Nick Cowie pre­sent­ing at a Web­Jam even in Syd­ney in Sep­tem­ber 2007 – thanks to Gary Bar­ber for the photo

As pre­vi­ously hinted at on this blog, Web­Jam 9 will be held in Perth after the Edge of the Web con­fer­ence, Novem­ber 6, at the UWA Tavern.

This will be Perth’s sec­ond Web­Jam event, although a few of the Perth Port80 reg­u­lars have had the Web­Jam expe­ri­ence at other con­fer­ences and events on the East coast of Aus­tralia. In fact, it will be Web­Jam num­ber four for Perth devel­oper Nick Cowie, who was a runner-up at the pre­vi­ous Perth Web­Jam event with his now-infamous “Web­Sledge” pre­sen­ta­tion, which poked fun at many mem­bers of the audience.

See­ing as he’s such a vet­eran, I thought I’d ask Nick a few ques­tions which may help those who are think­ing of pre­sent­ing but are unsure what will go down well with the audience.

Do you get ner­vous? Is it scary up there with every­one look­ing at you?

Not at all, with a bit of luck half the audi­ence will be peo­ple I know, and most would have seen me do more stu­pid stuff than will hap­pen on stage that night.

The Web­Jam audi­ences I have expe­ri­enced have been very sym­pa­thetic, so unless you are doing a bla­tant sales pitch they will for­give for almost anything.

It is only 3 min­utes, so even you have a com­plete dis­as­ter it is over quickly. You can get to the bar and drown your sor­rows while the next pre­sen­ter takes the audi­ences mind off what happened.

With close to 20 pre­sen­ters, the worse thing that could hap­pen is you do a very ordi­nary pre­sen­ta­tion that gets lost in the noise of the other pre­sen­ta­tions. A bad pre­sen­ta­tion is more likely to be mem­o­rable and will get your mes­sage across.

So give me the good stuff: what’s the secret of a great Web­Jam presentation?

I see a Web­Jam pre­sen­ta­tion as per­for­mance art, you have 3 min­utes to enter­tain and inform the audi­ence. So unless there is a real wow fac­tor in what you are talk­ing about/demonstrating, use humour, try to sur­prise the audi­ence (e.g. add a stu­pid slide to your deck, use an embar­rass­ing photo/video/audio of your­self, another pre­sen­ter, well known audi­ence mem­ber, celebrity in you demo etc), you could even try audi­ence inter­ac­tion. But remem­ber it is only 3 min­utes, so your pre­sen­ta­tion need to be fast, furi­ous and punchy.

That cer­tainly makes sense! Any other advice you want to offer?

You have only got 3 min­utes, make the most of it. Script your pre­sen­ta­tion and prac­tise it, get it down to about 2:30 to 2:45, just in case some­thing goes wrong. Then prac­tise it a few more times for good luck.

Be pre­pared, make sure that every­thing is pre­loaded on the com­puter that will used for the pre­sen­ta­tion and ready to roll the moment you step on stage. Your 3 min­utes is pre­cious, so don’t waste 20 or 30 sec­onds open­ing soft­ware, typ­ing in URLs, or wait­ing for web­sites to load.

Work­ing with live web­sites is as risky as work­ing with ani­mals or chil­dren, so have alter­na­tives ready just in case some­thing goes wrong.

Great con­tent should win, but in the past great pre­sen­ta­tions with ordi­nary con­tent have done very well. So pol­ish your presentation.

And finally, have a go. If you have a good idea or work you want to show off, sign up to present at Web­Jam. Spend a cou­ple of hours prepar­ing and step out on stage that night. It is great fun and slightly addictive!

There’s some excel­lent advice in there – thanks a lot Nick! Per­son­ally, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

I may have put my name down to present with my awe­some pal Ben. If we can do it, any­one can do it!