At the beginning of September 2011, I posted the status on Software Engineering Lab wall (on Facebook) asking whether there is anyone interested in Git or not. Some members replied me yes, and that is why I decided to conduct the talk on 15 Sep https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=193266990743634 (actually it should be 8 Sep, but I postponed it due to loads of work). I love Git a lot, and it is the second thing in programming world that I think "yessss this is it, this is what I really want" (the first one is Ruby/Rails). Therefore, even there was only a few people who are interested in it, I want to share my experience with them.
Same as usual, I spent quite a big time preparing it. As I was quite busy, I force myself to devote three days for preparation. It sounds too much, but I used fully three days, I want to make the story easy and precise for understanding. Git is not hard to understand. When I first tried learning it, the problem I found is that I did not know where to begin, I did not understand its vocabs and then I got lost. But sooner, I must seriously use it in my work. That was the time I took a real action and found that it is not hard!. After playing with it a bit, I described Git to Ken, my junior, and F, my best friend. It took only a short time to tell them what Git is and how to use it. Ken has no experience with version control system, so it is easy to inject the idea. F uses subversion a lot, so it is also easy too. However, when I prepared for the talk today, I did not sure how I should arrange the content so that it will be easy for audiences (lab members) to understand.
The answer I gave to myself is to give a direct hit on the workflow by showing its usages on two scenarioes: the easy (one feature) and complex (multiple features). I show the example of svn implementation and then show Git's. I decided to compare Git to svn as I think it will amplify the advantage of Git. And I was right. The content I prepared took around 20-25 minutes when I practice talking. Surprisingly, I used only 10 minutes to complete those stuffs in my real talk. Do not know why that I can cut small details. Perhaps my muda(cut-the-waste) ability is increased. That is great. I then spent around 20-30 more minutes to show Git in live action. It is very great to have live action as it helps every audiences to get the real thing.
I was not that satisfy with this talk of mine. There are many more thing I need to learn, change and adjust to make my talk better. I would score this talk for 6.5/10. Anyway, the audiences paid attentions to my talk and finally they understood what I want to convey. At least, I think I could promote Git to three - five of the audiences. Even it is a small number, but I was very glad that my talk is useful for them.
In some days later, I want to be a more skillful talker. More chances and opportunities to talk are needed so that I can improve my skill. Importantly, I also want to share everything I know, everything I experience. There is no need to only keep it within me, and I will be so happy to do so.
[resource of the talk]
http://storage.swarut.com/git_init/git_cheat_sheet.pdf