> “If you as a speaker must choose between entertaining or informative, go for entertaining. People are giving you 45 minutes of their lives.”
If that's all it boils down to then you probably shouldn't speak at all. I go to comedy clubs for entertainment. I fly halfway across the US and spend a week in a hotel for your 45 minutes of information.
I respectfully disagree. I work to make my talks entertaining — intellectually and on-topic entertaining — and people give me very encouraging unsolicited feedback.
I hate most talks. They're dry affairs that are far better experienced as transcripts to skim for nuggets of info. I very rarely go to conventions for this reason.
Speaking is a skill: you're inspiring and transferring rough mental representations. People should watch Lisp/AI prof Patrick Henry Winston's lecture on how to speak:
(http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9F536001A3C605FC)
I agree with 100% of the article, or close to it. If my spidey-sense tells me people are glazing over a bit, and my words/actions legitimately could be perceived as boring, I rush or skip through that part. I don't plug my company, and in fact it's nice to try shocking people a bit by offhandedly criticizing the company.
In addition, I won't step through a file of code. If I must show them code in its context, I'll tell them that they don't have to understand it, and I'll just point out some interesting attribute. I dislike when people step through code; most of it's generally obvious and in a form for explaining to a tediously literal-minded computer.
I disagree with the article. That particular attendee doesn't want to know who you are or why you even had to solve the problem you are presenting. Others in the audience may have a different preference.
Skipping slides if you see someone play Farmville? Don't. Frankly, by then it's too late, and messing up with your presentation live is a sure recipe for failure.
If that's all it boils down to then you probably shouldn't speak at all. I go to comedy clubs for entertainment. I fly halfway across the US and spend a week in a hotel for your 45 minutes of information.