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Comment by oemera | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to be harsh but after reading the article I couldn't listen to the "Uhhh Ehmmmm"s anymore.

Was he just reading the transcript to the guys? A keynote should be without any "uhh"s and "ehmmm"s otherwise you will not get audience IMO.

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'what HN users don't mean to be:'

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22I+don%27...

"English to nerd translation":

http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2012/03/nerd-to-engli...

For me there seems to be a proportion of "uhhs" that I require. This talk had a lot of them, more than I'd prefer, but it wasn't horrible and the content makes up for it (as does the Q&A). The extent of the reliance on the transcript was probably the extent people rely on notecards, the "uhhs" were mostly to fill the silence of when he was glancing at it to remind him of his place. If there aren't any "uhhs" at all in a talk I think "this guy took a speaking course and is probably trying to manipulate me", if there are too many I think "this guy didn't prepare or is just a bad public speaker", but there's a right proportion that makes me think "he's sufficiently human so I'll listen to him." Of course that last thought requires a bit of double-think since a good manipulator would know this about me.

Edit: of course, this is more of a description of how my subconscious works. Consciously I try my best to ignore these things and focus on the information content alone and feel like I should downvote you for letting yourself miss interesting content because of the speaker's presentation style. (Though to be fair at least you have the text version for 99% of the content.)

"... I don't mean to be harsh but after reading the article I couldn't listen to the "Uhhh Ehmmmm"s anymore. ..."

When I hear this kind of complaint about pg's speaking style I'm reminded of Enzo Ferrari ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari

   'I don't sell cars; I sell engines. The cars I throw 
    in for free since something has to hold the engines 
    in.' Enzo Ferrari

If you substitute "speeches" for "cars" and "ideas" for "engines", the quote still holds.

To each his own I guess. I actually really liked his speaking style, Paul came across as being easy-going and approachable. It also made his speech with notes not sound so much like a dry and stuffy keynote you usually hear at conferences.

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