speakeasy said:
Uptalk. Check.
Gratuitous use of "like". Check.
Teen valley girl accent. Check.
Vocal Fry. Check.
:fuckthat:
Thanks for the video. I've only heard of this crazy bitch from Milo, interesting to see her in action.
I've worked in tech for about 15 years now, in sales (complex integrated solutions for corporates and government.) So I've seen my fair share of bullshit presentations. And sometimes given them.
I've seen a lot worse than hers, but it was still bad. If one of my junior account managers gave a presentation like that I'd have a private chat of the "how do you think that went?" variety and then book time in their diary for some coaching.
First off, the unprofessionalism.
She looks like she had a heavy night and was dressed to go to the shops for some aspirin. When she kicked off with that cringe-inducing joke about "not getting drunk last night", I didn't believe her.
Presentations should be tailored to your audience. If your audience is techies, you don't necessarily need to Don Draper up your personal appearance the way you would for a meeting with the CIO. But looking like reheated sick and starting your talk with a comment about getting drunk is an immediate credibility-dampener unless you're at an AA meeting.
Secondly, the credibility problem. Whenever you take up people's valuable time and subject their precious eyeballs to Powerpoint, the first two questions in everyone's minds are:
Who the fuck are you and why should I listen to you?
If you're Sergey Brin or John Chambers, this isn't going to be a problem. You can skip the credibility statements by saying "I'm Sergey Brin, motherfuckers!".
Steve Jobs could have walked on stage, unbuckled his trousers, squatted, taken a big steaming shit, then announced "iPoop!", before dropping the mic and walking off to thunderous applause.
And iPoop Plus will be this big.
But if you're a non-famous, non-billionaire salaryman like me, or a whatever-the-fuck Shanley Kane is supposed to be, you can't start a presentation by saying "I worked in startups you guys!" and then expect people to take you seriously. Especially when the rest of your presentation is weak.
If your presentation is about "scaling product management", you'd better be able to give some examples of how you've scaled product management, or any audience worth talking to will be mentally willing you to
fuck the fuck off and stop wasting their time.
Apart from the vocal fry, wardrobe malfunction and unprofessional opener, she was also clearly nervous. That's not too big of a deal, she spoke clearly and most people are nervous speaking in public. It's a little bit surprising though given her persona as a hyperaggressive internet bully. Seems she's only truly confident on Twitter or going down on Neo Nazis.
Her Dante's Inferno theme was quite clever but she made the mortal error of not proofreading her own slides.
E.g "MAKING A DOCUMENT CALLED WHAT WE ARE WORKING ARE" :tard:
That's just fucking lazy.
And did her audience really need slides saying patronisingly obvious things like "WE HAVE SO MANY TOOLS!"?
But the main problem with her presentation is that it was bullshit.
Her core message - "don't use product roadmaps, because they're hard to live up to!" - is a pile of wank.
How do I know this? Because I've years of experience selling to oil companies, investment banks, and government agencies.
Guess what IT directors tend to want to see before they sign off on buying hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds worth of hardware and software and services for their shiny new datacentre?
The product roadmap.
Otherwise you're asking them to give you large sums of money and entrust the future of their business-critical infrastructure - and quite possibly their continued employment as an IT Director - to blind faith that Cisco or Microsoft or IBM or whoever won't abandon development on the product just after they buy it.
Guess how that conversation would go?
TL;DR version - Would not bang. Here's a palate cleanser: