Considering our past two entries, it should be no surprise to anyone that Innova hosted the Columbus Ohio Linux User’s Group last Saturday. The focus of the meeting was Rafeeq Rehman’s presentation on OpenID, which was very informative and an awesome introduction to OpenID, especially so if you’d never heard of it.

But, and no offense to Mr. Rehman meant, it lacked flair. I was interested enough in the material but I found myself sneaking off time and again to partake of the catered food or snap some pictures. This is a common problem when geeks give presentations (we’re not generally known for our communications skills), and if I were in the same situation it might have come out quite similarly.

As I was perusing programming.reddit.com this morning — keeping up with the field — I came across an awesome article entitled: How Not to Throw Up, which is an awesome article about how to handle giving presentations. It focuses on giving presentations in front of large groups of people, but the advice is usable when you’re standing in front of any number of people. Tidbits like: “Don’t cram each slide full of as much information as it can bear” and “watch the audience’s reaction and tailor the presentation to them” are pure gold.

Maybe those of us who are more comfortable in front of a debugger or a terminal window should take a read through — I certainly did — and keep in mind the finer points of performing in front of a group of people. Next time I have to present anything I’ll be darting back to this article for a refresher.