Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies on Conference Speaking and Presentation Skills | SCNA 2013
Chet Hendrickson and Ron Jeffries discuss their approach to software development, emphasizing simplicity, metaphors, and collaboration. They highlight the importance of clear communication and avoiding overly complex presentations.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
[Music] Alright, great. Hi Matt. One second. This is going to be a fun one. Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic. I'm at SCNA 2013 and I'm sitting down with Chet Hendrickson and Ron Jeffries. Did I say that in the right order?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
No, I don't know. So we'll find out in a second. But they give a talk about the nature of software development and also we're on the panel yesterday about software quality.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
So thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. Would you consider your company again, please?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
UGtastic. UGtastic. That's interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that. A lot of people just say UGtastic, which is fine as long as you say it. I don't really care. I'm just happy that anybody's even thinking about it. But we do interviews with people who are doing interesting things in the software development community and I think you guys have known for one or two things that are interesting. And certainly your talk on software here at the end of SCNA. One of the things I had to say I kind of got a kick out of was the simplicity of your images. Everybody else tries to make these really super fancy typography slides. Whereas to convey the information it was simple drawings that could be clearly understood and were not very... Not very artistic or... Not really very good. Not really not good is what I'm pointing for. But it reminded me of Sarah Gray who I just interviewed when she talked about Harold and the Purple Crayon. That you can use simple imagery and metaphors to convey a lot of information without getting bogged down in noise. Is this something that you... Well tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on metaphors. Well that's... That... I... Now I'm messed up. So... Well...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
But I just was curious is this something that you've been using for a long time?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
It actually is. Ron bought a tablet, PC, I don't know, eight or ten years ago and we started doing talks with just him drawing. Most of the little graphs and... Little graphs and stuff like that. If you do good it'll go up and if you do bad it'll go down. That's sort of, you know, about that look. And so... And eventually I bought one and didn't use it as much as Ron. Then it sort of evolved until now we do stuff on the iPad using a tool called Paper which allows you to draw very simple things. So... It's a very nice little product. I wish we got some kind of kickback when we mention their name. Yeah, we should. But, you know, it's a simple little drawing tool that works really well in this environment because it's... There's not much to it. You pick a color and you draw. As opposed to all kinds of stuff that more than a standard drawing kind of environment. Which... That becomes... Well now you have to learn this tool and it's crazy. Yes. And it's confusing. Well, and you're... But we are, as you see with the pictures, you're still left with the fact that I can't draw very well. Which is why the pictures are all so simple, really.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
But it's enough. Probably not. I would really probably draw them simply even if I were like able to draw something that looked real. Because the idea is to catch attention, illuminate the idea, not have people stare at it the way they would stare at great art and not listen to us because the point is perhaps to listen to the words as well as to see the pictures. So there's... And our main purpose in giving a talk is to entertain ourselves. It's up to the audience to entertain themselves. And so we enjoy having these funny little pictures and saying funny little things about them. And in your... In the way you did your presentation, it was back and forth and back and forth. That's... That I've not... I don't think I've ever seen anybody ping pong a presentation quite like that. We've been giving presentations about this kind of subject. I have actually the poster for the first one we gave in 1998. So we've been doing this quite long. Not this talk. Not this talk, but talking together, giving presentations together for 15 years. And so we have developed a style which kind of works for us and oddly enough this is sort of how we work anyway. It turns out, for example, in... We were coming back from the Netherlands and they interview you on the way out of the country to see if you're a terrorist or something. And they asked Chet if we were traveling together and he said yes and so we came up. And they would... The guy would ask us a question and one of us would start the answer and the other would finish the sentence.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
And he said, "Well, why are you here?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
" And he said, "Well, we said we were there to teach a class.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
" And he said, "Well, what are you? " And you're in business or something?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Yeah, we're business partners. We're partners, he said.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
We're partners, he said. I'm a business partner.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
And he said, "What kind of partners are you?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
" And we kind of tried to tell him we were business partners. And so we kept doing this ping pong back and forth while we were being interviewed. And at the end of the thing he said, "I think I know what kind of partner you are. " So apparently we're too good at it. So the next time we went to the Netherlands we took our wives. And hoped to meet the same night. In hopes of saying, "Look, we have beards. " So we haven't done it for a long time. We tend to finish each other's sentences and it works for us and we hope it works for the audience. Yeah, and it seemed to definitely be well received. And, you know, and just continuing on with the images, I just wonder if, with some of the, in a lot of the talks I've observed, people obsessing over typography and creating these very, what they think are professional looking, where really what I think it is, is the message is what defines professional talk and professional communication.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Do you, do you see going to other people's presentations where they have very elaborate fonts, colors?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
I, I think it is. Here's an example of our typography if you can see that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
This title is intentionally left blank.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Getting right in my hand already. Uh, yes. You know, we, we, we intentionally don't do that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
I suppose, you know, we, I, I would think, we probably think we're not very good at doing those things, but if we spend a little bit of time, I'm sure we could do as well as everyone else does. We tried various tools. We did some stuff from crazy years ago to discover that, you know, when you, when you do that, everyone throws up at the, sometime during the presentation.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Not because of what we were saying, because of the tool. The tool. And so we, most. Oh, the one that spins around. Spins around. Yeah, it's really cool. Yes, you know. It's cool. It's like an e-ride at Disney World. Uh, and so we, we have gone to this style mostly because I believe, I believe, uh, that we've learned long ago that the movement and the words convey the story. Mm-hmm. Uh, we come out of the old XP small talk world where CRC was used. Mm-hmm. The card, uh, the, the, uh, class responsibility collaboration technique. Mm-hmm. And, and we were taught to do CRC by Ken Beck, who was one of its inventors.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
If you've ever learned, have you ever done this technique?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
I, I, when I was going through.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Agile, I was learning. Uh, Ken doesn't write on the cards.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
The cards are blank.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Really?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
He moves them around and talks about them. Ha! Because the words don't matter. It's what you say and what's going on. And after a while you know that this one, that's the employee over there. Doesn't say anything, but it's the employee and that one is the department or whatever the relationship is. And so it's the motion that gets the, the information across. And so I think we kind of pick that up. To the, to the point where in the middle of the conversation when it becomes clear that there should be another object, people will point to a blank space and say, "This guy right here. " Right. Because everybody's got it in their head and then it's clear that the guy that you're talking about should be in this hole or there isn't any object. Um, so you're, you're trying to, you're trying to get an idea into, into people's heads. And, the, the, the beautiful picture doesn't necessarily do that. If it's too good looking, people will, will just look at it and be all taken over. And then people are talking about the slide. The picture, talking about the slide. Um, now we, we did do a talk one time where the, the slide was all done with pictures of cats. With lolcats kinds of, of titles on. Um, that worked well too. But again, it was just a little title.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
From which we spoke for a couple of minutes and then went to another picture of a cat. Um. And so, it's a style and we think, we, you know, it seems to work for us. And, uh, we hope nobody else steals it, I guess. We tend to do all the things this way. If you were for some, you know, go off the deep end and hire us to come in and do some sort of training for you. And we might show up with a slide deck of 200 slides. But we wouldn't show an end to you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
We would draw everything live and talk about it as we went along.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
So those are like your reference, more like your notes. Because people like to have something. Oh. That they can walk away with. Because they can walk away with.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
You know, and mostly we say stuff that's in them. Uh, but we do it live. Uh, because it's, it's that that we think generates the knowledge. If you're just standing there talking about the slide, the people check out. But if you're there talking to them and you're using some tool to help them visualize what it is you're saying. That works better. And the, and the more that's done in the moment, we think that the better it is. And so, as you described it, you've been doing talks for over 15 years. Um, as far as, is the, the, the landscape of conferences and, and, and big technical get togethers to, to discuss, um, our, our industry. Uh, do you have any, anything that you've seen that's changed in particular that, that either for the better or for worse?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
The, uh, the big conferences we're finding more and more boring. Um, not because of the many beginners who always show up because there's always new people coming into the field and that's fine. But because they have become so commercialized and so, so many of the ideas are canned, you know, you must do this and follow this rule and use this tool and, uh, so many things like that, that we find that the content is mostly not interesting to us.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And we think almost harmful to, to many of the people who show up. Um, there's a, uh, a huge number of people who are there from a big enterprise because they want to have a flag that says they're Agile.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
They don't have no intention or ability to do it or at least have no understanding and probably no ability to do it. So we're trying to come to smaller conferences like this one because there you can talk to people and they're interesting and they're more full of people who are really excited about doing stuff. Now I don't know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences. That it's going to be difficult to find a conference that isn't heavy and the developers that we find exciting. I believe that's probably true because we are at, on the heart, in our hearts we're programmers. Uh, we do the other stuff because... That's where the money is. That's where the money is. Uh...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Wait, did I say that?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Uh... Only developers. But this is what we care about. You know, we come out of the XP world, we're there to make the world safe for programmers. And it turns out in order to make the world safe for programmers, you have to do a lot of stuff in those other areas, talking with the business people and educating them about stuff. But in our hearts we're here trying to make the world safe for programmers. And that just reminds me of a talk that Corey Haynes came a few years ago to Obtiva and was talking about how developers need to take responsibility for a lot of these needs. And they're kind of, are these craftsmanship concepts, uh, that we're espousing. And, uh, you know, I kind of kicked back saying, well, we can, we're, all of us here in this room, we all agree that we would like to do all these things and that they're good practices, but the person with the purse strings is, is the business. And we can talk all day about how great it would be to do TDD and, and do it, but really you gotta sell.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
And that sounds like what you think about?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Well, the answer to that problem is something that Jim Highsmith said 10 or 12 years ago. It went asked, you know, how do I tell my managers, how do I get permission to do this pair programming, to do this TDD, to do whatever the practice was. And Jim said, don't tell them.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
They don't know what you're doing now anyway.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Do the right thing. And they'll see better results. They may ask you how you got that and you make up whatever answer is appropriate.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. But, you know, do you need to tell them what editor you're using now? Right. Do you need to tell them how, you know, do they know how you're doing your work now?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
No, they don't. Well, I mean, as you know, some shops do though. Like, you go into a Microsoft, Microsoft developer shop and try to introduce Ruby. It's not gonna happen. That's another, that's a whole another question. That's a different question. You know, the question of how do you get programmers to work the way programmers do, ought to, if they're saying we have to ask management for permission to program, that's where the problem is. Because you don't have to ask management for permission to program. You might have to ask management for permission to use Clojure.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
You should. But, to do your craft, no one has the right to tell you you can't do your craft. So, there's some kind of fear thing, and I think particularly younger programmers who haven't gotten to the point of being jaded to the point of saying I'm just going to do this stuff and the rest of you can walk off, feel like they're supposed to be told what to do. You know, because when you were working at McDonald's they told you what to do. That ain't it. This is professional. This is, I am the guy who does this. You don't tell your surgeon how to cut, and you don't tell your programmer how to program. So, but people have to learn that. They have to learn that it is their job to know how to do this thing well. And that's, you know, what this movement is about. Is to, is to get people to know what it is and to know how to do it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And, you know, and speaking of experience and getting to a certain point in your career, you know, I, I've had my wife say, what are you going to do when you're after over 50?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Are you still going to be a programmer?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And I, I'm not mistaken, I believe you gentlemen might be approaching 50 or so. And, and, and, yes. Yes. And I see that. From above in my case.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And, and mine as well. I'm, it's in the rear view mirror. Um, but I, I, as I walked up to your, to your table to invite you to come for an interview, you were working on code right there at the desk. And so obviously you're still very active in the developer community. For people who are looking down the road, um, at whether or not there's a career in development past 30, um, I'm well past 30 myself, but, you know, looking into the 40s and 50s and beyond, do you, what, do you have any, you obviously might have some insight into that. Well, I, I would not care to work for a living. Um, this is good because no one would hire me. Um, because I'm not the sort of person that works well with people telling me what to do. Um, I imagine I could have programmed as long as I wanted to. Um, but what happens is that your eyes get bigger. Um, you, at some stage early on in your career, you realize you can't program it all by yourself. And so you have to program with a couple of other people. And that means you have to learn to talk to them, you know, and maybe even look them in the eye once in a while. You have to fake that. Um, and as you grow, you don't just continue to grow to say, I really want to be even better at Emacs. You grow to want more things. And those things might be bigger products. They might be that you find joy in bringing up younger people. And so instead of just being a, the senior programmer on the team, maybe you begin to become a mentor. Maybe you become a mentor over many teams. So there's a whole spectrum of world out there. Um, I think it would be silly to imagine at age 25 that you have any clue at all what you'd like to be doing at age 35. Um, if you have something is going to appear in front of you, you're going to be like, oh, that's cool. Go and get that squirrel.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Um, and so I, I don't think you have to worry about that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Um, if you're good at what you do, stuff will happen to you. They will promote you. They will say, he keeps getting things done. All the teams will have him on and get things done. We should make him into a manager. We should make him into, you know, who knows what. And you gotta be a little careful because you might not choose to go there. But you might. You know, if you could manage teams the way an Agile guy would manage them, that could be kind of a cool job. And it sounds like, kind of what you were saying though, that the management, uh, doesn't have to be management in the way of being a middle manager, but it can be different. Like as you describe mentoring or working with other people in a different capacity.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
You could still, you might have the word manager. I wonder whether conventional, hierarchic management is going to be around. In, in big companies it will be, but, because it takes a long time for those things to die.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
But if you look at what really gets hot, new, wonderful products done, it's a bunch of people coming together. And then they get funding and then they find somebody to sell it and they do all these things. Um, it's a much more interactive, much less conventional command and control management that happens. And so I think the opportunities are both more human and less like administration and stuff like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
I, I've lived my life essentially seeking local maxima. I've done what appeared to make me happy within my short range of view. Uh, and oddly enough that seems to have worked out really well.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Is that your cookie?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
That is not my cookie.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Would you like it?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
You, you won't. I was just local maxima. You know, I, I, the world is too complex a place to make any long term plans as far as I can figure out. Uh, you know, I do what makes me happy every day. And when what I'm doing stops making me happy, I try to look around and see where, where within 10 feet will, will I be happier? Well, it's a, that's a tricky one because all of us who are technical know that local optimization could leave you in a bad place. You know, where there was really great stuff over here and all you did was become vice president of Microsoft. Um, well, okay. The world isn't quite like that. The world isn't a single optimization process.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
You, something bad happened there?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
No, it's going away though. Uh, the, the, the world is multi-dimensional. And so, it might really be that the, that the next thing that happens to you is that you hear about an interesting conference to go to. And you go to this interesting conference and you run into some interesting people and they say, what are you doing? Say, I'm working on this sucky job back in Detroit. And they say, well, you know, we really ought to think about what we're doing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Say, what are you doing?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And we're building this spaceship. And you, all of a sudden, boom, you've bounced into an entirely different dimension.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
So, it isn't, it is local optimization. You know, I think of it as just, I just cruise around going wherever the little krill are tastiest and munch them up. But, you know, every now and again something happens, it bounces you to a new dimension and you just do stuff.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
So, and, and at conferences, going smaller, going to that local, do you ever go to user groups? Do you have a history of going to user groups or participating?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
We don't hang with them. We go and talk with, you know, give a talk at them. But we mostly don't go and hang out at, at user groups. There are a couple of local to us and they always seem to meet at some time when I'm involved in doing something else.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And that's mostly just bad luck. We're going to go give a talk. We're actually going to go show up and do something, I don't know exactly what it is, in January at one of the local groups in Ann Arbor. But mostly we, we've stopped the local for some reason, for some reason we don't go to those. One of the things I don't... We're mostly lazy, I think. Well, there's that, but one of the things I don't like about it, and I noticed this at the open spaces that we went to at Dave Hussman's Dev Jam that was last month here. If we go to an open space, we have a tendency to take it over. Because we have so much to say about it, we can't stop.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
We can't stop ourselves. We know the answers.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
Or we think we do. And we're not really very good at coaching answers out of other people. That's just kind of not our deal. And so at a user group, we always wind up being more of a focus than we would like to be.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
It's fun to go and hear an interesting talk.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
But if it's a user group of people just talking, it doesn't work for us. We don't know if that's going to happen, we would just assume they came to our office at the coffee shop and talk to us about their problems to hear what we had to say about them.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
So for some reason that particular thing doesn't work for us. But I think it's because we're, I don't mean to say we're above all others, but we're at a different place in our work. And the user groups want to be kind of homogeneous. They want to all be kind of the people who are right now trying to fight their way up to get the company to do something. Or the people who are all right now being entrepreneurial or all whatever. And we're off in this other dimension that kind of doesn't fit with them. Well, do you find that maybe sometimes when you're trying to have a conversation, people, because of your reputations, might be more prone to just deferring? Well, you like that part. I suppose, I suppose. But I mean, I'm sure it must get old, you know, when you're like, come on, challenge me. Well, we're not going to do that. We might lose. Yeah, I mean, I suppose that happens, particularly since at least one of us has a reputation of being really nasty and tough. We're both really teddy bears, but there might be a little bit of that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And one of us was also raised by Jesuits and therefore can argue any subject on either side. And so it's really not a good idea. Yes. We have to challenge us. To challenge us unless... I think we would... You've got to ask a challenging question that's really challenging.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. You know, don't come in again and say, what should I do?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
You know, refactoring doesn't work because I don't know how to do it. It's like, yeah, it doesn't work because you don't know how to do it. Because we know that answer. We've seen so many people learn how to do these things that this conference is all about and seen they always benefit. And I heard somebody in the lunch line yesterday saying, we tried TDD and it just doesn't work for our kind of software. It's like, no, see, there isn't any kind of software where you can't do that if you're willing to invest in and learn how to do it. There's some where it's very difficult. I seem to have to be inventing TDD for the programming thing you caught us programming with. But if you want to do it, you can do it. And it will give you some benefit. It isn't possible. So we will tend... That kind of challenge doesn't work very well because we know every argument. We've been doing this for 15 years. And so we just crush the poor devil. And that's cruel. And we don't like to be cruel. Even today... Chet does, but I don't like to be cruel. Even today I did an interview with another gentleman, Amitai Schleyer, who is on the NetPSD Foundation. And he talked about how they even have a kernel called Anykernel, which allows them to do testing against a mock kernel. So that they even can unit test and do even security tests against this kind of mock kernel for NetPSD. And if you can unit test the kernel for an operating system, you can test anything. So that kind of just throws that argument right out. But again, I think maybe that's just people just don't know. And that is really the deal. So much of my resistance to doing some new thing is that I don't know. And I don't like not knowing. I don't like going back to the beginning. Who was it who talked yesterday about going into a new language and you sort of have to start all over? And I don't like that feeling of discomfort. I have the luxury that I've programmed in so many languages that I know it's in there to be found.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And so I'm a little bit more comfortable. But as Chet knows, if it comes down to, okay, now you've got to install all that crap on your Mac so that you can actually run Ruby and you're going to be able to load up every version of Ruby and all those little stacks.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
I know that when I go to the internet and say, how do you install that?
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
It will have perfectly clear instructions and I will do exactly those instructions and it won't work.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And it is really irritating. And so I resist doing some things like that because I don't know how to do it. I think that's always what happens. I think people resist refactoring because they don't know how to do it. So it doesn't work very well. It's because you're not very good at it yet. Nobody likes to be told you're doing it wrong, but the fact remains when we're not performing well, there's something we're doing wrong. And you just have to accept that, that it isn't the world. The computer didn't break your program. I know who broke the program that was broken when you came up to us. I did. And there's no doubt in my mind that it isn't that my iPad is broken or that suddenly Codeia doesn't work or that the language Lua doesn't include if statements. I know I broke this.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jefferies
conference speaking and presentation skills
▶ Speaking
And that's part we've got to do.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Well, thank you very much for taking the time. It's a pleasure. I hope we're going to edit this down to about two minutes. Uh, no. No. Thank you very much. Appreciate the time. All right. [Music] Thank you.
Critical Insights
durable
"Simplicity is key in communication, allowing the message to shine through without getting bogged down in noise."
durable
"Effective communication in software development is about the movement and the words, not just the tools or fancy typography."
durable
"Collaboration and back-and-forth communication can enhance the effectiveness of presentations and learning."
durable
"Professional communication in software development is about the message, not the presentation style."
durable
"The CRC technique, developed by Ken Beck, emphasizes the importance of motion and action over static cards and text."