360iDev 2018 Pt. 1
Last week I attended 360iDev in Denver, Colorado for the first. The conference is a four day event held in Downtown Denver with nearly fifty total sessions offered. As the name kind of eludes to, it’s mainly iOS related topics, but they also had sessions about soft skills and inspirational, non-code sessions. Of course I couldn’t attend every single session, but luckily they do record them. I was able to go to twenty-four sessions, and will talk about some of my favorites. I’ll first share some of the more soft skills and inspirational sessions here, and then do another post on the more technical sessions.
Overall the conference was a blast and I met a lot of great people! I walked away with some awesome ideas for projects and growth items, which you will hopefully see on here in the near future. I will definitely consider going back, maybe as a speaker next time 😉.

Crafting Great Presentations
The first day of the conference consisted of 3.5 hour workshops, and the first one I decided to go to was “Crafting Great Presentations” by Jay Thrash. Even though this was at a conference, his tips don’t only apply to conference style presentations, it can be for local meet-ups or even just a presentation at work. He grouped the entire session into three main parts, each for a phase you should have when crafting a presentation: 1) conceive your message, 2) visualize, bring your story to life, 3) present.
Conceive
Every day, with every action and choice, you’re either a teacher and inspiration, or a lesson and a reminder — Cat Stewart
The conceive step is all about coming up with your message, and ways to craft your message. Jay talked about a four step process that you can use to figure out what your message should be: topic, brainstorm, story, and then structure. Your topic should be something your passionate about. If you’re not passionate about it, that lack of enthusiasm can come across when giving the presentation. Brainstorm — do research on the topic and find others who have gone through the same thing, as well as other’s who have the opposite experience. You can also apply divergent versus convergent thinking to fine tune your topic. Figure out what are all the things that fit into the topic, then select the best pieces. Story — be a story teller, don’t make it just about being a presentation. Convey the highs and lows till you found the solution, and make the audience understand and reenforce why are you struggling with this. Structure — use visuals to reenforce your story, not compete with it. As you go through those steps to create your message, you want to keep in mind a few things:
- Your message should have a purpose. What are you trying to get across to your audience?
- Your message should capture the attention of the audience and build a relationship with them. You can do this by empathizing with them. What is it that brings them in? What are their struggles?
- Your message should resonate with the audience. You want your message to be shared further than the single point in time you gave your presentation
Visualize
At this point you should have your message picked out, and you should start crafting the presentation and bringing your message to life. You want you presentation to be more than just words. When giving the presentation, the audience is splitting their time between you and the slides. So when the audience is focusing all their attention on the slides or you’re reading verbatim, they’re probably not hearing what you’re saying. As a result, what is the point of you as the presenter? This is a disservice to yourself and to the audience. Might as well of printed it off and handed it out. At Hudl, we have company designed slides that we should be using, but Jay gave some design and content guidelines to practice when making your own slides:
- Color should be kept simple (4–5 colors), and should be used consistently throughout the presentation. E.g. one color consistently used of background, one color consistently used for key points, etc.
- Contrast is critical, test your different color combinations with background color(s).
- Typography should be kept simple, same as color. Choose 4–5 fonts and use them consistently. Assign a purpose for each one.
- Use all the space, don’t use tiny fonts. The bigger the font, the easier it is to read
- Layout, again, use consistently. It makes it easier for your audience to consume. It shouldn’t be difficult for your audience to find the most important information
- Images — go big!
- Be aware of text on images. Alter the image so that the text is clearly seen
- Live coding — If you’re brave enough to actually do this: practice, practice, practice. Also highlight key changes. You may not need to see me physically type all the code to get the point across.
- Animations — less is more. Use it to focus attention, but just enough to draw attention. Too many can become distracting.
Presentation
How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things, but how well we are understood. — Andrew Grove
It’s almost time to give your presentation. Before the day actual comes, you should go through your preflight checklist
- Backup copy of presentation somewhere. In the cloud or on a USB, preferably USB so that if something goes wrong with your computer, you can easily just copy it over to someone else’s computer.
- You have all the dongles and batteries you need.
- “Clean your room”, i.e. clean your desktop!
At this point, you should have practiced your presentation a lot. You gain confidence through practicing, and what you’re saying should now be second nature. One tip Jay gave was to record yourself going through a practice run. Then listen and critique yourself. This also helps if you think you explained or said something in a super awesome way. So when you go back and listen to it, you can remember exactly how you said it. Some other presenter tips were:
- Practice pausing; you don’t need to keep talking the entire time.
- Be careful with anything ad-lib. You want to be aware of your boundaries and make sure you don’t cover anything to early
- Don’t rely to heavily on your notes. The more you put on your notes, the more dependent you are on the notes and less engaged you are with the audience.
Now it’s over, but that doesn’t mean your role is over as a presenter. You should be available for questions and be an active part of the community that was there. Start up conversations or ask for feedback from people who attended. Then refine and repeat the process for the next time you present.
Wired for Connections
I use to think I needed more ink in my pen or a bigger pen to make a mark.
The keynote of the conference was given on the second day by Tammy Coron. She talked about the struggles she had growing up, as well as the struggles she faces today at making connections. Growing up she didn’t connect with people because she didn’t think she was worth it. She saw flaws in herself and was concerned with what other people thought of her. She was terrified of people, and that people were going to pass judgement. She thought, “It was not worth it for you to be friends with me.”
Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are — Brene Brown
She then told use a story about a water bearer and his broken pots. The moral of the story is that we are so concerned with the imperfections and flaw we see in ourself that we forget to see the beauty we provide around us.
Meeting new people has always been a struggle for me. I blame it on being an introvert, but I face some of the same struggles as Tammy with meeting new people. I struggle with starting conversations and always worry about what I’m going to say, but Tammy gave advice to just be present. “When I worry about how to respond to what you’re saying, I completely miss what you’re saying.”
Her closing line was that we just need to connect with people, and she had some stats from Gallup that showed we are likely to be more engaged and satisfactory when we have a best friend or close friend in the workplace.
What does it take to put your mark on this world? It doesn’t matter how big your pen is, doesn’t matter how much ink you have. What matters is you have to take cap off. Be willing to show the world your insides.
That is how we leave a mark in this world, by making connections with people.
