Observations on Observations

Stephen Downes mentioned that Clark Adlrich's presentation at Canada ASTD was short on detail until the final minutes. I thought that was interesting because that was my critique of a podcast he put out earlier in the week about communities of practice. I guess when you create a presentation for a conference you take your best guess at what the audience wants. However, I find that the best presentations can articulate the necessary frameworks clearly while digging a bit deeper during the critical moments of the presentation.

In Downes podcast he spends a lot of time talking about what he is going to say and recording the presentation and how he had worked on a project that produced value through a newsletter and not through commerce on the web. At the end he begins to describe the keys to his experiences and make suggestions. I think Clark was probably doing the same, setting the stage to make deeper insights.

Don't get me wrong Downes seems to be knowledgeable about his topic, I just found it ironic that he made the observation of Clark, as I made of him only a day earlier.