I’ve just got back from tonight’s AMITPRO meeting where I was speaking about InfoPath (if your still wondering what InfoPath is I’ll post about this soon!)
All in all I was pleased with how it went down and got some great comments from people there
Since I’m my own worse enemy when it comes to things I do I’m going to critique myself to make sure I learn!
If the ultimate goal was to give everyone an overall view of what InfoPath is, how it works, how much it costs, etc I think i achieved that. Driving back i thought of a couple of things I’d have liked to improve
1) Slides – some slides I skipped over far too quickly. I’d put the slide in there for a reason so why bother not using it?
2) Specific plan – I would have no hope of memorising some sort of script, etc so my plan was to use the slides as prompts and then talk from my own knowledge and experience which I think generally worked ok but i possibly over emphasised some things and glossed over other points altogether as I tried to make sure I covered everything. The other problem with this is that if I had to give the same presentation again it would probably be very different. It also meant I sort of dwindled away instead of having a clear specific ending
3) Speed – it felt to me like I raced through the entire thing though obviously that’s just my perspective as I was concentrating on recalling other things while talking at the same time
4) Demos – My demos weren’t as structured as I’d have liked (this sort of follows on from point 2) which I sometimes ended up wandering down dead ends
We rarely have group members speak at meetings so it was personally big deal for me to get it right. If you were there tonight thanks for your attention. Any feedback you have (good or bad!) is appreciated
I enjoyed the whole experience though I could probably do with a laptop upgrade :-)
Latest posts by Andy Parkes (see all)
- Dishley parkrun, Loughborough - August 1, 2023
- Woodgate Valley Country Park parkrun - July 22, 2023
- Abbey Park parkrun - June 8, 2023
Andy – you gave a really good presentation, you should be chuffed!
I went from knowing little or nothing about InfoPath, to understanding what the product is and what applications it might have – so I’d say job done by yourself. 🙂
Excellent presentation – not rushed and pitched at the right level for the group – engaging, informative and interesting, I’d say with a bit more practise you’re a natural!
Andy,
You had obviously gone to a great deal of effort to prepare for the meeting and I’d like to thank you for that. I now have a much better understanding of what Infopath can do and we should be asking questions around it’s inclusion in SBS and Office products.
I use a program called Adobe Captivate for demos, it allows me to record and edit a presentation and then just recall it from a flash file. It works quite well the only downside is you can’t really breakout to show something live. However the plus side is that you aren’t reliant on a customer connection going down or missing a great feature because you always know whats coming next.
Again, thanks for your effort on Tuesday, it’s greatly appreciated.
Paul