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Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations 1st Edition
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ISBN-100321820800
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ISBN-13978-0321820808
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Edition1st
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PublisherAddison-Wesley Professional
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Publication dateAugust 15, 2012
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LanguageEnglish
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Dimensions7 x 0.6 x 9 inches
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Print length288 pages
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Neal Ford is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in computer science from Georgia State University, specializing in languages and compilers, and a minor in mathematics, specializing in statistical analysis. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of six books. His primary consulting focus is the architecture, design, and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at more than five hundred developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than two thousand talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his website at nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @neal4d.
Matthew McCullough is a 15-year veteran of enterprise software development and currently enjoys the role of Vice President of Training at GitHub Inc. He is honored to be part of such an energetic team that is helping advance the software industry to a more collaborative and creative mode of working. Matthew’s past as a co-founder of a U.S. consultancy allowed him to have the job freedom to become a world-traveling open source educator, with the support of many businesses, conference organizers, and friends making it viable. Matthew is a contributing author to the Gradle, Jenkins, and O’Reilly Git books, creator of the Git Master Class series for O’Reilly, speaker on the No Fluff Just Stuff conference tour, author of three of the top 10 DZone RefCards, and volunteer President of the Denver Open Source Users Group. He can be reached via email at matthewm@ambientideas.com or on Twitter at @matthewmccull.
Nathaniel Schutta is a senior software engineer in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with extensive experience developing Java Enterprise Edition based Web applications. He graduated from St. John’s University (MN) with a degree in computer science and has a master’s of science degree in software engineering from the University of Minnesota. For the last several years, he has focused on user interface design. Nathaniel has contributed to corporate interface guidelines and consulted on a variety of web-based applications. A long-time member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group and a Sun-certified web component developer, Nathaniel believes that if the user can’t figure out your application, then you’ve done something wrong. Along with his user interface work, Nathaniel is the co-creator of the open-source Taconite framework, has contributed to two corporate Java frameworks, has developed training material, and has led several study groups. During the brief moments of warm weather found in his home state of Minnesota, he spends as much time on the golf course as his wife will tolerate. He’s currently exploring Ruby, Rails, and (after recently making the switch) Mac OS X. Nathaniel is the co-author of the bestselling book, Foundations of Ajax. Nate can be reached via email at ntschutta@gmail.com and on Twitter at @ntschutta.
Product details
- Publisher : Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (August 15, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0321820800
- ISBN-13 : 978-0321820808
- Item Weight : 1.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,348,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #91 in Presentation Software Books
- #130 in Business Communication
- #1,005 in Running Meetings & Presentations (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
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Matthew McCullough is an energetic 14 year veteran of enterprise software development, open source education, vice president of Training at GitHub, and co-founder of Ambient Ideas, LLC, a Denver consultancy. Matthew currently is a member of the JCP, reviewer for technology publishers including O'Reilly, author of the Presentation Patterns & Anti-Patterns book, multi-year speaker on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour, author of the DZone Maven, Git & Google App Engine RefCards. He channels his teaching energy through activities as President of the Denver Open Source Users Group.
Matthew loves technology, but has always had a parallel passion for teaching technical topics. He's struggled with the same challenges that any presenter would -- assembly of slides, hardware meltdowns, venue catastrophes, audience attentiveness, and acceptance to international venues he never thought would actually say yes. Matthew is excited to share these learning experiences and concrete solutions to the challenges in both story and recipe form in this book.
Matthew resides in Denver with his beautiful wife and daughter, who are active in nearly every outdoor activity Colorado offers. He writes frequently on software and presenting.
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Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a software company and a community of passionate, purpose-led individuals, who thinks disruptively to deliver technology to address the toughest challenges, all while seeking to revolutionize the IT industry and create positive social change. He is an internationally recognized expert on software development and delivery, especially in the intersection of agile engineering techniques and software architecture. Neal has authored magazine articles, eight books (and counting), dozens of video presentations, and spoken at hundreds of developers conferences worldwide. His topics include software architecture, continuous delivery, functional programming, cutting edge software innovations, and includes a business-focused book and video on improving technical presentations
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Top reviews from the United States
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As they show, not all presentations are the same -- as audiences and motivations for trying to convey information to others vary. But never have I seen such new and fresh ideas arranged in such a useful way to help others less skilled than these seasoned professionals achieve their own goals in team settings, management meetings, customer information exchanges, sales pitches, and public training or convention venues.
In reality, there are many of us who know important content that is worth sharing, but unless we can transfer that in a way that opens the audience to understand it, retain it, use it, and even enjoy the process, it remains locked within us as the original owners. Following these techniques clearly outlined in Presentation Patterns, we can learn to improve our own presentation processes and achieve the goals for which we undertook sharing the information. A "must read" if you intend to speak to groups!
The contribution of these patterns (and anti-patterns) to the software engineering community cannot be understated. For anyone wishing to make the jump from Software Engineer to Software Architect this is a must read. I put this work in the same category as other must have non-technical references such as The Elements of Style (Strunk & White) and Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers).
A pattern, to me, is a set of recurring events/objects/elements. The elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. So I was assuming that this book is an anatomy of GREAT PRESENTATIONS, boiled down to something really simple for others to follow and replicate. I was expecting something like this:
PATTERN #26 - SALES PRESENTATION
Elements:
1 - Relive the PAIN - help your prospects see, feel, hear, the PAIN they might have (1) previously ignored , (2) accustomed to or (3)paid a price to tolerate.
2 - Confirm your understanding of their DECISION CRITERIA - knowing what is of value to your prospect
3 - LINK your product / service to their VALUES
4 - Support your claim with data, proof and EVIDENCE
Anyway, I've got a book full of actionable guidelines and techniques for crafting better presentations. So the word "PATTERNS" and "ANTI-PATTERNS" here mean "DO'S and DON'TS".
The GOOD
- Comprehensive, well-researched
- Source provided to extend your knowledge
- Some concepts are well-illustrated using screen shots, diagrams and photos
- You don't have to read it in sequence, jump to any page and learn something useful
- Great examples for technical professionals
The BAD
- Confusing book title (Great Marketing though)
- All patterns are given a name and the names are just too gimmicky. "Cookie Cutter", "Bullet-Riddled Corpse", "Dual-headed Monster", "Live on Tape", etc.
- Some of the materials are "over-stretched", perhaps the authors have set straight guidelines for their writings, so as to ensure consistency among chapters. This is especially important when there are a few co-authors. (is it a pattern or anti-pattern?)
The unfortunate side effect of the organization of the book (into 1-5 page patterns) is that the importance of any given topic does not necessarily match the focus it's given. For example, I would have liked to see more content about the all-important "Narrative Arc", perhaps more examples or a larger how-to-create section. Similarly, the Ant Fonts anti-pattern received more detail than necessary. The title is almost sufficient.
Overall, I would recommend this book.
Top reviews from other countries
One of the problems I see with this book is that it is full of cross-references that would work great as links. The other major problem is that some patterns have very few images to illustrate what the pattern would actually look like so it feels like the book is over-reliant on describing the patterns with a lot of words, they definitely should have created a companion website with live examples of the patterns and anti-patterns.
Despite those weaknesses it still is a good reference to have around.