Microsoft TechDays 2008 - Mission accomplished
The last two weeks have been crazy, and i haven't been blogging for a while.
I have done two session on Microsoft TechDays 2008, one about Scrum and one about web service interoperability with WCF and Sun's Metro stack.
Overall it didn't go has well has i expected, but never the less it was a great experience and i would like to thank Microsoft for the opportunity.
The session about Scrum was packed full, with more then 400 people attending, i wasn't expecting that many people, and i think that took away the ability to strike a conversation with your audience and start a discussion that a session about Scrum requires, at least IMHO.
That said, here are some of the lesson i took from doing the sessions
1 . I need to work more on my communication / presentation skills. I have been doing this for a short time, and have a lot to learn, when it comes to deliver a captivating talk.
2. Scrum it is all about people, about communication about teams. Scrum sessions should have a small audience, 30, 40 people max.
3. Doing sessions, especially when your creating the material from scratch, it's hard. So don't over commit. I did, and the result was that although i had a lot o fun doing it, and the subjects where interesting, it took a lot of hard work, and consequently a lot out of me.
4. Audiences are hard to please, and sometimes the criticism isn't that constructive, people get stuck in minor faults in your presentation and don't get pass that, and focus on the subject.
So, you better deliver a squicky clean presentation without bugs. If you don't, even tough your content is relevant, informative and interesting, they get caught in minor things and loose focus of what's important.
In the next few days i will be posting more about Microsoft TechDays 2008 and about my sessions.
Stay tunned , Cheers
