On Thursday 18 August I delivered presentation on Software Estimation. Mainly I went thought the agenda that more-or-less matches contents of the book “Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art”, as I found it covering most of the main aspects of the estimation. I prepared a lot of interesting stories and analogies to explain stuff and presented that with great dedication… but… my audience was connected on the phone (except of two in room with me) and we did not have web cam (our IT dep. failure)… so… it really sucked.

I simply cannot know if they accept words and jokes I produce, thus I cannot understand if I have do adjust my speech. Also it is not possible to know if audience gets information easily or it goes hard. Asking audience different questions and getting response from them is also hard. Much more conversation was going between me and two people in meeting room. Long story short, when there is no visual feedback presenting information makes me, as presenter, frustrated. Of course it is not secret that it is important to have eye-contact with audience, I just wanted to complain a bit.

Ok, as we live in bureaucracy and connected world, there was feedback – filled survey. And you know what? It s***ed again – I got only 3 records in survey, even they are very positive (except complains on work of IT) it means only one thing – my audience didn’t admire the presentation. I won’t be surprised if 2 of 3 responses are from guys listening to me in the meeting room.