Comments on: Xtech 2006: Jeff Barr - Building Software With Human Intelligence http://strange.corante.com/2006/05/19/xtech-2006-jeff-barr-building-software-with-human-intelligence Picking out patterns in the chaos Wed, 16 May 2012 20:56:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Suw http://strange.corante.com/2006/05/19/xtech-2006-jeff-barr-building-software-with-human-intelligence#comment-2006 Suw Tue, 23 May 2006 20:21:28 +0000 http://strange.corante.com/2006/05/19/xtech-2006-jeff-barr-building-software-with-human-intelligence#comment-2006 Hi Jeff, Yes, your comment does make sense. I'd like, if I may, to take this opportunity to give you a little feedback on why I thought your presentation was dull. You can take or leave any of it, but my intention is to be constructive. There were a few things that stopped me from fully engaging with your presentation. One of the main ones was that you talk really fast. I am a prodigious note-taker (as you may have noticed from this blog!) and I can type as fast as most people speak. I couldn't keep up with you, though, and even when I wasn't typing, your words turned into a stream of sound that washed over me. It's easy to talk too fast, so if you slow down to the point where you feel you're talking too slow, you're probably just about perfect. The second major barrier was that you gave us too much background. The first 15-20 mins of your talk was either biographical info about you, or history about Amazon. You needn't have given us either: we can find out about you from your bio in the programme or online; and we all know what Amazon is and unless your history is directly relevant to the topic at hand, leave it out. We can go find that online too if we want. The third thing was that whilst we all had a suspicion that the Mechanical Turk is capable of doing some really cool stuff, by the time we got to the end of your talk we still weren't really sure what. You gave us glimpses, but you needed to slow down and go through one or two examples from beginning to end, illustrating with screenshots or demos where possible. I also felt that you missed out on fully exploring the implications of having an API for what are basically human-lead tasks. That in itself is a fascinating concept, being able to tap into real people to do tasks that can't be automated. I really appreciate you coming here and leaving a comment. I hope you will take my response in the spirit with which it is intended, as some friendly advice. Hi Jeff,

Yes, your comment does make sense. I’d like, if I may, to take this opportunity to give you a little feedback on why I thought your presentation was dull. You can take or leave any of it, but my intention is to be constructive.

There were a few things that stopped me from fully engaging with your presentation. One of the main ones was that you talk really fast. I am a prodigious note-taker (as you may have noticed from this blog!) and I can type as fast as most people speak. I couldn’t keep up with you, though, and even when I wasn’t typing, your words turned into a stream of sound that washed over me. It’s easy to talk too fast, so if you slow down to the point where you feel you’re talking too slow, you’re probably just about perfect.

The second major barrier was that you gave us too much background. The first 15-20 mins of your talk was either biographical info about you, or history about Amazon. You needn’t have given us either: we can find out about you from your bio in the programme or online; and we all know what Amazon is and unless your history is directly relevant to the topic at hand, leave it out. We can go find that online too if we want.

The third thing was that whilst we all had a suspicion that the Mechanical Turk is capable of doing some really cool stuff, by the time we got to the end of your talk we still weren’t really sure what. You gave us glimpses, but you needed to slow down and go through one or two examples from beginning to end, illustrating with screenshots or demos where possible.

I also felt that you missed out on fully exploring the implications of having an API for what are basically human-lead tasks. That in itself is a fascinating concept, being able to tap into real people to do tasks that can’t be automated.

I really appreciate you coming here and leaving a comment. I hope you will take my response in the spirit with which it is intended, as some friendly advice.

]]> By: Jeff Barr http://strange.corante.com/2006/05/19/xtech-2006-jeff-barr-building-software-with-human-intelligence#comment-2005 Jeff Barr Fri, 19 May 2006 14:35:14 +0000 http://strange.corante.com/2006/05/19/xtech-2006-jeff-barr-building-software-with-human-intelligence#comment-2005 Hi Suw, Thanks for your comments. Sorry to hear that I came across as "dull." I try to present all of the facts and to show cool demos built by members of our developer community, but I really try to put the focus on the APIs and on the demos, not to draw attention to the speaker. It wouldn't be hard to be dramatic or theatrical, but that's not my strategy. I'd rather my audience walk away with "wow, that' some cool stuff I saw from some guy" than "Wow, Jeff's an amazing speaker but I don't know what he talked about." Make sense? Hi Suw,

Thanks for your comments. Sorry to hear that I came across as “dull.” I try to present all of the facts and to show cool demos built by members of our developer community, but I really try to put the focus on the APIs and on the demos, not to draw attention to the speaker. It wouldn’t be hard to be dramatic or theatrical, but that’s not my strategy. I’d rather my audience walk away with “wow, that’ some cool stuff I saw from some guy” than “Wow, Jeff’s an amazing speaker but I don’t know what he talked about.”

Make sense?

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