Presenting At Csun
I’d been recommended coming to CSUN by numerous people for a few years. What finally got me was my intention to present with a colleague at Kaiser Permanenté regarding our relationship dynamics. Kaiser has been a key influencer in how our accessibility processes have grown and we wanted to distill what we learned over the years.
Unfortunately, he was unable to actually join me but I managed to keep myself on the list. First time presenter at the same time as a first time attendee. Pretty neat.
Topics and How Many Times You Can Edit a Slide Deck
CSUN Slide Deck.pptx
CSUN Slide Deck - final.pptx
CSUN Slide Deck - final final.pptx
CSUN Slide Deck - final for real final.pptx
I’ve been adjusting my slides as I’ve been attending sessions and learning how people approach it. Any conference like this has sort of a base line content density and style of presenting and, having never been, I wasn’t sure what that meant. My tendency is to be pretty conversational - I practice until I sound unpracticed - and my slides are anything but dense. I use few, big title words on a slide and rarely more than say 50 words of description. Occasionally, I’ll script out specific points in the slide notes.
Example Slide
The image above is more my typical style. The background is a blurred color cloud/gradient. There’s little text (I’ll write it out below) - just a bug one-word title and three sentences of description totaling 22 words. What I plan to say for this slide is a short paragraph on my feelings as we met with blind users struggling with our software in 2019.
Slide Text
Title: Scary…
Description: One person missed a payment. Folks would be well within their right to be angry at us. Instead, they made us lemonade…”
In comparison, what I’ve seen so far is a much more text density per slide. People try to outline their points in what I’d call a more traditional corporate way so that the slides can stand alone outside the presentation. (Thankfully there’s only been one instance of a person just literally reading their deck to us.) I’m trying to balance that without losing what makes me me when presenting.
In part, I want to standout because I think I’m a vey good public speaker but part of me wants to give people the correct content for their expectations. At this point, I have 3 “final” draft decks plus a sans-animation version for people to reference. It’s 90 some slides still.
I went to one session yesterday that was barely more than 10.
Hmm…
My Solution Is…?
I’m stressed but not stressed, ya know? I’ll be fine and people will like me or not. I can’t control for that but I can control for how I present. My solution has been cut some of the visual flair plus an extra section that wasn’t necessary to get my point across.
But also, I’ve written 2 supplemental documents - one a stepwise guide on how to do the thing I’m talking about, and the other a partner version written ore in the vernacular for maturity modeling accessibility systems. The former was intentional. The latter came because I had a good idea I pursued that didn’t quite work for the slide deck but still thought it valuable.
My solution is to do “more” work to add context and practicality while still allowing for an engaging talk.
My Session Is on Friday
If somehow you are reading this and are at CSUN, my presentation is at 4:20 I Platinum 7 on Friday. Last slot of the day for newbies. :)
Published on March 12, 2025