New Ruby language logo on the block

I'm NOT proud to annouce: the new Ruby language logo contest has a winner.

Here it is:Now, for sure, I will stay with the old one:


Or a variant:

I really don't get the point.

There is an ugliest, washed out, with three different font styles version, of the old logo ?!?!

Rails regional events in Brazil

Two of the most important cities here will have Regional Rails events.

First: RejectConf SP’07 ( november 17 ) at São Paulo.

Second: Rio on Rails ( december 8 ) at Rio de Janeiro.

Informations in portuguese only.

But here are the logos:

Takahashi method

It has to be mentioned...

Very important on my presentations assembly method is the "Takahashi method".

When I go from the Storyboard to presentation software, I use his method to represent each idea, in just one word.

Then on the next steps I develop all the necessary text / images and other slides, to express the idea behind that word.

It is a fundamental tool on the process.

You can find more about the "Takahashi method" here .

Thanks to Masayoshi Takahashi.

Presentation recipe 2nd release

The Ruby presentation work keeps going.

And I change “my modern presentation recipe” a bit.

No more slides quantity pattern, but ideas pattern.

For example, I keep the Acts concept, and distribute some slides on those Acts.

I think it is not the way (at least for me) anymore.

OK, we have to impose some kind of limit there, or we can face a two or more hour presentation, and we know that is not good.

But if we state 10 slides on that Act, 5 on that one, there is an unfair rule.

Some people speak 30 minutes with 10 slides, some less then 10 minutes with the same 10 slides.

So I think the idea pattern is a better choice.

You will have a 30 to 45 minutes presentation (I think it is a good average).

You follow my recipe, you have a 5 Acts pattern.

You have to express the whole thing in the first five minutes of your presentation.
So I suggest 5 topics (IDEAS) here (1rst Act).

Next you have 3 slots (7 to 10 minutes each) to develop your story.
Here, I suggest 7 to 10 topics (IDEAS) on each of those Acts (2nd, 3rd and 4th)

At the end you have another five minutes slot to finish the presentation, and once more I suggest a 5 topics (IDEAS) here (5th Act)

That is it ! You have a 30 to 45 minutes Hollywood style presentation.

No matter how many slides you use.

The point is: how many ideas per time slot (Act) you will show.

My Ruby presentation on the road

Hard work, on my Ruby language presentation, last weeks.

First of all, I defined “my actual recipe” to modern presentations.

It is something like using Syd Fields’s 4 acts format and a simplified composition, of Joseph Campbell’s (The hero with a thousand faces), ideas.

Hugh research, lots of sites, documents and videos after, I have a 5 Acts template to my presentation, thanks to Christopher Vogler (The Writer's Journey), proposals.

I think it will be useful to someone else in the future.

With the template done, I fill it with the Ruby language data (that is called “data dump phase”), and after that, start to adapt my presentation to the Lawrence Lessig’s presentation format.

That was a hard work on finding images to express the ideas, since each slide contains just a few words (most of then just one), the number of slides and pictures involved grow up a lot.

Since Lessig’s stile is much like a photomontage movie, that is a consequence.

If you really want to know what I mean, have to see all the material here, and a fresh approach to his ideas here.

Those presentations are most of the time “one way presentations”, the speaker talks and the audience listens to him.

The above Lessig’s sample is a 31’40 minutes presentation with 243 slides…

My case is different, I pretend to interact with the audience (you have to consider, our audience in general is smaller then Lessig’s), I have to convince each one in the audience that he/she is the “hero” on my story. In fact they are part of the story.

If you take the common 1 slide per minute format, you loose a lot on visual impact, and instinctively go to the boring “bullet presentation” format.
On the other hand, if you choose the Lessig’s original format, you loose the audience interaction.

So my choice is: instead of 1 slide per minute format, a sequence of short photomontage movies and interactions per minute, in my mind this way we have the benefits of both patterns.