Be Nice..when Showing Code in a Demo or Presentation
As a child of the 80’s I live my life by movie quotes. One of those comes from Roadhouse.
I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.
It hurts me to say it, but many of you are NOT being nice. But you are SO close to getting there.
As someone who does a LOT of show and tell around our development tools, I spend many minutes of each day demonstrating features that involve SQL and PL/SQL — both in graphical user and command line interfaces.
There are many tips and tricks I have for making this as enjoyable as possible for the user, but there are two that apply equally to both environments:
#1 Increase Your Font Size
Not everyone is sitting in the ‘front row.’ And not everyone is a retired pilot with 20/20 or even better vision.
Does it mean you might have to re-think how your code will show on the screen when it comes to line wrapping or the size of your windows? Yes. But if you’re there to deliver a message or help someone — help them.
If they can clearly see what you’re showing, then they can more easily follow along with your train of thought, and they’re going to come away with your message intact.
Go as high as you can. I’m at 36 in Windows CMD, and in my GUI, I’m currently at 22.
#2. Use Screen Magnifiers, Liberally.
Do your slide, or your demo in real time as you normally would. Pause a half-second, and then rewind to the beginning of your action-shot. Zoom. Show how you started the process, EXACTLY where you clicked, or repeat exactly the keyboard sequence you used. FOLKS ARE GOING TO BE ASKING, how/where did he do that?
Let them jot this down.
Then do the thing, and zoom in again on the results.
If you anticipate your audience’s needs and questions ahead of time, you’re that much closer to winning them over.
Don’t lose them because they can’t make out what you’re doing on the screen.
Controversial Statement: Consider if Black Text on a White Screen Really Works
I am going to say, ‘no, no it doesn’t.’ This is a subjective statement. But I’ve seen enough presentations where folks go code samples and screenshots that look like they came straight out of Notepad or vi, without any consideration to how it will appear.
If your code is an essay, then pay attention to the aesthetics. Don’t lose the technical argument because someone is distracted by the fit and finish of your product.
Maybe you hate how I show code above, but darker images on slides with predominately white backgrounds and themes seem to work better…for me.
