How to present a technical training class to coworkers

[sabine]

1. Have a customer start asking bizarre questions about functionality.  For example, "Why doesn't it work?" is a good starting point.
2. Call the developer who wrote it.  Call him often.  Get to be good buddies.
3. When he quits, call the secondary developer.  Call her often.  Memorize her extension.
4. When she quits, quietly despair.
5. At your one-year anniversary, have your TL tell the entire division that you're the expert on this bit of functionality.
6. Get bombarded by questions.
7. Have the same customer give you extremely complicated questions about the functionality.  For example, "I want to make a report that says this, but that item doesn't seem to have any data in it.  How do I get to those data?  Also, I'd really like it if the report would leap off the screen and pick up my dry cleaning, but it keeps making a left at Albuquerque instead of a right.  How do I address this?"
8. Come up with clever solutions to the problems.  Learn to dread the phrase, "It's performing as designed."
   
9. Have the coordinator for the Annual Tech Training Instructor Drive show up in your office, asking you about the functionality.
10. Suddenly realize that they haven't hired any developers to replace the ones who quit.
11. Without coming right out and saying, "We're all doomed!" agree that you're the only one who vaguely understands this part of the software.
12. Rewrite the presentation to make sense, throw in the bits that were developed for the newest version, and set up a couple of demo reports in a test environment.  Make sure to fight with VMware the entire time.  Discover a couple of cool new things that you'd never actually seen before but vow to make common knowledge.
    
13. Have a cuppa tea.  Squash the pre-presentation jitters with the fact that NOONE else knows the software and will be able to call out any mistake.  Allow some jitters to come back when you realize that if you tell the implementers something wrong, this will make more work for you later.
14. Use the public speaking and teaching skills acquired in grad school and other places.
15. Gloat about your success in your LJ before it's actually happened.