Conference Speaking And Presentation Skills: Mike Hall Interviews Gary Bernhardt | SCNA 2012
Conference Speaking And Presentation Skills: Mike Hall Interviews Gary Bernhardt | SCNA 2012
🚀 Discover how Gary Bernhardt crafts compelling talks and presentations! 🎤 He starts by speaking freely for 30-45 minutes, then refines his content, and uses simple, clean slides to convey his ideas. 🎨 The importance of design is key, with Gary advocating for simplicity and effective spatial relationships. 📈 Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a master of software craftsmanship! 🌐 [Link to full interview] https://just3ws.github.io/interviews/gary-bernhardt-software-craftsmanship-north-america-2012 #GaryBernhardt #SoftwareCraftsmanship #PresentationSkills #DesignMatters #TalkCreation
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike again with UGtastic. I'm at SCNA. Now I'm sitting down with Gary Bernhardt, who's created the Destroy All Software screencast series, and he also just recently gave a talk here at SCNA. In previous interviews, I've talked, I've had Gary's style of presentation being called, when Gary's gonna get up and talk, he's gonna drop some knowledge on you, and he has a unique way of presenting. I wanted to understand a little bit about how you approach your presentations and your speaking engagements, and what influences you.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah, the way that I actually create a talk, for one thing, is, I think, very unusual. I don't, I certainly don't outline, I don't write. Usually what happens is I stand up in my apartment, start pacing, and just start talking for about 30 to 45 minutes. And I might stop, and make single word notes on slides, just making slides that are white background, black text, single word. And after that, I go through a very long refinement period, but just standing up and talking creates sort of the backbone of it. The pieces get shuffled, but the core message is usually there. And in a case where I'm proposing a talk, I'll actually do that before the proposal. So by the time you get my proposal, I already know I can deliver a full length talk, I'm happy with the content. As far as how I come up with topics, I have much less insight into sort of that process. I just sort of come up with them.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
You're like, I wanna talk about X.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right. Now sometimes I do, I'll keep a running wiki page up in my personal wiki that's just ideas, and I'll have, I'll see trends come up in it. So that's where my talk last year at SCNA came from. This talk was a little more premeditated. I just, I wanted to focus on this idea of boundaries and values being the boundary between options. But yeah, that's sort of a very high level, overview of what my process looks like.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Because last year was expansion and contraction.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right, capability, suitability.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And then this year it's boundaries. Oh, excuse me, yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
That was another pair of topics, yeah. So last year's was, it was actually a series of I think seven or eight dichotomies. Expansion, contraction, capability, suitability, and several others I've now forgotten.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh yeah, so I remembered one aspect of it.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right, right, yeah. So those were all related. And then I tried to make a talk out of all of them, found the ones that fit better, together the best, and then just sort of figured out how to turn that into a narrative by putting it in the right order and adding some historical context. But there's usually a core idea like that. I mean, the core of capability and suitability was three pairs of words, ultimately. The core of boundaries was just boundaries and values. The relationship between the boundary between code and other code, and how that relates to a value passed between code and other code. So there's always a core--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, the value being how you cross boundaries.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yes, the value being the-- The boundary itself, the thing that goes between two pieces of code for them to communicate, as opposed to a blocking synchronous message send, a method call. So there's usually a core sort of idea that's very simple and can be expressed in just a few words.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
With your Destroy All Software series, is that a similar methodology that you use to come up with topics for that screencast?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Sort of. It's a little different because Destroy All Software, our screencasts, I can't come up with things to say and then put images to them. That would be me doing a talk, a practice talk every other week, which I don't think would be worth $9 a month. Instead, with a screencast, I usually sit down and just silently will go through it. There will be a refactoring that's the core, that I want to be the core of a screencast. I'll just do it silently a few times. And if I feel like it's still interesting to me after doing it a couple times, then I'll pull out the microphone, start recording and just start doing it. And I just, sometimes the second time I do it, I'm already recording and I just do it all the way through over and over again until I feel good enough about it. I didn't make any major mistakes. I didn't have to backtrack. I didn't stumble over words a lot. So it's similar in that I don't do upfront planning. I just start doing it. But the thing I'm doing is different. For a talk, I'm standing up and speaking in the visual secondary.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
For a screencast, I'm standing up and speaking in the visual secondary. For a task, the visual is much more prominent, much more important. And I actually start with the visual work being done first and then figure out what to say.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
I have to ask that, do you do the art for your presentations?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
The design, the slide design? Yep, I do all that myself. I'm not a good designer. At least I don't think I am. But I know how to get a color scheme on the internet. I know how to make things either line up or not line up in conspicuous ways. And those are sort of my core.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Or maybe it's the simplicity of them and just having a clean-- that gives it a sense of a design.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things-- I mean, preparing talks has been the mechanism by which I've become much better at design. And the main thing I've had to learn is that it's very simple. I have a lot of slides where it'll be-- I did a lightning talk today where I showed some things about how I design slides. And a slide might be four words, but I don't just put four words. It's in the middle of the screen that's black on white. The color choice matters. Probably at least one of those words is going to be a different color for some reason, a semantic reason. And they're not just going to be in a line. They're going to be in some kind of-- there's going to be some kind of spatial relationship. It keeps people interested in the content.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Did you look at it-- what influenced that? Or is it just a taste thing?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
The main-- the point at which I started doing it was when I read a blog post by Zach Holman, who's at GitHub. I forget the name of the post, but if you Google for Zach Holman's blog--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, I'll have a link.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah, you'll add a link. And one of the big things he said was line things up or don't line things up. And that is sort of the core of what I do. It's really simple. Big fonts, not a lot of stuff on a slide. Line things up or don't line things up.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
OK.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Some simple guidelines.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
With the software, you have taken-- I remember when you came to Optiva and the GeekFest, you were talking about, I think you were just at the point of launching, you were preparing to launch, where you had just done a few--
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
That was last-- yeah, that was last summer, so I was a couple months in.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah, and you were open to suggestions, and you did apply some of those. And I thought that was very impressive that it wasn't a, I'm going to create this thing, and I know it, and I'm just going to push it out the way I see fits. You were open to feedback, and a few years on, watching the interactions you have. I just wonder, is that something that's been a double-edged sword with interacting with the community?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
As far as the software, I would say no. I get a fair bit of email to the support address, a few emails a day. Not a huge amount, but enough that I have to check it regularly. And I don't know that I've ever gotten a question I thought was just a dumb question. I'll call a dumb question a dumb question. I really think it's dumb. But no, people are very deeply engaged, and the questions they ask are usually very deep, meaningful questions. They really understood what I was trying to say. That is not true in general on Twitter, for example, where people are going to-- people may lack context about me. They might have followed me because they saw me do some silly four-minute lightning talk, and they lack the context for my relationship to software. And so that colors your perception of what a person either believes or is saying. So they're very different worlds. The Destroy All Software subscribers have a lot of context for what I think about programming, and they very rarely misattribute ideas to me or misunderstand what I'm saying. So--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
But on Twitter, different story.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
On Twitter, different story. On Twitter, it's much more frustrating for me because people will explain very basic computer science concepts to me, for example, and I'm like, I know that already. I don't need that explained to me. And it's very frustrating when 20 people explain to you what, like, some basic data structure is or something.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
At least for me. I'm very frustrated by that. I feel sort of attacked. I feel like--it feels like people are saying--calling me stupid, even though I know that's not what's happening. The emotional response I have is sort of defensive, like I'm being attacked.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
OK. Yeah. So it's--because it's--I was kind of saying before we started the interview that it's a lossy--it's a very lossy--Twitter, I should say, is a very lossy platform. It's a lossy medium that sometimes--even the written word in long form is hard to convey intent. That's why even I tweeted a joke back at you today and I'm like, I don't know how this is going to be received. I tried to couch it as much as I could in that this is a joke.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And that--but some people are very literal and they see a question, they're like, oh, I'm surprised that you didn't know that.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right. Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So--but is that something that's having become a--becoming a success--success sometimes can be a double-edged sword and that's really what I was kind of going with with the Shorrell Software is you become more known and more--having more people being aware of you and it's the demi-fame of our profession.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
It's--you've started to progress beyond just being--
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
One of the people in the crowd to being somebody that is a focal point.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And that people start to, you know, kind of like with Uncle Bob, he's--he's a personality and people come to him, you know, for better or for worse. And it's not that--it's not a side of him, it's what people's motivations are for going to that person. Are they going because that person's famous or because they've seen some kind of value from what that person had to say?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right. And--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
What's interesting.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
That's an interesting dichotomy you raise. Because in the early days, it's--it's got to be the latter, right? It's got to be they're going to that person because they said something that they found useful.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
But when you're--when you become properly famous, and I wouldn't consider myself a properly famous programmer, but--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
It's--it's relative to our industry and--
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And the circles.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
But--but once you become well-known enough, people--people come to you because of your name or they might dislike--they might assume that you're wrong because of your name.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
There's some people who are--who view the idea of--who view anyone who--who is--who's--who's--who's more famous than you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And--who has notoriety as either doing it--extracting money from people by unfair means or detached from reality. There--there are a lot of people who think that some of the core Agile guys just don't program, which is--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
--just not true.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Those guys are all hackers. They all hack all the time. So it--and I've--I've had a little bit of that. Certainly not as much as, you know, people have been--
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
--well-known for a long time. But--but that is also that it has been very frustrating for me. And I'm actually--I'm planning on reducing my public visibility for exactly this reason. I don't want to--I don't want to turn into more of a curmudgeon than I am naturally because I feel sort of beaten down.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. I--and I wonder if that's--I mean, I don't have the opportunity to ask. Maybe someday I will. But what happened with Y is that he--overall, most people have a very positive, but I have to wonder what his actual interactions with the community really were. And were--were people--was there enough negative coming at him that it ultimately drove him away?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
I--I certainly know people in the Ruby community, prominent people, and--and more than one of them who think that that is exactly what happened. If you go back to some of Y's posts and read the comments--I mean, the posts are always self-contained, right?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
You read the comments where he's interacting with people, he has a very sort of--he has a sort of sarcastic wit that he's--that he's speaking in. I mean, if--if I were Y watching me say this, I would be so mad at myself.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
But I think that to some extent, he's sort of--he's sort of--might have been masking this discontent behind--behind his--his very dry style of speaking. So I don't know, I don't want to guess at what was going on in Y's head. Poor guy probably just wants us to never say his name again.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. That--but it's--it's relevant to this conversation, though, in that--looking at somebody who's, um--and--and it's one of the things, talking to many of the people here that are speakers, they're prolific speakers, or authors, or even, uh, free and open source site, I have a friend who--who creates a--a code in for Java, and sometimes people are just like, "Do this. " You know, like--like he owes them something.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Oh, oh, I see.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
You know, and--and that it's--it's the same thing for speakers and for authors that, uh, they assume that because you've created this thing, you're somehow obligated--and, I mean, I think it's--there is a social contract, but some people take it too far.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yup. I--I--yeah. Uh, to relate this back to my Destroy All Software interactions versus just public Twitter interactions, it is very rare for a Destroy All Software subscriber to demand anything from me.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Uh, there are a couple things that people seem to want, like an iTunes feed, which I will do someday.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yes.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, but as far as sort of demanding me--demanding for me to do anything for them, it's very rare.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mm-hmm.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Uh, on public Twitter, uh, people tweet-- like, tweet me a link to a gist of 100 lines of code, including specs, and be like, "What's wrong with this? Why is--why--is this good or not? " I'm just like, I can't read and deeply analyze 100 lines of code at a whim, you know, it'll take me half an hour, and I don't--I'm not gonna take the time to do that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, so it puts you in the very unfortunate position of having to tell someone, "No, I'm not going to help you with that," and, uh, and they may not realize the--the level of demand that's on you, right?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And so, yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
That makes me--
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
As you can tell, I have lots of feelings.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Bound up in this.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, you just brought something to mind. A few years ago, there was, um, it's not so much anymore, but there was a very, very, very popular, uh, ASP, uh, pre-ASP . NET, um, website called, uh, Four Guys From Rolla.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Okay.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And one of the guys on there, he would get so many questions that finally he would just respond with a link to a page that explained how to hire him. Uh, so if you asked him a question, he said, "I'm, you know, I have the--the website. You can look at it. It has lots of answers. "
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
"There's lots of answers on there. But if you need some personal help, my rate is $75 an hour and it's a minimum of an hour. "
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
That's a lot of rates.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Well, that--this is years ago.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Okay.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Um, but, um, and it was also strictly for answering questions.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So he had a--he had his question answered.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Oh, okay. I see. Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Um, or even with Avdi's Grims, uh, you can hire him. How to hire Avdi.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Mm-hmm.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
You know, so maybe that might be a way to turn these random requests into, uh, a few extra bucks.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah. I mean, there--there is always that. Um, I don't think I've ever responded to one of these requests in that way and that's partly because I don't want to seem like a jerk.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, there's--there--there are many kinds of jerk and I don't ever want to be the kind--seem like the kind of jerk who's trying to take money from you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Well, I--but--
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
I will say I--I was aware of this guy's context when he did that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yes. Yes.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
He was getting thousands of requests.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yes. Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And he ultimately had the pushback.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And--and if I were getting that many, maybe I--I probably would just stop using Twitter requests honestly.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
But, um, um, I lost my train of thought. Uh, so, right. The other thing is I don't want to be doing that. I don't want to spend my day answering the same questions I've answered before. I don't want to, uh, analyze code for the same mistakes that I've found before, right? I want to be figuring out how to do--how to do new things that are genuinely interesting to me. It's not that I think that doing those other things is bad, it's just that I get--I--I get bored very quickly and I don't want to be doing repetitive work. So, um, so unfortunately that's--that's not a solution for me.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
No, that's fine.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
That's why I don't think.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And I--I just--just curious, uh, you had said that you had run a--a user group before. You had run a Python group in Cleveland.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yup. I didn't start it. I just ran it for about a year.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Okay. Okay. Have you done much speaking or engagement with, uh, user groups?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Um, not really actually. I mean, I did a few talks there. The first talks I ever did were there, um, long before I ever did a conference talk. Um, mostly short ones. I don't think I've ever done a full-length talk at a user group after I started speaking at conferences for the first time, which was '08. So it kind of--kind of just switched completely over.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Okay. Because we were--we were having a brief conversation and you alluded to having, uh, an opinion.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And I'm not exactly sure how to couch the question, so I'll just bluntly come on and say, uh, what -- what was your thoughts that you were -- you were thinking of?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, well, so my opinion about user groups is not -- is not why I stopped speaking at that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mm-hmm.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, so there's two pieces to this. One is that, uh, doing a talk like the one I did here is extremely expensive in time for me. Um, it's probably -- nowadays it's maybe 20 to 30 hours of prep. Uh, when I started doing high-quality talks like this, it was more like 40 to 60 hours of prep. It was a lot of work.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And I didn't want to be doing that to give it to an audience of 20 people.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Because it's just -- there is -- I mean, doing a talk at SCNA has monetary value for me.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Sure. Yeah. Because that's -- that's interesting. Some of the conversations I've had over the last couple days have focused on the, uh, idea of -- of getting beyond your -- your small group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mm-hmm.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And it -- it sounds like they were coming at the same problem that it was -- you don't want to just become a, um, a, uh, um, I can't think of the word, but you don't want to just become a -- a hive mind where you -- everybody just agrees and nods at each other and says, "Yes, yes, we're also smart. "
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mm-hmm.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, but goes out to a different group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So, I -- do you think maybe the answer to avoiding that insular group is spreading out and going to different groups and trying -- go to the Clojure group, go to the, uh, . NET group, go to see, um, uh, something that you've not done before?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Right. It could be. I mean, I can't, um -- my knowledge is limited to my own experience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mm-hmm.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, so I can't -- I can't -- I don't want to speculate too much. I -- I think that -- that could probably help, but there are always going to be things that are specific to a group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Like, um, in 2000 -- when did we start that group?
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
'07, probably, we started the Ruby group in Cleveland. Um, and in 2007 in Cleveland, you had the Ruby group, Python group, and then a whole bunch of more like Java, C# kind of things.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
There was very little counterpoint, uh, to -- to -- to Ruby because Python is not a cultural counterpoint. Well, it's a very different culture to Ruby, but -- but the things you talk about in Ruby have no analog, usually, in the Python community.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
So there's very little -- there's no counterpoint to RSpec. You know, the counterpoint is X unit --
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. --
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
in Python, basically. So, um, that may be better now. It depends on where you live, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but I could certainly -- I could certainly see it helping.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
I mean, but it's just a very different -- but that's one of the things I think would be healthy if a Ruby developer who's enamored with RSpec went to a Python group and learned about doc tests and saw, wow, that's an interesting way -- I think that would be wonderful. Every Ruby programmer should learn about doc tests, for sure.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And -- but it's just a different way of thinking, and that's -- I think that's ultimately what I've kind of inferred from the conversations I've had over the last several days is, um, or the last several interviews, is spend -- those cross-pollination, and it -- it seems to fit in with what you described as becoming too much of a closed group, closed system, and not getting exposed to those new ideas.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
And seeing, oh, that's really different than the way we do it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
It's -- that's -- it's certainly very valuable, um, to do that. Every opportunity -- well, maybe not every opportunity. There's value to focusing down on something.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
But you need to come up, for sure.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to staff me. Appreciate it.
Gary Bernhardt
conference speaking and presentation skills
No problem.
Critical Insights
durable
"Gary Bernhardt's method of creating talks involves a free-form initial session followed by refinement, resulting in a clear and concise message."
durable
"The importance of design in presentations cannot be overstated, with Gary Bernhardt advocating for simplicity and effective spatial relationships in slide design."
durable
"Gary Bernhardt's approach to creating content for his screencasts is similar to his talk creation process, focusing on a core idea and refining it through multiple iterations."