 Ah, sound check. Okay. Hello, my name is Jansen Henshel. You may remember me from last year's WordPress presentation. If you don't, that's okay. This talk will be about how to give a great WordPress presentation. I have three main points to consider about making a WordPress presentation. These are, be prepared. Even your nervousness won't keep you from giving a great presentation. And tell your personal story. Point one, be prepared. And by that, I mean organize your presentation so that you aren't nervous and the audience can follow your words. What are the main things you want your audience to know when they leave? What are the things you want the audience to have stuck in their head when they think about your presentation? If they take away even just a few of your main points, then you've really accomplished something. When people attend a conference or any kind of meetup, what sticks out to them are the highlights of it. Organize your presentation around the ideas you want your audience to remember. If you're at a loss as to how to start your script or your slides, start with your main points. Think of the three to five things that you want people to take away from your presentation and that you will be happy if they remember those three to five things. Those main points will be the basis of your outline. It's crucial that you know that your audience understands what you're talking about. But in order to accomplish this, you have to understand the different types of people that will be coming to your presentation and write your presentation accordingly. There are four different types of people that usually come to work camp. The first one is the beginner. They range from knowing how to use email to being well-versed in using Excel or Google Docs. Some haven't really even mastered their own phones yet. When I was here on beginner's day several years ago, I wasn't really coding it, but I was really, really interested in learning. Most of the people we met seem to work for big corporations and nonprofits like universities. It seemed to us that people were there because their work sent them there. So if you've planned a presentation for the beginner crowd, be aware that they don't yet have enough knowledge to have too many questions, so you'll be filling in those gaps for them. Next are the designers. The designers are great at design, but may not be such great coders. They have an understanding of design softwares and analog aspects of design, but may not have experience with coding visuals for a website. If you are planning your presentation for the beginner crowd, be aware that, again, they may not be as knowledgeable on coding as you are, though it's possible if you are only a coder that they will have a natural ability for better UX or user experience. The third type of person is the intermediate WordPresser. An intermediate WordPresser has and can build websites, but they don't know what to do with them. They have a website, but they don't have much traffic going to it. They're here to find out the next stage of what they should do with their website. They are usually interested in business and marketing. If you are planning your presentation for the intermediate WordPressers, keep in mind that they know what they're doing, they learn quickly, and they are generally looking for specific solutions to their problems. Finally, we have the advanced WordPressers. They are great at coding and marketing, and can code in several different languages, WordPress being just one of them. They are looking for more clients and are trying to expand their business. Obviously, not everyone fits into these four groups perfectly, but they give you a general idea of the people you're presenting to. The presentation I did last year how to make a WordPress portfolio would be aimed at beginners, designers, and intermediate WordPressers since it was about making a WordPress portfolio which can be useful for getting a job. Plus, it has advice on UX or user experience. For the advanced WordPresser, people seem to enjoy the reviewing of concepts they learned but maybe forgot. People can remember what you're saying if they can't see or hear it. You may think that you've made these elegant slides, but if whatever you've written forces people to take out their glasses to see it, you're not getting your points across. Make your text as big as you can so that the people in the back of the room can see. I did a lot of drawings in my earlier presentation and I ended up redoing most of them to make them look bigger and bolder. Which one do you think looks better, this one or this one? Also, avoid having your slides be basically a closed caption of your entire presentation. If people spend most of their time reading, they won't be listening to you. Let your text support the main points of what you're talking about. Or better yet, use some sort of visual presentation of what you're talking about. People will see the visual image and still listen to your words. You'll convey your main idea in more than one way. I answered my text in my slides but my slides mostly consisted of my drawings. My drawings helped to get my points across even when I didn't go into detail explaining them. Pictures are great in that people can add their own meaning to them as well as what you're saying it means. You can't plan for everything. Everyone does last-minute tweaking of some sort, whether it's changing your slides to be better, fixing a grammar mistake in the script, or realizing that your on-stage setup doesn't work properly. As a first-hand example, when I was doing my first WordPress presentation, I went over the drawings with my mom and she told me that you redid some of your drawings because of Adam's shout-out, but the rest still look the same. You'll be embarrassed if people see the different styles of slides. So I redid all of the drawings the night before my talk rolled around. Another example, when I did my presentation at WordCamp Las Vegas 2017, the projector was showing the wrong slide. It's good to have slides but try not to be totally dependent on them. Be ready with other options. If you think there might be a problem with visuals for the audience, if you think there might be a problem with slides, have two, three, maybe even four analog visuals for the audience. That's just in case things go really wrong. Most of the time, things go pretty smoothly, but you can make up certain things depending on your comfort level. If you're using certain types of devices, make sure ahead of time that they have proper dongles and equipment. When I was doing my first talk, I had to talk to Tom to check if he had a dongle to connect my iPad to the projector. He didn't, so he got one specifically for my talk. Thanks for that, by the way. Do not rely on anything Wi-Fi. If you want to show a real-time website, make screenshots just in case. Depending on the location, the Wi-Fi may be spotty. Never depend on it. Something important about your contact information, make sure it's not and will not be old. If you really want people to contact you, give them at least one forever contact. In all honesty, you never know when someone's going to watch your presentation. They can watch it when you give your presentation. They can watch it on WordPress.tv. Or they can watch it two to three years from now, hoping to see what your presentations are like. You never know when or why people are going to watch your presentation. So just in case, have a forever email or phone number, Google number, whatever, that you know you're going to have for a long time. And it's best if one of those numbers or contacts is not attached to your business. That seems counter-intuitive, but businesses come and go while you'll still be around. So if your business morphs into something else or becomes obsolete in some way, people should still be able to contact you through your forever contact. Give people all your information at the presentation. I've been to several computer conferences where people were told to check their slides at a particular address or GitHub, Slack, whatever. I've only ever looked once or twice at people's slides, and those were the four things I was really interested in. Well, it's good, and I still encourage people to do that. Understand that most, at least 95%, will never look at those slides. People come to conferences for the experience of the presentation, and it's really important take-aways that they get from the room, so to speak. It's really important to hit the main points that people take away and to make your presentation seen and heard. You may want to do a giveaway at the end of your presentation, so people stay until the end, or something funny or interesting going on to set you apart. But in all honesty, they're really there for the information. Don't make it hard for people to get that information. Point two, even your nervousness won't keep you from doing a great presentation. I say that because it's true. Your nervousness won't derail you from making a good presentation. It would be silly just to say, don't be nervous, since you're going to be nervous no matter what I say. Heck, even I was nervous. But when I started talking, I sort of got into the flow of the presentation. Why? Because I was prepared. I could read with little boops to signify where I should change the slide. An experienced presenter might not have needed those notes, but since last time was my first time presenting, it was calming to have something where all I had to do was read. My mom says I was still a bit fidgety. She says I was advancing to the next slide when I shouldn't have. But I would have been even more fidgety if I hadn't written down those notes. Of course, I was also nervous on the days leading up to the talk. In fact, when we went to the speaker's dinner, I was grumpy and sad while eating mac and cheese. My mom told me, don't worry, everybody's running for you. But I didn't really believe her. I thought that since she was my mom, she had to say that. But then our phone master came up and told me, hey, don't worry, everybody's running for you. And that's when I started to believe it. So, if you're really nervous about giving a presentation, think about it. When was the last time you walked into a room thinking, I hope this is horrible and a complete waste of my time? Nobody thinks that, and that's why it's true. Everybody really is rooting for you because they want to see a good presentation. Of course, some people will be even more nervous from hearing that. On the second day of work camp, Adam gave me a shout-out. I was so surprised by that that I had to work really hard on my drawings. You may think you're going to disappoint your audience, but that's just your nervousness talking. Of course, it's still good to take anti-nervousness measures, such as dress or her senior approval, your presentation beforehand. And by that, I mean read it aloud. It's not enough just to read it to yourself. You need to hear your own words out loud to yourself. It's very important to get practice for the big talk, and you know the strange wording errors, grammar errors, or even just things that don't make sense. You can also time your just rehearsals and learn to see precisely how long your talk is and adjust your talk accordingly. Introduce yourself to the audience to establish a connection and build confidence during the presentation. Speak loudly so that everyone can hear you. Don't let other noises, such as from the opposite room, derail you from your talk. To make sure you're speaking loudly and confidently, do a sound check with the eyes. This also helps build a connection. You can do this to, can everyone hear me? Can the people at the back of the room hear me? Nothing's more annoying as an intentee for someone to be talking or having a discussion with someone and you can't hear them. If you're writing some jokes or some funny things into your talk, put pauses into it. Believe it or not, pauses are important. If people are reacting to your jokes, you don't want to talk over their reactions. Also, and this is important if you're nervous, you may be talking too fast and not realizing it or you're being fishy and rushing through your slides. Pauses help people to catch up and they let certain concepts sink in. Don't speed through your slides. Again, most people will not look up your slides, so you need to give them a chance to take pictures or take notes. Anticipate certain questions and have ready answers. Anticipating questions will help you research the answer if you need to. People are looking to you as an expert on what you're talking about, so you have to be prepared. Also, when somebody asks you a question, repeat it for the rest of the audience to hear and then answer the question. More than likely you're being filmed for a WordPress.tv. I'm not saying that to make you even more nervous, but that's generally what happens. When you're being recorded, the recording can't hear the audience as well as you can. Look at the audience when you're speaking to them. It's annoying when someone doesn't look at you while they're talking to you, so look at the audience while you're talking to them. It's good to take these measures to reduce nervousness, but remember, even your nervousness will keep you from doing a great presentation. Think about your personal story. When I say that, I mean that you should tell your own story. Talk about your own experiences. You may think that you have nothing to say, or that you don't know enough to give a presentation, but think about what brought you here in the first place. Think about what compelled you to learn and to build a developer website. What was the hardest thing about that entire process? Probably the hardest thing or the most uncomfortable thing to admit is your most compelling subject. Most people don't want to admit that they didn't know how to do certain things or that they got stuck on something that they now believe is really simple. But if you had a problem with it, I can guarantee that other people did as well. Me, coding was hard when I first started, and I couldn't really figure it out. But then I started going to the forums and just asking people how to do things. But once I got the answer, I didn't know exactly how it worked out, but I eventually just figured it out. The most difficult problem I've had is helping someone program a video game. The people seemed really friendly at first. Then they were very complimentary of my work. I didn't know the platform, so I had to learn it by myself, but I learned it very quickly. In fact, I think I learned it better than the guy I was working with. The situation kind of devolved into me fixing his broken code and getting nothing but abuse from the guy. I'm convincing everything that happened, and I'm not saying that everything I did was perfect, but I did learn something from the experience, which was to set boundaries at the beginning. My mom suggested that I do my talk about that, but I didn't want to because I'm still processing it and I feel like part of it is my fault. My mom said it isn't, but I'm still not quite sure. The community continuously needs new blood. The reason why WordPress has survived so long is because it has a community that supports it. You may think you have nothing to contribute, but your voice and participation is important. You can talk about what got you here and why are you interested in coding, your journey from a non-tech background, and so on and so forth. Everybody thinks they're the only person who wants to learn or find out how to do something. Look at me. I'm just a kid, and most times when I go somewhere, I'm the only kid in the room. And yet, I'm sharing my voice to you all right now. Don't let the thought that you're alone keep you from sharing your knowledge. You have something to say, and there are people rooting for you to share it. We have a bonus session. Let's go over how to make an outline for our presentation. Write down all of your thoughts. Don't worry if your thoughts aren't organized. Throw out all of your ideas. All the things that make you feel happy, sad, mad, or confused, get everything down. All those things will be tightened up later. Write down your main points, the things you've learned from the experience, whether it be two, three, five, nine, whatever. Since these talks are relatively short, three to five is a good amount of main points. Most people can't remember much beyond that. If you have a point that's funny or vague, you should explain exactly what you mean by it. If people start out confused, although probably remain confused, clear things up as to exactly what you mean. Break the main points you have into different storylines. People tend to remember stories. People get stuck on something. Their frustrations about being stuck tend to make their ideas fly out your head. You'll either use them, give yourself time to let ideas fly out your head. You'll either use them or not use them, but at least they'll have something to draw from. If you get stuck and unmotivated, enjoy doing something else that's productive and that you usually think of as a chore, like doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom. You'll never get motivated if you do one of your normal procrastination distractions, like playing video games. Doing something that you normally think of as a chore will free your mind as your body is working and for some reason, it tends to bring up new ideas. If you don't manage to think of anything new and you're still unmotivated, at least you've done something productive. So, let's say I'm going to do a talk based on the story of the abusive programmer I told you earlier. Let's call it dealing with difficult teammates. Here's a sample outline for this hypothetical talk. So, you can see we have the main points outlined in bold. These are the main points that your audience should remember. And that said, behind them are the supporting facts. And you'll notice that on the third one of each of them, I've added plus story. And that's because, again, people remember stories. If you add stories to your presentation, the main ideas that you want your audience to remember will stick out more in their head. Fill out this outline by first thinking of the things I want the audience to remember. In this case, I base all of the main points at the things that would have helped me in that difficult situation so that others are prepared for these kinds of things. I'd say the first point should be, be clear about your work because it's extremely important to understand what you're doing and who you're doing it for. Programming the video game, or read by the way, I was proof. I didn't know if there was a deadline on certain things or what most of the game was even about. Some of the deadlines seemed arbitrary. The second point would be, know your co-workers because you can't actually trust people until you know who exactly they are. Word. In my case, I don't know anything about the other programmer. I think he might have been a teenager, but I'm not sure. The third point could be, don't be afraid to ask for decency because there's really no reason for you not to have common decencies. You shouldn't be scared to ask for politeness and respect. As I've said, the other programmer of the video game was very rude and often launched into screaming fits. I've got my three main points. I should give some explanation and elaboration for the points, but some stories to stick my ideas into the audience's heads. I've already explained a little bit about why I chose those points and give many stories for each so I can put those many facts into the outline. In the real script, you won't give one-sentence explanations for all of your main ideas, but we're just making a general outline right now. Now, we have three main points with explanation, many elaboration, and the story. That's our basic outline. Obviously, not every outline is going to look exactly like this one. You might want two or four main points instead of three, or you might want more supporting facts and stories for one point than the other. This is just to give you the basic idea of how someone might construct their outlines. That gives you a better idea on how to make a WordPress presentation. I hope that each and every one of you summits an idea for a presentation next year. Good luck! I guess I'll be taking questions now, so anyone has some things to ask me? How long does it take you to draw the slides? First, I have to come up with the idea of how I will represent the sentence that I'm currently trying to draw out, and that takes me like, 35 minutes or something, and then drawing it isn't really that hard, so again, that takes me like five minutes. Sometimes I'll do a slide and then I'll realize, oh wait, I did it wrong. I don't think I should do this. And then I'll just erase everything and then do it all over again. Do you draw on paper or go digital, right away? Do I draw on paper or do I do digital writing? Yeah, right away. Immediately. You use an app. Do you draw your iPad? Yes, I draw on my iPad. I use an app called Adobe Draw, and I also have an Apple Pencil, which is convenient for me. Do you find it's hard to prepare for presentations? Do I find it's hard to prepare for presentations? Well, again, as I said, it is kind of like nerve wracking when you're five minutes away from the presentation. Are you nervous now? No. Yes. Why did you get into coding? Why did I get into coding? I want to make a video game for my 3DS. I should add more, right? How many work camp presentations have you done? How many work camp presentations have I done? Well, including this one, too. You read your audience really well. You seem to know if we're going to find something really funny or when you need to add something more. Did that come naturally to you or did that take a little bit of practice? So does the talent of reading the audience knowing when they're going to laugh at something, does that come naturally, or does that come from practice? Really intentionally make things funny. You call that natural? Yes. What do I see myself in five years? Lead organizer for Work Camp LA. Do you have any online classes? Do I take improv comedy classes? No. I have an 11-year-old daughter. Where can I point her to raise her interest in coding? Where can you point your 11-year-old daughter to raise her interest in coding? Yes, online. Do you want to meet her? Do you want to meet your 11-year-old daughter? Do you have any online resources? Okay, so the resources I started with were Code Academy, which I think is free, but I haven't checked it out in a long time, so there might be some sort of paid service or something. And then I also used Khan Academy, and they have, along with every other voice in the history of the world, they have computer programming and computer science and advanced JavaScript. They basically have HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and then they have more advanced things like algorithms. And they also have an adapted version of this book called TheNatureOfCode.org, which is basically this thing that teaches you how to make simulations of the real world. You. How do you spell that with Academy? That's correct. How do I spell the Khan Academy thing? What's the... C-A-D-E-L-Y. Is there a game that you've created that's online? You said it was free that we could, like, check out, like, is there a demo on your website or anything like that? Is there a game I've created that you could check out right now? I mean, I have stuff on my Khan Academy page. Oh, I forgot to mention that. Khan Academy also allows you to create your own programs. Both in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but also in this JavaScript language library called ProcessingJS, which is basically an adapted version of the language processing. And then they put their own little twists on ProcessingJS that's more like Khan Academy JS. And you can make your own programs in their code editor, and you can check out other people's programs and the code. Yes. So when are you planning on starting a full-time job as a programmer? When do I plan on becoming a programmer? Yes. Have you thought about what you'll talk about next year? Have I thought about what I'll talk about next year? Well, like I just described, which was dealing with difficult teammates. I already made the outline, so it should be easy. Riverside is still accepting applications, Janssen. Ooh, Riverside is still accepting applications. When is Riverside? November 3 and 4. And it's only 45 minutes away? Yep. Ooh. Just saying. And you raising your hand or what are you trying to do? Okay, anybody? Yes, you. Do you have friends at the same age that is programmers too? Really? No. Well, I'm homeschooled, so I go to this thing called a homeschool charter, which is basically like, you're homeschooled, but you're still in school sort of? Like, it's confusing. Friends around the same age as I am, which is almost their team. Yeah, not in real life. Yes. Is it hard for you to go back and forth between real life and your tech life because there's such different experiences? Is it hard for me to go back and forth between real life and not real life, which is my tech life? Well, I feel tempted to say yes, so I'll say yes. Which one? Which one should I do? You? Are you saying something? Do you think you would be a fun character on the TV show Silicon Valley? Like, what would you... When would you see yourself going into the TV show? Do you think I would be a... Do I think I would be a fun character on the show Silicon Valley? I've never seen Silicon Valley. I don't want to watch it. That's enough. You in the back. Are there any frameworks that you're really excited about learning right now? Anything new? Are there any new frameworks that I'm excited about learning? Well, to be honest, I'm not really the type of person to be keeping up with all of these new wacky technologies that have been coming out. Like, go away. I have a book on it, but I haven't read it. It's too dry. You. What do you think about Gutenberg? That's a great question. We went to a meetup, but he doesn't fight him yet. We went to a meetup. That's my mom. Alternate question. Alternate question. Have you found a problem that you can't solve and do you need help with solving a problem? Have I found a problem that I can't solve and I need help with it? Do you need help with it? Let's see. I think I'm working on something on ConiCAD called Marvel Physics. Basically, I'm simulating the physics so I could use some help with that. And, because anyone raised you? Do you have any other hobbies that you like to do in your spare time? Do I have... Science video games. Do I have any other hobbies? What are your hobbies? Going on the internet and watching YouTube. I'll tell you what's on the news. Let's see. I like to read. I am a very fast reader. What else do I do on Sundays? Oh, yeah. Magic. Magic. Thank you, mom. Like magic the gathering or magic? Like magic tricks. Like making a coin disappear. I wouldn't want to make it disappear. It's a coin. Do you have a YouTube series of yourself teaching or describing things? Well, I do have a YouTube channel. It's called Janssen's. Okay, I'll spell it out for you. It's capital J, lowercase a, lowercase n, lowercase s, lowercase e, lowercase n, lowercase s, if I'm not mistaken, uppercase l, lowercase e, lowercase e, no, a lowercase s. And another lowercase s. And a lowercase a, and a lowercase a, and a lowercase a, and a space. And then com, as in dot com, except there's no dot. Janssen lessons, space com. Janssen's lessons, space com. Let's see. I'm buying you this lab. Did you enjoy drawing the slides to go along with the presentation? Yes, I did. They were very good. Did I enjoy drawing the slides for my presentation? Yes, I did. What kind of books do I read? Any book. I mean, my mom won't let me read adult books, so let's cross that out. I'm not a baby, so let's cross that out too. Yes, you. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do I want to be when I grow up? A programmer, I guess. Yes, you, again. If you were a programmer, what problems would you solve? If I was a programmer, what problems would I solve? Let's see. I mean, I don't really understand all of that weird server-side, HTTPS, something, something, mobile jungle stuff. So I guess I'd be front-end? I'm assuming that's what you were asking, right? I mean, do you want to solve world hunger? Do you want to make cool things? Do you want to, I don't know, help people tell stories? What do you want to do? Well, I suppose it depends on the company who hires me. Again, I'm up for hiring. And... Two questions. I was just asking, do you have brothers and sisters? No. Do we have brothers and sisters? No. Okay, let's end this.