I presented a 90-minute Webinar on “death-march projects” today, sponsored by the IT Metrics and Productivity Institute, and several people have asked for a copy of the presentation materials. Because of the requirements of the Webinar environment, I used Powerpoint as the presentation mechanism; but for several reasons (e.g., the fact that numerous embedded hyperlinks mysteriously disappeared, and the sheer ugliness of the fonts and format), I’d prefer not to distribute the presentation via Powerpoint.

Instead, I’ve imported it into Apple’s Keynote package, reformatted it and cleaned it up, and ensured that the hyperlinks were still there. I then exported it to an Adobe PDF document, and have made it available to you in a couple of convenient mechanisms. Perhaps the easiest approach is to visit my Slideshare page, where you’ll find the presentation in a form that can be viewed online, downloaded to your own computer, and shared with your colleagues via various social networks. For example, you can email it to everyone in your office who missed the Webinar today; or you post it on Hi5, MSpace, Friendster, Xanga, Livejournal, Facebook, Blogger, or FreeWeb. You can also bookmark it on Digg, Facebook, Live, Furl, Google, or StumbleUpon.

If you’re one of those misanthropes who has no idea what a social network is, or if you’re terrified that Slideshare might be something perverse and dangerous, then you can click here to simply download the 1.3-megaybte PDF file from my website.

While you’re at it, you’ll also find that my Slideshare page has a downloadable/viewable PDF version of my Web 2.0 presentation, and another one titled “Top Ten Software Engineering Concepts”; they can be shared in a similar fashion. All of these presentations are published without the usual copyright nonsense; instead, they’re published as “open source” documents under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). So you’re free to distribute them, modify them, and improve them — subject to the constraint that you can’t blame me if you don’t like what you end up with. You’ll see all the legal verbiage on the first full page of text of each presentation…

Let me know if you have any questions or problems. Meanwhile, enjoy … but do your best to avoid any death-march projects. They’re rarely much fun, and they’re almost always pretty risky.