ColdFusion Muse

14 Comments

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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 10:53 AM

  Thanks for the kind remark in your mention of my troubleshooting talk. The admiration is mutual! :-)
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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 10:59 AM

  As for the list itself, I want to share an observation, for others (and perhaps the cfobjective folks) to consider.
  
  I appreciate that Mark's doing it because he wants one page listing them all (versus people having to pick a session on the conference site to see the slide link).
  
  Perhaps the conference folks could consider offering such a "single page listing" in the future. This is at least the 2nd such list that's been started (http://www.tucsoncfug.com/post.cfm/cfobjective-pre...), so it seems the demand is there. :-)
  
  If the conference site is db-driven, it may not be too hard to add. We shall see.
  
  And someone may propose, "why not just get all the speakers to post to slidesix.com?" That would be nice, too, but again getting every individual speaker to do that may be too much to expect. Almost all the speakers seem to have posted their slides somewhere on their own sites, which is why these links can be offered.
  
  It just seems it would be better for the conference site to be the place where such an authoritative list could be put (and updates continued), especially since they have the speakers in a mailing list and can press them to make sure to have posted their links, if available. :-)
  
  Still, until then, I understand why some may proceed on their own. Just hoping the need may diminish over time.
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  Posted By

  Mark A Kruger | 5/19/11 11:30 AM

  @Charlie,
  
  I think you are right - there should be a unified resource portal. Also, at other conferences presenters are required to have their presentations ready to put up on the web for during or after the conference. At the moment it doesn't seem like all the presenters have their material up on line.
  
  -Mark
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  Posted By

  todd sharp | 5/19/11 12:13 PM

  @Charlie: thanks for mentioning SlideSix! So if you weren't aware I'm working on finishing up the rewrite of SlideSix and hope to relaunch sometime in the summer as a site solely focused on developer/designer presentations. As part of this we're adding support for conferences/events to give them an outlet for further exposure for their event and also, as you mentioned, a place to put all their slides so that attendees who may have missed a session or want to review slides can do so. You're right about it being difficult to get everyone on the same page which is why we're adding the ability to post presentations on behalf of someone else (while providing credit/links to the author). Hopefully this will lead to a more successful product for conferences/events. If you have any other advice or know of anyone who is willing to contribute please point them my way (since the effort is all open source now).
  
  Thanks again and sorry I missed you all at cf.o this year!
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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 2:36 PM

  @Mark, sure, it would be nice if conferences could have presenter slides posted before the session, but we all know that many presenters often are working on them (or at least may be tweaking them) right up their session. :-) So if the conference organizers did "force posting of slides beforehand", they might (and in the past have been) old and not what the presenter is showing. I'll note that I (and perhaps others) do try at least to post my own session to my own site before my session begins, so that I can at least point people there to that. It is not often as easy to get slides posted on the conference site even hours before your session. :-)
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  Posted By

  Mark A Kruger | 5/19/11 2:41 PM

  @charlie,
  
  Yes... good point. I know I'm certainly "tweaking" things right up to the last moment in some cases - especially with sample code and demos - stuff I'm trying to do live. Still there should be a single repository for all the presos. Right now it's a bit of a hodge-podge I think.
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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 2:42 PM

  @Todd, great to hear the update. I have a few thoughts in reply.
  
  If we can beg Mark's indulgence to have a little more discussion on that, this seems a good place/time to do so, in that many others reading this entry may either have concerns (as presenters) that kept them from posting talks, or readers may wonder why some presenters didn't, and what we can hope for in the future. :-)
  
  First, I'll say I especially like the ability you are considering to post presos for others. Certainly one of the challenges has always been getting presenters to take the time to do it.
  
  But it begs another question, though, which really is to me the bigger problem I had with posting slides on slidesix: who would then be responsible for managing spam comments? The poster or the presenter? Or could either? Indeed, could it maybe be that anyone (somehow authorized by you) could delete spam comments?
  
  Spam comments were a real problem (for me) with the old slidesix site. It was also rather tedious to get to the point to be able to delete them, even if you wanted to be a good soldier and clear up after the pests. It simply dissuaded me from wanting to post anything beyond the one I did (since that alone was hassle enough to deal with).
  
  So are spam comments something you plan to address in the rebuild? In particular, will you be adding a way to easily delete the spam via a link within the email that shows us what the spam comment was? Right now, it's a multi-step effort which is just quite discouraging.
  
  Also, are you planning on supporting pptx files? I think that may have discouraged some presenters.
  
  Don't hear me wrong: I appreciate that it was a lot of work to create and run slidesix. I've been reluctant to make any public comment of these concerns. I'm just sharing here the things that discouraged me, personally. I have to wonder if many other presenters may have felt the same, though I realize you had lots and lots who loved it and did support it. Just mentioning these while you've brought up the point. It's great to hear that you're trying to keep it going as an open source project.
  
  I hope that someone who does benefit from the service will consider taking up these issues. I realize some may say, "so why don't you pick up the task since it's your concern?" The thing is, I never used slidesix myself. I only offered a talk on it. I never had need to view those of others, so it's a bit of a challenge to hope that users in that position would take up the flag to work on the open source effort. :-) Still, maybe some would (and I might). But we can hope that others who do plan to work on it will consider these issues.
  
  Todd, I see that you have a google group for discussing the project, at http://groups.google.com/group/slidesix-open-sourc.... (Sadly, the most recent 5 messages there are spam. :-( The good news is that Google lets readers mark messages as spam, and I just did, so perhaps in the future they will go away.) But Mark I'll note as well that there are some steps you could take as owner of the group to help prevent them. I blogged about that a couple years ago: http://www.carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2009....
  
  Here's hoping more folks step up to help you make it what you think it could be.
  
  Hope that's helpful.
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  Posted By

  todd sharp | 5/19/11 2:53 PM

  Hey Charlie - don't have time to fully address everything at the moment, but the plan for comments is to use a third party system (disqus) and allow users to register/use their own account for disqus (or just use the default unmoderated disqus account) which has a number of options for moderation/spam control.
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  Posted By

  todd sharp | 5/19/11 2:58 PM

  Weird.... for teh google group i have it set to 'Messages from new members are moderated' but a few spam got thru that somehow. I'll ban those users and keep a better eye on it.
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  Posted By

  Scott Stroz | 5/19/11 2:58 PM

  I know that this really is not the best place for this, but given that it's been thrown out, I feel i need to reply here.
  
  I have had presos up on SlideSix for quite some time and I think I have gotten 1 spam comment.
  
  That being said, the SlideSix code base is now open source, so if someone is really bothered by the spam comments, it would be really, really cool if they contributed code to address the issue.
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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 3:39 PM

  @Todd, thanks for those thoughts.
  
  @Scott, hmm. Well, I offered an explanation of the challenge in expecting presenters (contributors of content) to step up and fix the problem. They're not the main users who benefit from the service. (Sure, perhaps some may feel they do, so they may be more encouraged. But for a presenter who does not and is discouraged to use the system, it's not really them who miss out, so hoping they'll step up just isn't realistic.)
  
  As for spam comments not having been an issue for you, that's good to hear for you. I had only one slideset I ever posted, and the spam comments were frequent enough that it was a real annoyance for me. And as much because it not only wasn't possible to delete them clicking a link in the email, but also it was a pain to manually delete them in the admin interface. I finally just disabled all comments, which then kind of negates part of the value of putting slides on the site, right? :-)
  
  I'll note as well that I have since seen in Todd's google group he says in an update/status note that he recognizes spam as an issue and (like he said above) he's planning to address it. Great to hear. And it sounds like he may have planned to offer some more thoughts here later as well.
  
  But to any who see my comments as distasteful, please don't shoot the messenger, folks. I was offering a sincere and honest explanation of an issue that was significant enough to discourage me from posting slides there. I was offering them in the context of why you may not have seen it be the solution everyone wished for when wanting to have "one place to list all slides" after a conference, which is the focus of this blog entry.
  
  Maybe other presenters might have felt the same way. If these are addressed in "slidesix next", it would seem it could help a lot. Again, apologies to Mark for this getting a little off-topic. But maybe it will also help get still more interest in some wanting to help with the open source project. And I have just joined the list, so I'll be in a better position to help if I can. :-)
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  Posted By

  Charlie Arehart | 5/19/11 3:45 PM

  Oh, and there's one more place where the problem with comments was recognized by Todd and others (so not just "my own issue"). I knew I'd seen it sometime earlier today, but just found it again.
  
  It's discussed in the comments of the blog entry where Todd announced the project was being open sourced:
  
  http://cfsilence.com/blog/client/index.cfm/2011/4/...
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  Posted By

  Tim Cunningham | 5/19/11 4:29 PM

  Mark,
  
  Thanks for the links! I see you referred to my topic as "Punny." I use humor when I am nervous, hope it didn't detract too much from the topic at hand.
  
  Also please add Elliott's links to his slides:
  
  http://www.elliottsprehn.com/blog/2011/05/16/cf-ob...
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  Posted By

  Rob Brooks-Bilson | 5/19/11 7:24 PM

  Mark,
  
  Here's the link to my preso and demo code from "Undocumented and Off Script: ColdFusion & Ehcache" (slides embedded from SlideSix):
  
  http://rob.brooks-bilson.com/index.cfm/2011/5/13/S...