This 🚧 work-in-progress 🚧 playbook for developing and delivering webinar content, with a focus on delivering live demos...
- I develop the narrative, e.g. as a high-level outline, using the team as a sounding board to get feedback / inputs early on!
- I try and write the least amount of code possible in the amount of time available! I can always fake it, e.g. I just started building this app, the important part is the narrative.
- Pre-recorded demos are great, they buy predictability but at the cost of prolonged preparation time, and they allow me to speed up boring parts, like waiting for builds to complete.
- My preference is to use ScreenFlow to screen-record my demos.
- When recording my screen:
- I use my laptop's retina display exclusively, for the best possible results.
- Any code snippets I use are pre-prepared and available on my second monitor so I can copy and paste at the appropriate moment.
- I turn off stafftools, so any pre-release features aren't visible (use the backtick character, `, to disable stafftools)
- I try to keep to the browser, to minimize context-switching
- I use a private (incognito) session, so bookmarks, pinned tabs, extensions etc are all hidden
- I make sure the date/time isn't visible in the screen-recording, so the content doesn't become dated, and so that I can easily re-record edits in the future
- After recording my demos, I share them with the team as early as possible to solicit feedback
- I edit my demos down using ScreenFlow again, erasing mistakes, and fast-forwarding through the boring parts (e.g. waiting for builds etc)
- I slice my demos up into individual files, each lasting a few seconds, and then drop each file into a separate slide in Keynote:
- This helps me pace the presentation, I'm not rushing to keep up with the video, I can control when to advance to the next part of the demo.
- Keynote also has controls to fast-forward (
L), or jump to the beginning (I) or end (O) of the playing video -- which is helpful if your delivery is faster than when you recorded the demo
- I use presenter notes pretty heavily, essentially using these as a transcript.
- I record myself doing a dry-run, e.g. using Zoom, and then watch and critique, modifying the material / timing as I see fit! 🤔
- I prepare some seed questions in advance, so that I have something for the Q&A.
- When it's time to deliver... I relax, smile, enjoy it! I put my trust in all the hard work I've done up until this point! 🤗
- When it's over... I preserve the material to facilitate re-use,.
- I use Git LFS to preserve large files, especially that Keynote file containing all that video!
- Finally, I consider sharing results appropriately, e.g. in an internal post.
- https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/unlocking-the-cloud-operating-model-with-github-actions/ where this approach was recently applied