Re: Internet of Value talk at W3C Brazil

> I did a talk at the W3C Brazil conference a few weeks ago in which I
> tried to define the two streams of work we're doing related to
> payments. Would appreciate any comments or criticism so I can continue
> to refine these ideas.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sANeF3_w_3g&index=3&list=PLQq8-9yVHyOaHUE6t3x89xRO4-tPR1n2L
>
> Adrian

Thank you, personally I found it interesting and generally well done. 
I didn't take notes, but on considering it afterwards, and now 
noticing your request for comments, FWIW I'll take a stab:

Pro

--Liked the slide/model with the three-stage development of the web 
side-by-side with the financial institutions and emerging web 
payments. I think that made it clear that something needs to 
happen--is happening--and might get reluctant institutions to take notice.

--The personal note with your problems shipping your dollars home to 
pay bills in rand was effective for me.

--Liked the emphasis on emergence of distributed payments like 
bitcoin/ripple as being in their infancy and needing to be 
accommodated along with traditional systems, rather than replacing them.

--Liked the format where you have the large slides available that you 
click through as you talk, but you are not focused on them or looking 
at them, and are instead speaking non-scripted while looking directly 
at your audience. For me, this makes it much more engaging than 
speakers who point at slides with a laser or cursor while they speak. 
I believe most of my learning comes from listening carefully to what 
you're saying, rather than looking at the slide, which I can then do 
in a split-second (or two) when I feel the need. Here I believe it 
would have been particularly effective for the conference attendees, 
since they could make that choice at any instant between you and the 
big screen over your head.

Con

--The flip side of the last Pro point: as a watcher of the video, it 
might have been nice to have the current slide embedded in the corner 
of the video (maybe 1/4 or 1/8 screen), so it could be referenced when 
the viewer needed to see it, just like the conference participants could.

--Question period after: Because the questions were in Portuguese (I 
think), in this particular situation it would have been good if you 
had repeated, in summary, the questions, before you launched into 
answering them. It would perhaps have been boring for the participants 
(who all had simultaneous translation I assume) but given the 
remarkable camera work it's clear a lot of effort went into the video, 
so any non-Portuguese-speaking audience (ie, me :-) ) would benefit.

--Your split in time (during the talk) between when you posed the 
problem of your personal money transfer, and when you answered it, was 
quite a few minutes, and although you summed up nicely (in the second 
reference), I found it confusing to know why you were telling some 
parts of your story at first, and almost wandered away and became a 
non-audience in the interim.

--I'm not sure how well this talk would adapt to different audiences, 
at different levels of technical knowledge. To put it another way: you 
were juggling high level social organization concepts intermingled 
with quite low level technical ones, often using the jargon of the 
latter. At a conference of programmers that would probably work, but 
it might need substantial revision for various other audiences. Yet 
IMO those other audiences are going to be essential for this work to 
get funded and accomplished -- so you might have to create several 
different talks to get the same ideas across. Maybe ZJ, MJ, and FJ 
(zero jargon, medium jargon, and full jargon) versions. It's a symptom 
of the depth of the problem you face that I don't know whether this 
was a medium jargon or a full jargon version. ;-)


Again, I appreciated seeing the video, and hope something here is of 
assistance.

Steven Rowat

Received on Tuesday, 20 October 2015 20:49:44 UTC