Gave a presentation to the Okangan Software Developers group last night. My title was Internetworking and media technology in the digital age.... Of course as is the case with all these types of presentations, it is hard to know just how much detail to cover and how broad a scope. So I created this 135 slide presentation that I thought could act as a reference for them, and based on a survey I gave them at the beginning of the presentation I would narrow down exactly what I was going to talk about.
Well the survey came back with a unanimous yes for Web 2.0 and the digital home. So of course all the more detailed slides I had on networking and protocols were out the window right off the bat. However I still talked about cabling and basic network topology. The topic I always like to talk about is how twisted pair and fiber optic cable work. After that of course I focused on Web 2.0 where I demo'd my Del.Icio.Us bookmarks, blog and Flickr pictures.
All in all everyone was very receptive and I didn't put them all to sleep, which for me is a mark of success! I was going to play the George Carlin skit about a modern man, but time got the better of me and decided to leave it off the plate. However I do have to make mention of where I got some of my material from. For the Web2.0 stuff I pulled it from David Leeking's site, the IT director of the Kansas city library. Gotta love google! He had an awsome intro to Web 2.0, which I partially borrowed and enhanced with my own examples. I also pulled some information from some of the tech training presentations at stanford. That IT department really seems to have it together. I'm sure they have the same issues as most IT departments I've worked in, but these Friday afternoon tech briefings they seem to do really demonstrate a strong will on the part of their IT service group to reach out to their customers and further educate them as to how become more productive with the technology. With everybody just kicking in a little here and there and sharing their knowledge and content we can all be that much richer.
