Les Journées des Logiciels Libres

October 16, 2006 2:44 pm Dave Neary gnome

Pourquoi et comment contribuer aux logiciels libres

I was in La Doua on Friday morning at les Journées des Logiciels Libres giving a presentation titled Pourquoi et Comment Contribuer aux Logiciels Libres.

I had great fun preparing and giving the conference, and I hope people enjoyed it. It was a personal journey through my own first contact with free software, and some general advice on keeping one’s sanity over the years, as well as an attempt to explain why we spend so much of our free time doing something that the majority of people just don’t understand.

Being a man of low self-esteem, I would be interested in hearing from anyone who was present (or who watched via streaming) about what they thought of the presentation.

It was the first presentation I’ve done where I used some of the techniques that Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin use in their presentations – making it visual and participative, using fewer words and more images on slides, concentrating on the “why” than the “what” of what you’re presenting. It’s both more effective and more fun than the “normal” way of concentrating on bullet points, but it also takes a lot more effort.

4 Responses

  1. Lucas Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 1:37 am

    Hi Dave,

    Your presentation was very good. The best one I’ve attended this year at JDLL. I didn’t expect much from it (I’ve attended quite a lot of “introduction to free software” or “how to participate in FS” presentations, and I tend to find them boring) but was really surprised to find yours so interesting. What you said echoed with many things I had already felt when dealing with FS projects.

    I hope the slides will be available soon (but you already know that, since I mailed you privately about this). However, one downside of using this system of slides is that it is difficult to leave a track to follow for people not attending the conference. If you just read the slides, you can’t get most of the content of the talk. The video will be a nice thing to have, and if you have some more detailed written notes about what you said, it would be interesting to provide them too (you really gave lots of good advices).

  2. Kouran Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 5:02 pm

    Will the presentation be online soon ?

  3. Dave Neary Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    I don’t know – I’ll need to ask Fredix from the ALDIL when the presentation archives will be going up.

  4. Lefty Says:
    October 22nd, 2006 at 5:00 am

    Heh. Guy is the King of the Universe when it comes to giving great presentation. I learned a lot from him when we were both at Apple…