Chris Coyier
Archive for December, 2012
The Childhood Friend Test
Thursday, December 20th, 2012
If you remember it as:
up up down down left right left right start
you were a loner.
If you remember it as:
up up down down left right left right select start
you had friends.
Or a sibling I guess.
Tis the Season for Excellent iOS App Releases
Friday, December 14th, 2012
The new Gmail is awesome.
The new Rdio is awesome.
The new Google Maps is awesome.
The new Twitteriffic is awesome.
The new Flickr is awesome.
The updates to Zappos and Instagram have been awesome.
Polar is awesome.
Not Extroverts
Monday, December 10th, 2012
It may surprise you that most speakers I know are not extroverts. I don’t mean extroverts in the way you may think, either. I mean it in the Myers Briggs type: they are not the type of people who gain energy from other people, they gain that energy from themselves. I’m one of these people, too.
Meeeee too.
I need to learn more about introversion. This was a good read.
Speaking Links and Thoughts
Sunday, December 9th, 2012
Idan Gazit on Designing Presentations.
Dr. Weinschenk’s video 5 Things Every Presenter Should Know About People.
I was once recommend Confessions of a Public Speaker and I read it and it’s very good.
My Biggest Tip
Look at your previous talks. Could you make an entire talk out of one of the slides? You should probably do that. Slides that cover everything under the sun feel like the person is avoiding actually saying anything (usually). If you go with something very specific, people will remember it instead of zoning out with information overload.
I once did an hour talk on only the ::before and ::after elements in CSS. Literally nothing else. I’ve gotten tons of feedback on that talk on how people totally get it now and they use these selectors now to great effect in their work.
By the end of the talk, I feel like people should completely understand what you are saying. Like in City Slickers when Billy Crystal is explaining how the VCR works very clearly and dude explodes like:
SHUT UP. JUST SHUT UP. The cows could tape something by now.
I want it so when I’m done talking, if there were any cows in the room, they understand.
Other Quick Hits
People in the room want you to do well. They aren’t against you, they are for you. They will be super forgiving as long as your acknowledge and respect them.
Confidence is key. Talk about something you know cold. You know it to the point where even if you get a weird question about it that you can’t answer, it’s actually interesting that you don’t know the answer and you can use that as your answer (while promising follow-up).
Tell em. Tell em what you told em. Tell em what you told em. Old adage that helps mostly in structuring your talk.
Stubborn Love
Sunday, December 2nd, 2012
The Lumineers deserve every ounce popularity they have.
It’s better to feel pain,
than nothing at at all.
The opposite of love is indifference.