presentation – Terence Eden’s Blog

Presenting ActivityBot at FOSDEM

@edent — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 12:34:17 +0000

Because I'm an optimist, I submitted a few talks to FOSDEM in the hope one might be accepted. Because I'm lucky, I got two speaking slots. Because I'm an idiot, I decided to do both talks. On the same day. An hour apart. On opposite ends of the venue.

Fool!

My first talk was at the Social Web Birds-of-a-Feather session. I told people about my ActivityBot social networking server and how I built it into a single file. In the spirit of minimalism, I only had 8 minutes to present. Time for a speed-run!

Sadly / Luckily there's no audio or video of the session (if you have some, let me know) so you'll have to make do with some slides. Speaker notes are included - read them rapidly for the full effect!

I built an ActivityPub bot server in 64KB of PHP. Sorry!

Feedback and Photos

Talking Contact Tracing at FOSDEM

@edent — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:34:19 +0000

I was delighted to be invited to speak at FOSDEM. And I was not at all intimidated to be speaking on the cavernous Janson stage. The audience were lovely⁰, asked interesting questions¹, and - most importantly - laughed in all the right places 😅.

Regular readers will recognise this as being an updated² version of the talk I gave at EMF 2024 - feel free to watch that one if you want to see if I've improved.

Huge thanks to the AV team and the video-wizards behind the FOSDEM infrastructure.

As I say in my introduction, these are my personal recollections. I no longer work for the Government, so feel free to send any complaints to the circular file.

Feedback

A few pieces of public feedback I got after the talk.

Except for one weird heckler who shouted out something incomprehensible. ↩︎
Well, one guy came up afterwards and asked "What exactly is Covid? Can you explain?" I politely suggested he speak to a medical professional. ↩︎
But, yes, still wearing the same t-shirt! ↩︎

My triple screen set-up for effective online presentations

@edent — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 11:06:25 +0000

I recently gave an online presentation at Tech Nottingham. It went off without a hitch, and I got some great feedback. I'd like to briefly discuss the tech that I used to make it all work.

Here's "mission control":

On the left portrait monitor, I had two windows. The top one was Zoom, running in Chrome (more on that later). This was what I was presenting from. I kept it on screen so that I could see what others were seeing. There's nothing more annoying than having to stop a presentation because participants can't see the slides.

The lower window was Slack. We had a chat channel for the event. This meant I could keep an eye on the chatter, spot any important questions and - most importantly - receive live feedback. For an in-person talk, I'm usually able to judge how it's going by listening for laughter or noting if people are paying attention. I also asked questions of the audience, which I encouraged them to answer in Slack. I think that helped foster a sense of engagement.

Slack was also a way for the organisers to message me if something went wrong. I'd be able to get a notification without it interrupting the presentation.

The centre monitor was also split windowed. On the left was Google Slides' speaker notes. The centre screen also houses my webcam. It's really distracting when people are speaking to you, but looking elsewhere. So my notes are lined up under the camera. That way I can see what I'm meant to be saying and see what the next slide is, all while maintaining eye-contact.

I bumped the font up so I could sit a sensible distance away and still read my notes. The meeting timer also made sure I didn't over-run my timeslot.

To the right was another Zoom instance. This time running in the app. This was muted and had video off - it was set to "gallery" view. This enabled me to keep an eye on the audience to see how they were reacting. Being able to see people laugh or flinch isn't as good as hearing them - but it's better than nothing!

Behind the screen is a cheap ringlight. My curtains were drawn because I didn't want the audience distracted by seeing sunlight flickering on my face.

On the right monitor is my Google Slides presentation in full screen. I always start my presentation with a testcard. For conferences with a complex AV set-up, it means that they can instantly see if something is wrong with the colours or aspect ratio. For attendees, it's a visual cue that something is about to start.

Off Camera

Four absolutely vital things that you can't see in the photo:

Headset microphone. I have a big microphone for recording. But considering the number of monitors and windows, I was worried about fan noise. So I use a Plantronics 310 headset. The mic is close to my mouth and doesn't pick up external noise. It only has one headphone, so I can hear how loudly I'm speaking. There's a physical mute button which I can hit when coughing - without having to scramble to find the right Zoom window.

In my hand I had a cheap wireless presentation clicker. That's a bit of a hangover from when I used to be on a conference stage. I know I could use my keyboard, but it's easier with a clicker.

Phone. Set to silent, but in my field of vision. Useful for emergencies.

Glass of water. You should be drinking more water. Stop reading this blog and refill you glass. Right now, please. Speaking is thirsty work. Remember to hit mute when you take a sip. No one wants to hear you slurping!

What didn't work

A few days before the event, the organisers ran a tech rehearsal. Here's what we discovered.

Zoom's Linux app won't screenshare if you're using Wayland with Pop OS. Why? I've no idea. Both Chrome and Firefox were able to screenshare Wayland windows with no problem.

Trying to mix different conference apps is a bad idea. The original plan was for me to present in one app and have that video be piped into Zoom. It almost worked, but it was easier just to keep everything to one app.

Animations and music. These never work well even in normal presentations. It was too much hassle to try and work out how to route audio from my mic and from whichever Chrome windows was being shared. Keep it simple, keep it safe.

Do you need all this tech?

This is possible to do on a single screen, but it is harder. At a minimum you need your notes and your presentation. If you have a tiling window manager, you can tile your presentation to the right aspect ratio, and share that. But you won't be able to go "full screen" - so your audience will see the browser's URL bar etc.

I'd say a minimum of two screens is necessary. I could have put Slack on my phone, or ignored it entirely.

If you're doing lots of online presentations, I'd love to hear your tips!

How to present at a hack day

@edent — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 12:46:46 +0000

I go to lots of hack days and hackathons. Some are big corporate affairs, some are boutique community events. They all have one thing in common - Geeks suck at giving demos.

You have 3 minutes to convince the judges - or your peers - that you've built something brilliant. How do you do that?

One Hundred and Eighty Seconds. It is not a lot of time. So here are my top 3 tips for succeeding at a demo.

Show the thing

This is the most important one. You need to show what you built. Demonstrate the thing that it does and what's clever about it.

The audience gets death-by-powerpoint every day at work. A good demo won't bombard them with slides.

Even worse, is a presenter who spends all the time talking about the problem, discusses their build environment in great detail, then runs out of time to do the actual demo.

I've literally seen someone spend two and a half minutes talking about why they hate Heroku and how they swapped to AWS - only to realise they have no time to show anything.

Here's my brief guide to showing the thing:

Take 10 seconds at the start to explain the premise behind your app as simply as possible.
- "I wanted to build an X, using Y, to fix Z."
- That's really all you need to say. Your demo should fill in the gaps.
Show the happy-path through the app. No one cares if your demo does password validation.
- "When you open the app / website it shows you a thing. When you click on the thing, it does this clever thing."
At this point, you can talk about the technology.
- "It uses BlipSoft's AI library to talk to Funkenstien's middleware layer. We built a converter to recalcify the bytes."
Show one or two other clever bits.
- If the user uploads a picture of a cat, the interface dynamically changes to be cat themed!"
Don't tell people what doesn't work.
- If it can't handle photos of dogs, or if it crashes on a Tuesday, or if it only works on landscape Android phones running a bodged firmware... so what? This is a quick hacky demo. You don't need to martyr yourself.
Have a definite ending.
- "Thank you for watching! Any questions?"

And, you do need to demo something. Some PowerPoint slides are not a demo.

Keep to time.

This is also the most important tip. If you run over time, you're being rude to the audience and to the other presenters. The judges will not thank you for it.

You have a limited time - and that should be fine. You shouldn't build something in a weekend that takes more than a few minutes to demo.

Actively work to make your product quick to use. In these days of engagement metrics, it's hard to remember that your user probably doesn't want to spend much time using your product.

Here's a bad example I saw recently. The team had built a nifty AI demo which looked at a photo and gave back useful information. They'd built this into a chat-bot. And that's where things went wrong.

The demo they gave looked like this:

Bot: Hi! I'm Botso! Your vision companion! What's your name?

The presenter then typed "Hi Botso, I'm Jane. Nice to meet you."

Bot: Great to meet you too, JANE. Would you like to upload a photo?

The presenter then typed "Yes I would."

Bot: Cool, JANE. Your photo must be smaller than 4MB and be JPEG. Is that OK?

The presenter then typed "I only have a PNG."

Bot: Never mind JANE, I'll convert it. Click here to upload

All of that preamble might be good in a production app - but for a demo you can skip straight to the good stuff.

Rehearse.

So how do you succeed at the first two points? The same way you get to Carnegie Hall.

About two hours before the demo, stop coding. If you add anything new now, I guarantee you're going to break something.

Start a timer on your phone, turn the phone over, then give the demo. You have to actually speak the words aloud - not just in your head. Click through the thing you're demoing. When you reach the end, flip your phone over again and see how long it took. My guess is your idea of 3 minutes is different to the stopwatch's idea.

Work out what you can trim from your demo? Do you really need to explain your git branching strategy? Can your demo already be logged in rather than waiting for a 2FA SMS? Will the audience care about something you spent ages on?

If anything is seriously broken with your demo, fix it. But remove the temptation to add any new code or to change any of the outputs.

Go to the room where presentations will be taking place. Is there a stage? Is there a microphone? Does the WiFi work there?

In the half hour before the presentation, you and your team should run through your presentation repeatedly.

Stand up while you rehearse. Practice passing the microphone to each other. What will you do if a bit of the demo fails? Are you consistently finishing in under 3 minutes?

Isn't this a bit much?

Yes, possibly. I'm a bit obsessive about good demos. Brilliant technology is often hidden because of a crap demo.

Communicating ideas is an important skill. If your app cures cancer, but you spend 3 minutes talking about how hard a specific API is to use, no one will understand its importance.

If you only take one piece of advice from this blog post - just rehearse your demo a few times before going on stage. I see too many presenters who are genuinely shocked at how quick 180 seconds go by.

Your hacks are amazing - and you deserve to show them off in their best light.

Tell the audience what you want them to do

@edent — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 07:08:05 +0000

I do lots of public speaking as part of my job. I'd like to share one of my tips for giving engaging and impactful talks.

Two caveats:

This is a sort-of work post. In that, I'll be discussing something I did for my employer - but they haven't asked me to write this, nor have they reviewed it.
Just because this works for me, doesn't mean it is right for you. Sometimes you have to find your own path.

Here it is...

Tell the audience what you want them to do.

It's that simple. I quite often say "Stick your hands up if you..." or "Give me a cheer if you've ever..." it's a cheap and effective way of getting the audience to engage with you. They think about what you're saying and get a little dopamine boost from sticking their hand up (I know the answer!) or vocalising (I'm part of the team!)

Recently, I tried something new.

During a talk I stuck up a simple slide and said:

Take a photo of that. Tweet It. Print it on a T-Shirt. Send it to your CEO and your developers.

And, do you know what happened? People did!

A few more points to note:

The slide was designed with the room in mind. Large text, so even people at the back could read it. (Huge thanks to Matt Stibbs for his work designing the slides).
The message was intended to be empowering and specifically aimed at the right audience.
Some people love Tweeting from conferences. It makes them feel connected with a wider audience - and shows their boss that they're not wasting time being out of the office.

A sound-bite in PowerPoint form.

It doesn't always work

I'll let you into another secret. This only works some of the time. I've been in front of audiences who refuse to stick their hands up, or participate with anything going on.

Some people are grumpy. Some just don't want to do anything but stay slumped in a chair and passively listen. Other people strongly dislike audience participation. That's OK. You don't need to force people into mandatory-funtime, and you don't need to be embarrassed by your enthusiasm.

So ask the audience to play along, tell them what you want them to do, and find ways to help them be part of something brilliant.

Reflections on #EMFcamp - a Science-Fact Convention

@edent — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:06:22 +0000

At a science-fiction convention, you queue for hours to hear a bit-part actor describe what it was like on the set of a forgotten sci-fi show. At a science-fact convention, you have a beer with a person who is literally changing the world with a laser cutter, some diodes, and a smattering of Python.

Welcome to ElectroMagnetic Field!

(I've stolen the subtitle from Ken MacLeod's description of Charles Stross's story Dechlorinating the Moderator.)

I'm not one for camping. Or doing anything in a field. So I was quite nervous about attending the festival. But everyone was lovely, the talks were amazing, and the food was good.

At every turn I bumped into people doing amazing things. Robots! LIDAR! Science! It was blissful. And the cider was pretty cheap.

I've never been to a laser powered rave watched over by a robot cat, while people covered in LEDs danced under posters promoting genetic modification on the BlockChain. I've never sat in a tent while watching a material scientist demonstrate her craft - and then later gone back to the same tent to watch a Chap Hop singer strut his stuff.

EMF is weird!

Bug Reports

These are all P3 or lower.

As a sleeper, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by air-horns. I'm quite happy for "bangin' chooons" to pump out - but my ear-plugs are not designed to cope with klaxons being fired off.
As an audience member, I don't want to watch 20 minutes of a presenter figuring out how to connect a laptop to a projector. All presenters should have to use the pre-configured stage laptop. I only saw one talk which needed a specialist laptop - to show the audience a view from a USB camera.
As someone who eats food, I don't want to queue for 30 minutes only to be told the advertised vegetarian breakfast isn't available. This is a problem unique to UK food-trucks. They seem taken by surprise that customers want to give them money. A few of the trucks were excellent, and knew how to serve food quickly. Still, an excellent range of veggie food.
As someone who wants to ask a question at a talk, I don't want to be stuck behind someone saying "Less of a question, more of a comment." These people need to learn some manners!
As a wishy-washy-bleeding-heart-politically-correct-do-gooder, I'd like to have seen more diversity. There was no lack of age or gender diversity, but it all felt a bit white.

Highlights

We accidentally hired a very silly campervan. Which lead to...

I did my talk about The (Connected) House of Horrors and loads of people came!

My brilliant wife did a talk about our OpenBenches project.

I met so many new people, reconnected with old friends, and put faces to Twitter avatars. I had my mind expanded about LGBTQ+ behaviour in animals, saw people hacking their way through insurmountable technical obstacles, and was inspired by all the beauty and creativity on show.

Roll on EMF 2020!

Preparing For A TEDˣ Talk

@edent — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 09:05:08 +0000

Yesterday, I gave my first TEDˣ Talk. It was organised by my employers, Telefonica in order to showcase innovative thinking throughout the business (usual work/personal disclaimers apply).

I don't want to go into too much detail about how amazing the day was - or the incredible talks that I heard my colleagues give. I'd like to talk a little about preparation. What I think goes in to making a great talk.

I'm not going to claim that I know everything there is to know about public speaking - nor that my talk was measurably better than anyone else's. I simply want to list what I do in order to feel comfortable up on stage. I hope that this will be of some use to you - whether you're preparing for a TEDˣ or some other public engagement.

Understand The Event

What is a TEDˣ Talk? What is the message of the event? What are people expecting to hear?

If you're talking at a shelter for stray dogs - don't talk about stray cats.

What did people say last year? There's no shame in watching other people's talks and "borrowing" their successes. I'm not saying that you should steal material - but that you should study their inflection, body language, mannerisms, and work out ways that you can incorporate them into your style.

Talk, Don't Write

The first thing to realise is that the written word is very different from the spoken word. It's called a "Talk" for a reason!

If you start by writing down what you want to say and then reading it aloud, you'll find that it sounds stiff, mannered, and entirely unconvincing.

Set up a voice recorder on your phone and start talking. Imagine that you're talking to a friend, what would you say? How would you emphasise your point? Where would you pause?

Play it back and listen to yourself. You'll hate the sound of your own voice, that's perfectly normal!

Start writing down the phrases and sentences you like. Keep repeating them out loud. See what connections your brain makes to string points together. Record, listen, write, talk, repeat.

Once Upon A Time

There are many different ways to craft a talk. Ultimately, though, you're telling a story. You're around a camp-fire spinning a yarn - just like your forebears. You need to make the story compelling - I was always told that "acting is the art of stopping people from coughing." In today's world, "giving a good talk is the art of stopping people from staring at their smartphones."

Think about the journey you want to take the audience on.

The beginning - your audience knows nothing. How do you introduce them to the characters and the situation?
Drama is conflict. Who are the "goodies" in your tale? What adversity are they facing?
Resolution is satisfying. What was done to defeat the baddies? How did justice prevail?
Knowledge is power. What practical steps can the audience take away? What's their call to action?
Finish. Don't abruptly end your talk. Bring the audience to a definite conclusion. Let them know you've finished, and let them know it's time to applause.

Get To Carnegie Hall 🔗

Practice.

I cannot stress this enough. Learn your material. Know it off by heart. Know exactly where the pauses are, which words to stress, when you are going to have time to take a breath.

Practice in your car, on the loo, in the shower, wherever you can. But remember this - practice out loud.

Running through lines in your head is cheating! Anyone can fool themselves into thinking they know something. Talking aloud is the only way to prove that you can do it.

Let the words flow through your mouth. Let your tongue get used to the way one word morphs into the next.

Practice with real people. It's easy to talk to a crowd of 200 strangers - it's hard to talk to one friend.

Have a couple of people listen to you talk. Let them tell you where you're going wrong - both in content and delivery. Trust them. Adjust your talk.

Then go practice it again.

Warm Up

You can't go from zero to hundred-percent instantly. No one can. A few minutes before your talk, warm up your voice and body. Stretch, chat tongue twisters, jump up and down, hum scales, and take several deep breaths.

Passion

There's no really good way to fake this. Are you excited by what you're saying? If so - show it! Let the audience be infected with your passion - be it joy or rage.

If you're not particularly interested in what you're saying, the audience won't be interested either.

If you can't find anything to talk about which genuinely enthuses you, it may be time to reconsider whether you should be speaking.

Tweets

My blog, my rules. Here are some nice tweets and photos from the event.

Hugely inspirational talk from @edent on code clubs for kids #TEDxTelefonicaLondon pic.twitter.com/2NMJp2Sn78

— Matt Flood (@mattflood) September 25, 2014

Fantastic @CodeClub presentation from @edent at #TEDxTelefonicaLondon. Superb.

— Tom Chant (@Thomas_Chant) September 25, 2014

Be A Better Speaker

@edent — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:00:39 +0000

I've taken a bit of a break from the conference circuit. With my previous job at InMobi I was attending 10 different events per month (on average). Some were merely hosting, others were presenting.

It got really tiring after a while. As much as I love the UK tech scene, it can be a bit repetitive to see the same faces and answer the same questions over and over again. It also took a toll on my personal and social life. It's rare that you take someone on a date to a mobile conference :-)

So I gave myself an enforced break. I have almost completely withdrawn from meetups, launch parties, conferences, or workshops for the last few months. The ones I have been to, I attended as a spectator rather than a speaker. That's much less stressful.

That said, I think it's time to start getting back in the saddle! I've created a profile on dex.io which lists some of my more recent public speaking gigs.

I have noticed that some people are really intimidated by public speaking. This blog post is an aide-mémoire for a BarCamp session I want to run on how to be a better public speaker.

So, here are my top tips:

Warm Up

Perhaps the most important. Before any talk I warm up my voice. There's nothing worse than hearing someone's voice break, or listen to them trip over a sentence. I do tongue twisters, humming, sing scales (badly). Anything so that my voice is clear for the audience.

Learn Your Material

You need to be confident in what you're saying. Knowing the general gist of what you want to say isn't enough - you must know your material backwards. If the slides break down, you still have to present.

I can't stand it when people say "errr... now... errr the next slide is about dogs" click "errr... I mean cats!"

You have to respect your audience - they want to hear a talk from someone who knows what they're talking about.

Don't Disparage Yourself

My number one pet peeve is speakers who start their presentations by saying:

I'm not a very good public speaker.

I'm really nervous.

Thanks for having me - I hate public speaking so this probably won't be any good.

How many times have you heard similar sentiments expressed at the start of a talk?

Essentially, you're telling the audience that they're wasting their time by listening to you. If you don't respect yourself, the audience won't respect you either.

Stand Still

People who rock back and forth.... ARGH! It's so distracting watching you sway like a metronome! Plant your feet shoulder-width apart, back straight, stand STILL!

If there's a podium, cling on to it. Anything to make you stopping looking like a daisy in the breeze!

Move About

If you have the space - and are confident - move around. The audience are looking at you and it can get pretty dull watching someone in one spot. This is especially true if you're on a large stage.

You need to fill up the space with your presence and one of the easiest ways is to move to the centre of the stage, talk, pause, move to the side, repeat.

You don't need to dance, skip, or hop. Own the space.

Don't Read From Slides

Everyone in your audience can read. You're doing them no favours by reading densely packed slides. Each of your slides should illustrate an idea - preferably with an image or chart.

It's fine to explain what's going on in the image and how it relates to your talk. If you have a really important Einstein quote - stick it up, but don't just read it aloud; talk about what it means.

Resolution

Before going on stage, set your laptop to 800*600 resolution. Make sure you know how to set the screen output. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

For some reason, people with MacBooks are incapable of doing this. They always end up with a ridiculously high resolution, spend 10 minutes fiddling around with adapters, and then can't fit all their slides on screen.

Make sure your laptop is set to the correct resolution and you have your "display pre-preference" setting open and ready to use.

Microphone

If you're lucky, you'll get a clip on microphone. That way, you won't have to worry about it.

If you get a microphone on a podium - speak in to it. Don't turn your head away, don't lean back, don't assume that it can pick you up.

More likely you'll get a hand held microphone. Hold this like you would an ice cream. Talk at your normal volume - don't whisper or shout. Don't hold the mic at chest height or by your side. The mic needs to get a clear signal from your mouth.

Never Turn Your Back

You know how they say that if you're afraid of public speaking, imagine your audience is naked? I want you to imagine that they're armed to the teeth. Never turn your back on them.

Humans can tell a lot about a person from their face - when you turn around, you cut off 90% of the audience's access to your body language.

Don't turn and look at your slides - you know what's on them, don't you? You are talking to an audience - not the projector screen.

Be Enthusiastic

You audience has either paid to see you or they've given up some time to learn from you. They don't want to see someone who is bored with their own material.

I don't mean fake smiles, an over abundance of insincere joy, or jumping around like a sugared up tween! Show your passion and share your enthusiasm. Let people know why they should be excited about what you're talking about.

If you aren't interested in your subject - why should your audience be interested in it?

Timing

If you have a three minute slot, don't you dare go over 180 seconds. Everyone hates the presenter who can't fit their demo into the allotted time and begs for special dispensation. You have to respect the audience and the other speakers. Your phone has a stop watch app on it, right? Use that to make sure you can fit everything in without running over.

Conversely, don't worry about being short. No one minds a short talk and - if you were interesting enough - a shortfall can easily be filled by asking "any questions?".

Make A Note Of Everyone's Mistakes

Whenever you watch a presentation - see what you don't like about it. Figure out what turns you off and make sure that you don't do it.

Here's the hard part - do that with your own talks. Video every presentation you give. Then watch it back.

You will hate it. It's the hardest thing to do - your voice sounds funny, you have that annoying tic, you do that thing which reminds you of your parents.... ARGH!

But, sadly, it's the best way to learn.

Practice

Finally, practice. Go to BarCamps, put yourself forward for speaking roles, get a webcam and upload a talk to YouTube, give a small demo to people you work with, practice practice, practice.

Practice your words, practice your timing, practice your pauses, practice your slide order, practice practice practice!

Speaking in public can be hard. As with anything, the more you practice, the easier it will get.

And, in the end...

I don't claim to be the world's best public speaker. But I have been doing it for a while and my talks generally gather good feedback.

If you're interested in speaking in public for the first time, or if you want to improve how you present, drop me a line or come and see me at the next BarCamp I do.

QRpedia Presentation at Derby Museum

@edent — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:24:56 +0000

It's always an odd experience to watch yourself speak. Everyone - I think - finds the sound of their own voice really odd. I'm no exception!

This is the video from the Derby Museum Backstage Pass where we gave the first public demonstration of QRpedia.

The Video

Video shot by Nick Moyes.

The Slides

All slides are a work in progress. This is a close approximation of what was presented on the day.

Introducing QRpedia at Derby Museum from Terence Eden

View more presentations from Terence Eden

Why Doesn't Your Site Work On My Mobile?

@edent — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:24:24 +0000

This is the presentation I gave for OpenTech 2010

Opentech updated from Terence Eden

If you're on mobile, you can view the mobile friendly version of the slides.

Here's the audio of the talk.

🔊 OpenTech2010 Presentation: Why Doesn't Your Site Work On My Mobile Phone
🎤 edent

💾 Download this audio file.

The gist of the talk is - more people have mobile web enabled phones than have iPhones or Androids. Open Data requires open access. If you are trying to create a service to serve people - make it work on all phones. Not just phones owned by a minority of rich people.

The Future Of Android ... And How To Stop It

@edent — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:36:33 +0000

I was honoured when David Wood asked me to present at his first "brown bag" lunch lecture at Accenture. Normally I would run through a presentation of this length at several different venues and thoroughly hone it before presenting at a high profile event. As you'll see from the slides and video, it's still a bit rough round the edges.

I based this talk on Jonathan Zittrain's excellent Future of the Internet - And How To Stop It. You can keep up to date with all of Zittrain's work on network neutrality on his blog.

The gist of this talk is that keeping Android open is key to its success. We must resist the "AOL-isation" of this platform. How customers, MNOs, manufacturers and Google can work together to help keep this ecosystem flourishing.

I'll be polishing the presentation - and my responses to the tough questions - over the coming months. In the meantime, here are the slides and a video of the event. (All opinions expressed are those of the individuals concerned and may not reflect the views of their employers - past, present, or future. I believe all Creative Commons images have been attributed and licensed as requested. Please contact me if I have made any omissions.)

Future of Android ... And How To Stop It! from Terence Eden

(Sorry for the volume levels - try turning your speakers up to 11)

All comments and criticism welcomed.