> Martin van den Nieuwelaar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Well I'm not the sort of person to be wooed by a pretty powerpoint
> presentation.  That said, presenting information is much more
> difficult than most people give credit for.  I've attended conferences
> where IMO every single presentation was lacking (my own included!).

I know what you mean Martin. I remember being appalled at the big Seybold
publishing show in SF where virtually every presentation was dogged by too
much stuff on-screen, badly set up equipment et al, and then to later see
Marvin Minsky fumble with his technology...*sigh*

We, that is SPIS, use powerpoint in quite a different fashion to almost
everyone else. Not sure why -- perhaps it's because we've got a very
strong communications background, but it seems to work. It would be
interesting to see what folk have to say about it, and to pick up other
pointers from our peers.

I think Sue's ideas about having some CS slides available has merit too,
so am sure this will be a discussion point at the committee meeting on
Friday -- keep those ideas coming!

> I think the best results can be achieved with a basic knowledge of
> whatever presentation tool/medium is being used, and an in-depth
> knowledge of Edward Tufte's books on presenting information.  These
> books are a great read for anyone working with user interface design of
> any kind.

Edward Tufte is great! We were astonished -- and very, very pleased -- to
find out that he'd been using our SciTechDaily Website as an example of
good site design in his more recent lectures!!

And if you haven't come across him before, Tufte is a Professor Emeritus
at Yale, best-known for his three books on information design, The Visual
Display of Quantative Information (see
http://www.edwardtufte.com/1072037087/tufte/books_vdqi), Envisioning
Information, and Visual Explanations.

The Visual Display one is considered a classic and well worth a read, as
are his comments on Web design if you're working in that area.

By the way, did everyone see the article in the Press about the Web
company (sorry but I can't remember who it was) who were stressing that
folks should start Web design consultancy relationships from the point of
view of its place in the marketing strategy of the client company, rather
than launching into the nitty-gritty of ecommerce and design details et
al.

The interviewee mentioned he was surprised how few companies did this, and
I think he's got a point. I know we've spent a day educating would-be
clients to the point where they have realised they need to go away and
think about it some more (fortunately they tend to come back, albeit
sometimes six months later! :-).

Perhaps there's a workshop in that -- identifying client education gaps?
Any interest there?

Cheers,
Vicki
who is sure there are more CSI committee members out there, but seems to
be the noisy one at the moment... :-)


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