A long time ago, about four months ago, a “letter of happiness” came through the corporate mail, inviting everyone to try their hand and take part in VeeamON - the global conference of our company. As a rule, at such events heads of departments, leading analysts and marketers speak, but this time it was decided to invite programmers as an experiment. Actually, there were only two criteria for participation: the presence of unique product knowledge that I would like to share with the world, and the ability to express this knowledge in the form of not too clumsy phrases in English. Since the venue of the conference was chosen as Las Vegas, it would be somewhat rash to give up the competition for a seat on a transatlantic flight in advance. So the decision was made. Under the cut - the story of what followed.

Creative search: how I chose the topic of the report and invented the concept

But what to talk about: not about refactoring, in the end, to broadcast? It should be something new, understandable to users, and at the same time quite clever, about which only the immediate culprit could tell.

After much deliberation, the choice fell on the backup protection functionality in Veeam Backup and Replication. Let it appear even in the previous version, but even within the R & D team, not every first one knows and understands how it works.
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Salvation and the main line of the report was the analogy with the real, albeit slightly paranoid world: the data is such railway containers that are stored in a file — that is, in stock, and are protected like this, like this and that way. Locks, keys and safes of all stripes are used - and now the tricky architecture described in 40 pages of internal documentation can be put on several slides and explained to your grandmother. And at the same time to please our vice-president (in the photo below), who, taking upon his powerful shoulders responsibility for all the reports, carried out the entrance control and the screening of candidates, relying on common sense and language criteria.



The next step after this is to write an abstract - an annotation, on the basis of which a decision will be made - whether the report will go to the conference itself. If you have ever written such things, then you understand that this is still a pleasure: succinctly, in a few sentences, explain the essence of your speech, list its main points and intrigue a potential listener. Authoritatively declare - all this garbage! It is much more fun to write such a text using a non-native language. In general, writing about 300 characters I managed to kill about two or three hours on Sunday.

After sending the annotations to the organizers for approval, the most boring time began in the whole story. On the one hand, of course, I wanted to qualify and fly free to Vegas (as I thought at the time). On the other hand, there was a certain hope that the idea proposed by me would not be too interesting for the sophisticated public, and I would quietly write code in the workplace, rather than disgrace to an international audience.

Big benefits of modest features: how I prepared the presentation

In the end, life has shown that there’s really no place to retreat and still have to be dishonored. So I had to remember all the promises, so quickly the data in the annotation, and to bring into conformity with them the harsh reality of the presentation. Contrary to our own forecasts, this process took much longer than expected. After all, I wanted to make not just some, but a good presentation.

Two things helped me in its preparation:

• First, these are the comments that could be left under each slide in PowerPoint. Composing the next slide, after a while, oddly enough, slowly you begin to forget - not all of it is entirely, but some important points that fall out of memory. And the comments in this case are great help: what about writing, what about the subsequent training. And in principle, getting a finished text of the report at the end of the work on the graphic part is a very nice bonus.
  
• Secondly, the unexpectedly useful plugin for PowerPoint under the straightforward name "PowerTools for PowerPoint". One of the most useful features of the free edition is the alignment of the position and size of the graphic elements on the slides. It saves when you need to change the location of the same pictures on several slides connected with each other.

Of course, it wasn’t enough without selflessly stepping on a rake. Comrades, remember: if you have a Creative Team in your organization, first go there! And try until all guidelines for presentation design, all graphic sets and all links to resources, from which you can freely create pictures under a Creative Commons license, are submitted. For reworking an almost finished presentation is a useless work and a little offensive.

Proven in practice: useful tips for future speakers

Well, since I became an adviser, here is a little more on the topic of presentations in a non-native language.

• First, the specifics. To speak better on business and only on business. It is unlikely that you will be able to surpass the specially trained speakers in eloquence, talking about how space ships plow endless expanses of object-oriented code. Your forte is the actual, detailed knowledge of the product, for it was you who created it. And your task is to translate this knowledge using the limited language means of a foreign speaker.
  
• But so that at the same time, the language does not seem too dry and clerical, and the participants do not nominate you for the “best sleeping pill of the year” award - use analogies, bindings to the real world and other available means that make your story more alive, and used (of course, brilliant) high-level abstractions closer to the final listener.
• And, of course, the presentation itself. Good has two fat plus points. On the one hand, she acts as a cheat sheet, leading the speaker through all the thorns of the story. It allows you to build a logical scheme of speech, recalls that you need to talk further and supports in difficult moments. And even if at some moment the listeners are confused by your not quite fluent English, they will easily guess from the well-arranged pictures, what is it all about?
  On the other hand, we frankly admit that not all participants go to real conferences just to have a good sleep in the hall, receiving subconsciousness with new information. People want a little distraction and fun. For example, such a rocket glider, personified the next version of the Veeam Availability Suite, served this purpose perfectly:

And in your case, most likely, the only way to entertain them will be an interesting presentation. There is a video from the product demo - show it! It is necessary to clarify some kind of scheme in dynamics - add animation. The main thing is to rely on common sense and remember that your goal is to tell, and not to cause an epileptic seizure with a variety of colors and actions.

Dialogue of civilizations: how to prepare for it

What a good report - it can and should be rehearsed. In this case, you always know what to say, which words and grammatical structures to use, and feedback from the participants at this moment is not expected. Everything becomes much more interesting when the projector displays the last slide and you stop talking. At this point, someone definitely has accumulated questions, and this someone is eager to voice them and even get an answer. In this case, as practice has shown, you have only two ways out.

The first is to build the presentation so that it takes up all the time allotted to it. And since there is guaranteed to be a coffee break, or even better, lunch - you can generously donate a part of Q & A in order to please the participants in the gastro. And I am sure they will appreciate it for you. True, I am not less sure that especially curious comrades will come up with their questions both at lunch and after it.



So, perhaps, the second option - to take the fight immediately - is more preferable. And it is not necessary to be afraid of him. The questions asked, based on the experience of observations, will be formulated using the vocabulary familiar to you from your own presentation. And the incomprehensible moments can always be asked again: either directly - and there is nothing terrible in it, or using the veiled construction “Did I understand correctly that ...?”. Plus, I repeat once again: a thorough knowledge of the subject of the report is your forte. And therefore it is not so difficult to clothe this knowledge in the form of a short answer (and nobody asks to spread the thought on the tree).

Life and life of the conference participants

I think this is enough notation. Let us go better to the sensations from the event itself and from what surrounds it. It was held almost without a fly at the ARIA Resort & Casino: there were also relatively five-star rooms, and a three-story convention center at the services of the participants, completely devoured by the conference. The scale of the building, of course, is impressive - walking distance from your room to any audience could be 7-10 minutes. So we all were late for the first report.



And you can't be late! I’m either so lucky or in the USA, but everything that happens on schedule is strictly on schedule: airplanes fly on time, reports start and end minute by minute, even transport tries to keep within schedule. For a slightly relaxed state, which you get used to in Russia, it seems at first a bit unusual.

This is aggravated by the fact that in Vegas the most difficult problems for a pedestrian are logistical. The passion for megalomania and profit leads to the fact that seemingly small distances are overcome in an inadmissibly long time. On the one hand, the eye is constantly failing, operating on the unusual scale of the strip. On the other hand, the abundance of elevated pedestrian crossings and often non-working escalators constantly force them to enter casinos and hotels in order to alleviate the plight of their own limbs.

And there is already a simple rule: all you need - whether to exit, the reception desk or hotel elevators - is located exactly after the tremendous lawn of slot machines. This rule works flawlessly and works even better than official signposts, which are often cunning and send the traveler as long and winding as possible. The only exception for me, which I recollect with gratitude, was Bellagio - during my walks through it, I saw the casino zone, but no one made me walk along it on any route.

Another interesting feature of Vegas, and of the States in general, is that everything that can be automated should be automated. So, at the airport it is almost impossible to register “through the aunt” - the dedicated staff will politely but very persistently push towards the self-registration terminals.

What is curious, these terminals are able to read data from passports (Russian foreigners are suitable) to identify the passenger’s identity and, apparently, to fill in the boarding pass data. But since such a processing method is not provided in Russia, one should not be surprised that the data in our passports is recorded specifically: the appeal (mr, mrs) is attached directly to the name. Because on my landing proudly it appeared that I Immr. Aunty on control were surprised, but missed.

Speaking about automation, it is impossible not to note the abundance of automatic monorail transport - between the terminals of airports, between hotels of the same network, and for Vegas itself as a whole (albeit for money). It also works like a clock, it moves smoothly and slows down, positioning itself against external doors with very high accuracy. These are, of course, not unmanned vehicles - just one dedicated lane plus sensors on the doors a la "elevator" - but still nice.

Automation penetrates the hotel business. Thus, the rooms in Aria were equipped with a kind of smart home system: lighting, curtains, air conditioning and media center could be controlled from the switches and from the TV remote control plus the tablet at the head of the bed. The implementation, however, of this whole economy very stubbornly left much to be desired. For example, the buttons for bedside lighting were persistently controlled not by their own, but by their neighboring lamp. It was impossible to turn off the backlight of the tablet screen at all, the device itself was mercilessly stupid on any operations.

The main “masterpiece” of the engineering of smart numbers was the “Good night” button. The interaction with it looked like this: in the evening you walk out of the shower room, on the way you poke the curtain closing buttons; you fall on the bed and zhamkaesh in this "Good night". The lights go out, the curtains stop closing, but the TV continues to broadcast. It is necessary to rise in the twilight and look for the TV remote control, after which to persuade the curtains to close after all.

With all this, energy saving is not propagandized in any way - not that there are no usual switches, de-energizing the number in the absence of a key card, and manually standing at the exit, you will not turn off anything especially.
It is very strange that with such a high level of technical equipment and automation of self-service cash desks in stores, on the contrary, practically they did not come across. Either they have not grown to such a miracle of technology, or the level of petty crime for such an innovation is not low enough.

... and copper pipes!

But these are all travel notes. How is the conference itself? Honestly, she made a very pleasant impression. And not only because of the dense and varied breakfasts, snacks and lunches. It is very pleasant to scratch with self-esteem that all clever guys broadcast from the stage about the features you have developed using excellent forms of comparison and epithets. No less pleased to see the participants and tweets about what we are all great.

Particularly sharp add and demonstration of the product live: when a pair of thousands of eyes rests on the screen, which shows the first beta and the code written by you, the thought is only one - only it would not screw, it would not screw on! And this is against the background of the fact that only a few hours (or even minutes) remain before your own report. In general, if you want to tickle your nerves - it is such an attraction!

By the way, if you think that after your report you can relax, then I will have to upset you. Before the performance, you were just someone, one of the nameless participants, not interesting to anyone. But after the breakout session, you become in some sense famous. People are starting to approach you in the corridors, thank you for the report, ask questions, take pictures for Twitter and discuss the weather (which really seems to be crazy about the influx of St. Petersburg people and pleased the participants with a rain).



To give the speakers a break from the attention of other participants, a real celebrity was present at the closing ceremony of the conference - William Shatner, known for the role of James Kirk in Star Trek. Being far from the topic of availability, Mr. Shetner argued in general terms about the successes and the meaning of life, as well as the achievements of the electronics industry. And if the first threads came out of his mouth smoothly, obviously, being polished by repeated repetitions, then he had to work on the last one. (I admit, I liked the reports of the direct participants of the conference more.)

“And what conclusion follows from this?”

I would call the experiment with the involvement of technical specialists at a marketing conference quite successful: the sessions with their participation gathered quite a solid audience and received quite good grades. As it turned out, many people were very interested to learn about how exactly the product works, and what clever engineering solutions were used in its implementation.

What conclusions can I draw from my own participation in the conference? Initially, I set myself two goals: to evaluate my English in a combat environment and roll to the States for free.

The first goal was achieved, and here the international conference is really very good. When you yourself speak in large volumes, and you understand other people, this is very encouraging.



With the second goal, everything turned out to be so-so, since due to significant time costs in the mornings, evenings and weekends, to create and polish a presentation, it is difficult to call VeeamOn at least to some extent.

The third unexpected aspect for me was the pride for myself, for the product and for the company as a whole. As a developer, I interact with the product at the lower level and almost do not see what all this translates into: in partnership with major software and hardware manufacturers, in a positive feedback of real users, in how the product solves real problems. A conference of this level allows you to look at all this.

The next VeeamOn will be held in New Orleans in the spring of 2017. Who knows, maybe see you.