In early December. I followed up my Code Camp presentation with a talk on the Castle project. The presentation was also for the Fairfield / Westchester .NET User Group. Though I had been committed as a speaker for about three months, I wasn’t able to start preparing the presentation until the weekend before I spoke. In addition to learning to be a presenter, I’ve been learning about over-committing myself…

Preparing
Having recently finished converting a five years old classic ASP based portal site to run on the Castle stack, I felt ready to ramble about my experience. Filling ninety minutes seemed a trivial task. As I sat down to write the presentation, it became clear to me that I had my work cut out for me. Castle is a broad topic. I ruled out IoC, which still left me with MonoRail and ActiveRecord and indirectly with NHibernate and NVelocity.

My Code Camp slides having been too sparse, I was determined to make these slides full of samples and content. My intent when I presented was to use the slides as a guide for me, but to lead the audience through a number of coding demonstrations in VS.NET. As I started nearing twenty-plus slides on MonoRail alone, I knew I was heading for a content crunch, having to choose what was essential and what could be glanced over. Features such as View Components and business object validation demonstrate the power of MonoRail and ActiveRecord, but weren’t given much slide space. I learned quickly that this would be an introductory presentation on Castle. I ended up with over fifty slides…

The Presentation
I had anticipated a small crowd. Before Code Camp, typical attendance for the FW User Group was around fifteen-twenty. Plus, this was a cold December night. I thought the number would be more like ten… But Microsoft was kind enough to offer thirty-five VS 2008 copies to attendees via a random drawing (I won one, btw). Mark, who co-runs the group had informed me the day before I spoke that registration was around sixty (seventy-plus the day of the speech). This high registration number had be a little distracted…

I’m used to speaking in front of people. I’m an adjunct at Fairfield University. I teach programming to nearly thirty college students every Wednesday night. I’ve also led several brown bag lunches at work. I even used to work as an MCT. But Code Camp showed me that it’s different speaking to one’s peers. The teacher-student relationship doesn’t necessarily apply. Attendees want to know how to apply this technology to their problems. My students are learning how to solve problems with technology.

Because of the attendance, the event wasn’t held in a classroom as it usually is. I was on a podium, in a dark auditorium with a spotlight. I didn’t much care for the detachment from the audience. It’s hard to engage a shadow. I suppose this setting is something with which I should become familiar should I hope ever to speak in a large conference setting. Having a conversation with (as opposed to lecturing to) a nearly faceless audience is part of what makes a good speaker good.

I spent a great deal of time trying to research answers to questions I was anticipating. I learned a great deal more about ActiveRecord and NHibernate in the process. I don’t recall any questions that were newly learned. The questions I did receive were typically about how to do something the Castle way (i.e. pagination in view components). I feel I answered questions effectively and without too much hesitation, which was a good feeling.

In Conclusion…
Overall I was happy with my presentation. Admittedly, I had more fun at Code Camp. This feeling is about the setting. It’s easier to be near the audience. Though I am pleased to have made it through my slides. The audience seemed a bit fatigued. The VS 2008 give away pushed my start and end time out and people started to leave as it got late. I wasn’t insulted, this happens at all meetings…