Eyeo 2014 - Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi, Internet Person, gave this presentation last year about his bots and creative process. He talks about exploring black boxes, discussing how code is weird, the problem with elegance, how to make less boring procedural generation, Spelunky, the importance of context,

Context, in particular, is an important idea. Darius discusses how a generator goes from flat and boring to interesting by adding context to templates and random input.

Thesis: Reflecting on my presentation skills

Today Stephen Nickson came into SVA IxD thesis class and made me reflect on my own presentation skills. 

Above is the video of me giving an Ignite Talk (5 minutes talk given with 20 slides that auto-advances every 15 second) at Eyeo 2014. Put yourself in my place and imagine presenting in front of 500+ people who you look up to. It was the most nerve wrecking experience and I was shaking so badly from the beginning to the end. Afterwards, I was not satisfied with my talk and was scared the watch the video. This is the first time I am sharing the video (maybe I will watch the video after writing this blog). 

I am sharing this video now because Class last Friday reminded me of the lessons I learned from this experience. 

The first lesson is that practicing is really important. Let me make a confession, I never practiced for my presentation since I was 4th grade. I don’t recommend this because this method has 50/50 statistical success rate. You might be completely fine or you might be completely nervous and shaking. Unfortunately, I was not as lucky at Eyeo 2014 Ignite talk. Only if I practiced, I would have felt more comfortable.

The second lesson is that you need to believe in the content of your presentation. At Eyeo, I gave a talk as a Design Lead of UNICEF Innovation Unit and through the presentation I attempted to get people excited about the work UNICEF do and ask audience to get involved. However, this presentation was something my boss believed in (who was very good at getting people to join him). It was missing my own voice. It felt like I was wearing someone else’s cloth and that made the presentation more hard to deliver.