Jason Leveille's Blog

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to Jeff Brown's HS Advanced Web Tools. This is the second year in a row that I've had the opportunity to visit with Jeff's students, and I have thoroughly enjoyed each visit.

The highlight of the talk likely came in the 42nd minute, when I tripped over my computer cord and sent my laptop crashing to the ground. It was all part of the show. I spent the weekend trying to prevent the imminent failure of my laptop HD. It's currently hanging on by a thin thread.

A Lesson in Vocabulary

My talk started with a bit of a warm-up ... I threw some talking points at them, from which I derived the vocabulary for the discussion. The talking points were:

• Are you ever overwhelmed with what you are expected to know?
• Remind yourself that the best solution to a problem is often the simplest.
• Complex solutions cost much more over time, and are bound to make you miserable.
• How can you possibly identify the simplest solution if you don't know much about the problem you are trying to solve? You need education.
• Education is a long-term committment, and should rarely be a short-term goal.
• Your best education will almost never happen in the classroom (after which I got a standing ovation).
• While you are in the process of learning, of being "educated", you are going to make mistakes.
• Mistakes are ok. You need to make mistakes in order to get better ... in order to know where you need improvement.

From these talking points, I derived a simple set of vocabulary words:

• Overwhelmed
• Simplicity
• Complexity
• Education
• Failure
• Success

Finally, I provided basic examples of simple solutions; I talked about the importance of dedication to education in the field of web development; and I talked about the part that failure plays in the success of a web developer.

Impressions

Overall I thought the presentation went ok. It could have been better. It could have been worse (I could have broken my face for example). The best part of the presentation came with the questions from students at the end. I think the next time that I talk (thanks to Mr. Brown, there will be a next time), I'll leave more time at the end to interact with the students ... and I'll leave my laptop unplugged.

Presentation

• Presentation (.pdf)