I give a lot of talks, and like any speaker I'm always asked for a copy of my slides. Also like many speakers, particularly those who put some thought into their slides, I hate giving out copies of slides as handouts. When I use slides, I design them to be a visual accompaniment to my words, not as a stand-alone "slideument". Such slideuments are very distracting when talking, as reading the bullet points takes the audience's attention away from the words being spoken. As a result my slides are graphic, minimal, and often involve animation that's cued into my talking. Such slides are meaningless without me speaking.

A written piece is a much more effective stand-alone document. I can write this to make sense without audio, and use an approach designed for reading rather projecting on a screen.

So here's some suggested items to read that go with recent topics I've been talking about. I think most people will find them much more useful than slideuments.

The Essence of Agile

This talk is mostly based on my essay The New Methodology. During the talk I also talk about the necessity of practices for evolutionary design to avoid the danger of FlaccidScrum.

The Value of Software Design

The starting point of this talk is the DesignStaminaHypothesis. I then introduce the metaphor of TechnicalDebt and describe the forms of technical debt using the TechnicalDebtQuadrant.