “Free”. Most often enough they tend to connect FOSS with “Free of Cost” rather than the “Freedom” associated in using Free and Open Source Software.

4.The Curious – these are the people who participate in the program because the topics is something new and it appeals to them.  They might not be as technologically verse but they keep an open mind that they tend to do research later in order to learn more about what was discussed.

5.The Give a Way Person – these are people who registers and leaves after getting the give a way materials. They might spend an hour of two but they often leave once their objective is achieve.

6.The Troll – these are unique individuals who are usually hyper and talks out loud with the other participants during the presentations. His main interest in participating in the activities is to show off that he is much better than the one doing the presentation. He shows off even if he knows nothing much of the topics and gets satisfaction from the anger he generates from other people because of his participation.

Balance Everything

Doing a large group presentation for Software Freedom Day requires balance.  The main objective is for your presentation to create enough interest that the audience would remember and pursue further studies on your topic.  

1.Never Assume Too Much or Too Little – never assume that you will be presenting to a group of people who knows a lot about computers and software.  Never assume also that you are facing an audience that knows to little about the topic that you would discussed. Take the middle ground remember that it is not a technical training presentation that you have all the time of the day to go through the whole process. You are there to entice them so that they would seek further studies on your topic.

2.Never Target the Minority Take it as a Whole – most of the time presentations falls flat because only a few people are able to connect with the presentation. Use simple words that everybody could understand. Use experiences that they could relate to in conveying the message across the audience. 

3.Never Shut Down a Troll – when engaged with  troll it would be much better to answer his questions directly and in a manner that everybody could relate to. For very technical questions or questions that could not be of interest of the rest of the participants can be discussed in a separate discussion after the presentation.