Jenn Lukas — Front-End Developer

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Jenn Lukas Slide Consultant.

Posted on October 20, 2011 at 02:43 PM in (65) Comments

Im starting a new business. Slide consulting.

You’ve got a keynote that needs some snazzing? I’ve got cat pictures with your name on it.

You believe there’s something missing? I’ll be here to add stormtroopers pictures and Museo Slab font.

You’ve got an illustration of a penis? Ill let you know that it might offend someone in your audience.

Its beginning to become a pattern.
Every conference I go to someone says something or has something in their slides and at least one person finds it offensive and next thing you know, #dildogate is a hashtag in your twitter stream.

It’s hard to be a speaker. Sometimes you’ll be up there talking and say something and think to yourself: did I really just say that? Trust me. I’ve been there.

And maybe sometimes it’s less a slip, and you put animated gifs of dancing vaginas of in your slide. At 1am, that might seem funny! And a lot of people will agree (perhaps me as well). Its a hard job to think of a universally funny joke that a room of 200 will laugh along with.

BUT you might also completely offend someone. And as speakers, when we get in the front of the room, we are the authority at the moment. People have signed up (and maybe even paid) to see us talk. And I think we all need to respect that.

We have different senses of humor. My approach is usually to cater to that and to err on the non-adventurous-dancing-body-parts side.

That said, you can still be funny! If you want to make a joke about nerds using the internets to look at porn, you can. But perhaps instead of having an illustration of a very naked lady (drawn very nicely, but still very full frontally), you have an illustration of some lemons with party hats drinking punch. Everyone likes a lemon party joke!

That one’s free! :$

Really though, we have all these standards bodies for other things, why not for nerd speaking ettiquette? I really want us all to get along and I prefer to go to conferences where everyone feels welcome and aren’t turned off by something that isn’t a crucial part of the fantastic content.

We’re all in this together friends. And Im sure no one wants to make anyone uncomfortable. So, feel free to reach out here (if you want to battle with my amazing spam content) or on twitter if you’d like to run any of these jokes by me and I will let you know if you making the ghost of Susan B Anthony cry.

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