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by BrentOzar 3142 days ago
tl;dr - writing your slides out in calligraphy is hard.

The post would be better reframed as, “calligraphy is hard and time-consuming.” Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a keynote presentation. The output is gorgeous, but I’d be curious if you couldn’t get better results faster and cheaper with an outsourcing service.
2 comments
noufalibrahim 3142 days ago
Well, I certainly didn't expect that but then again, the business slant of HN is part of its nature.

This was as much about the process as the result. I practice calligraphy as a hobby and spend time and energy to get better at it. Getting faster, cheaper, and better results by outsourcing would rob me of the process and that's killing the project as far as I'm concerned.

(P.S. I wrote the post).

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BrentOzar 3142 days ago
> This was as much about the process as the result.

Cool - but the process of WHAT? If you’re working on calligraphy, make the post about calligraphy. As a frequent presenter, I read the title and went, “great, let’s see how another presenter prepares.” This wasn’t really about the keynote at all - it’s about designing slides with calligraphy. Step back and think bigger picture - you could write this as, “how to build slides with calligraphy” and get a bigger, happier audience. People would love to see how you lay out that kind of thing, how long it takes, how long you’ve been working at it, etc.

However, it has nothing to do with Python, PyCon, 2017, or a keynote. It’s just long term presentation design. It’s an evergreen post that’s worthwhile for people who do any kind of presentation.

It’s like saying, “2017 Range Rover sale preparation,” and then writing thousands of words about innovative and timeless sales techniques. The title and first few paragraphs really undersell what you’re doing.

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dragonwriter 3142 days ago
While it's perhaps counterintuitive, audiences often respond better (particularly in advance, where a title has to do it's work) to framing things in grounded concrete terms that are, as you point out, overly specific, rather than generalized abstractions that end up seeming ungrounded. Now, for some segment of the audience that works less well after the fact, but it's usually a minority and, perhaps more importantly, its after the fact.
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noufalibrahim 3142 days ago
Ah. Now I understand what you're trying to say. I titled it like that simply because after I delivered the presentation, a lot of people asked me about it and this was written more or less for them than for a general audience.

I think I should retitle it as you've suggested.

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dr_zoidberg 3142 days ago
Yet another suggestion: the title is fine, you're telling the story of how your prepared the PyCon India 2017 keynote. I was a bit surprised to see it was about how you physically made every slide using calligraphy. If you just added a paragraph at the begining explaining that, it'd be fine by me. It was still good to see[0] though, and I loved Jouberts quote about teaching.

[0] I didn't read it entirely, but skimmed and took a quick look at the slides.

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shas3 3142 days ago
This is like saying, "why are you learning to play the piano when you could get the same results from listening to the track on Spotify?"
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