Last month I had the opportunity to take part in a job assessment of the Austrian Software Test Experts. The managing directors and I have been friends since long as would be expected from guys who say that "software test is cool" and a "fanatic about code quality". I was looking forward to meeting the whole staff of testing experts.
The CEO had asked me to prepare an introduction and a short presentation about some code quality related topic. Unfortunately I had a very busy time and wasn't able to prepare anything in-depth. The night before I just hacked together a little presentation by copying all kind of slides from some of my previous presentations. Stealing the joke from Uncle Bob's talk Craftsmanship and Policy (2:30), I titled it My Favourite Topic, which is of course - me. ;-)
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I didn't take the presentation too seriously however the CEO said it was hilarious, almost comedy styled. People who had known me liked it a lot. But it turned out that I did a really poor job. Half of the audience didn't get the joke and therefore did not know what I was talking about. They got the humorous, self-deprecating introduction wrong and were discussing if I was disrespectful or just unprofessional. They hauled me over the coals.
3 comments:
Reads like the everyday job of a developer: Create top quality in minimum time!
It is the same for presentations or other talks. You need time to produce quality. Definitely a valuable experience!
A code cop should know that ;-)
I agree. I didn't want to spend the necessary time to make it great. But in the end it sucked and the smaller but still considerable effort was wasted.
I just uploaded a brushed-up version of the slides to Slideshare for more convenient consumption. Enjoy!
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