
Creating a presentation by hand using calligraphy - baijum
http://nibrahim.net.in/2017/11/04/pycon_india_2017_keynote.html
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matt_wulfeck
Beautiful handwriting. Letter writing is a lost art, both in writing and
meaning. Doesn’t anyone know or recommend a pen-pal websites where people
exchange hand-written letters just for fun? My hand-writing is horrendous (as
my spelling) and I’d love to get better at it.

~~~
mih
BBC carried an article today on the very topic of handwriting (Do we need to
teach children joined-up handwriting?) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-41927258](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41927258)

~~~
dugditches
I recall being forced to learn Cursive Script[1] in early grades, since 'it's
all you would use to write Essays and assignments in once you got to high
school'. Upon reaching highschool we were always asked to print.

I think it should be dropped in favor of Typing Courses. While I suspect youth
are on devices a lot, it's likely mostly touch screens. This also would
possibly help children learn more words quicker as well as a useful skill.

I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized
Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I
suspect it's all done this way now).

Turns out I was holding my writing utensil wrong. With it resting on my Ring
Finger knuckle[2]. This grip had my thumb, ring, and middle fingers all
bearing down on the tip, causing far too much pressure. As an adult it took a
while to learn a proper grip and I now enjoy writing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian)

[2] internet example
[https://i.imgur.com/krdw7sT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/krdw7sT.jpg)

~~~
SwellJoe
_" I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized
Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I
suspect it's all done this way now)."_

I was diagnosed with dysgraphia in 4th grade and was allowed to type most
things from then on; except by a couple of shitty teachers who thought I was
just being lazy or something (and, not coincidentally, those were the classes
I failed and was held back in). This was back in the 80s when learning
disabilities were somewhat novel in small-town schools in the south. I was
lucky enough to have a computer (a C64, with printer!) at home beginning
around that same age. I don't recall if it came into the house before or after
my diagnosis...probably just before.

I've always thought I was really lucky to have had a computer at such a young
age at the time, but now that I'm thinking of it on the timeline of when I was
dealing with having trouble writing and being treated like I was stupid by
teachers because of it, I'm seeing that luck and privilege in a new light.
Once I got a copy of SpeedScript and later GeoWrite, I was able to do nice
reports and homework...it became somewhat of an advantage or at least less of
a curse.

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SwellJoe
I'm always jealous of folks who can draw/write effectively and beautifully.
I'm dysgraphic, so even writing legibly on a whiteboard is not really an
option for me; I mean, I can struggle through and make it legible if I take
about five times as long as someone else would take, but even then the writing
won't be beautiful, by any definition. Writing on the chalkboard in school was
a real source of stress.

One of my favorite presentations ever was a description of public key
encryption where the presenter used hand-drawn cartoons and drew some in real
time. And, one of my favorite explainer videos is the Food is Free intro
video, which is all hand-drawn by one of the founders of the project (who's
also in the band BLXPLTN, among others; he's pretty good evidence that talent
isn't evenly distributed):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlC-4MgfICU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlC-4MgfICU)

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amrrs
That's good. I've seen your calligraphy passion and skills separately on
twitter. This is a nice combo when a techie can be more than a techie which is
very common in the west where a developer also fishes or surfs, but being in
india Noufal you're an inspiration!

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j0hnM1st
this is cool

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metahost
tl;dr: Make beautiful presentations with calligraphy

I might be mistaken, the post doesn't link to an article providing insights on
preparation of a keynote presentation.

~~~
qznc
The article does describe more than just the calligraphy, although that
certainly is the main focus. Example of preparation unrelated to calligraphy:

> Mortimer Adler suggests making a detailed outline of the speech and then
> using those as notes. I wasn’t familiar with how to do this so I gave the
> speech like I would usually do and recorded it on my phone. It was
> excruciating to listen to myself but I did it. Took around 45 minutes. I
> transcribed everything I said onto paper and that gave me my first draft.

~~~
convolvatron
I agree. the calligraphy was in some sense the excuse for going over and over
the talk and making the result a considered effort. I think many speakers have
the same problem I do. I stop being able to look at my own work far too early,
and have to really force myself to go through more than two passes.

Practice talks help a lot, not even because of the feedback from other people
but because it forces me to pay attention to what I've done and how lacking it
is. (edit: obviously feedback is helpful too)

maybe if I wrote it out multiple times in longhand I would make sure to finish
all my thoughts/sentences and actually read the thing through

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BrentOzar
tl;dr - writing your slides out in calligraphy is hard.

The post would be better reframed as, “calligraphy is hard and time-
consuming.” Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a keynote
presentation. The output is gorgeous, but I’d be curious if you couldn’t get
better results faster and cheaper with an outsourcing service.

~~~
noufalibrahim
Well, I certainly didn't expect that but then again, the business slant of HN
is part of its nature.

This was as much about the process as the result. I practice calligraphy as a
hobby and spend time and energy to get better at it. Getting faster, cheaper,
and better results by outsourcing would rob me of the process and that's
killing the project as far as I'm concerned.

(P.S. I wrote the post).

~~~
BrentOzar
> This was as much about the process as the result.

Cool - but the process of WHAT? If you’re working on calligraphy, make the
post about calligraphy. As a frequent presenter, I read the title and went,
“great, let’s see how another presenter prepares.” This wasn’t really about
the keynote at all - it’s about designing slides with calligraphy. Step back
and think bigger picture - you could write this as, “how to build slides with
calligraphy” and get a bigger, happier audience. People would love to see how
you lay out that kind of thing, how long it takes, how long you’ve been
working at it, etc.

However, it has nothing to do with Python, PyCon, 2017, or a keynote. It’s
just long term presentation design. It’s an evergreen post that’s worthwhile
for people who do any kind of presentation.

It’s like saying, “2017 Range Rover sale preparation,” and then writing
thousands of words about innovative and timeless sales techniques. The title
and first few paragraphs really undersell what you’re doing.

~~~
noufalibrahim
Ah. Now I understand what you're trying to say. I titled it like that simply
because after I delivered the presentation, a lot of people asked me about it
and this was written more or less for them than for a general audience.

I think I should retitle it as you've suggested.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
Yet another suggestion: the title is fine, you're telling the story of how
your prepared the PyCon India 2017 keynote. I was a bit surprised to see it
was about how you physically made every slide using calligraphy. If you just
added a paragraph at the begining explaining that, it'd be fine by me. It was
still good to see[0] though, and I loved Jouberts quote about teaching.

[0] I didn't read it entirely, but skimmed and took a quick look at the
slides.

