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Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#131

Post by EnderMB »

The best advice I can give to you is that if you're giving a talk on something that you're not an expert on, then tell people you're not an expert.

I gave a talk a year ago about Continuous Delivery, despite being a bog-standard developer that has had to do it on a couple of occasions. I had some general rules that I could carry across from one company to another, so my talk was around these general paths to happiness, and discussing the tools I have used, alongside a generous Q&A.

The questions were all fairly straightforward, and a number of people came up to me at the end to share the same sentiments - they were developers that had been roped into doing sysadmin stuff, and that they found the talk and answers to be very useful.

I have a theory that people often go to talks not to learn something new from an expert on the subject, but for a structured developer chat around an approach on a subject that seems to work for someone in a given context. If they've attended, they're interested in the subject, so as long as what you say is on-subject and clear it's difficult to give a bad talk. From there, it's mostly around delivery, which comes with practice and preparation.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#132

Post by jppope »

1) Do not attempt to live code. change your code via version control, build small videos, copy and paste... whatever you do... do not try and live code

2) Read "The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs" ... its not really about Steve Jobs so much as its about how to be a great presenter.

3) building or writing a talk is significantly less important than the delivery... which means that more of your time should be spent on how to deliver the speech (recording I find is the best way to practice)

4) Pick a single thing and do it well, do not attempt to put too much into a talk or tackle something massively complex.

5) Make sure that everyone is walking away with something they can actually use. This doesn't require it be a hard skill... "Soft" or philosophical utilities are just as good

6) Have Fun and be funny... Speakers have a tendency to want to show off the size of their intellect, and the level their competency- having a speech be entertaining is way way more important.

7) DO NOT READ FROM YOUR SLIDES. know your shit. slides are supplementary

Extra Credit. Here's a collection of some fantastic technical speeches:

* https://vimeo.com/9270320 * https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat * https://youtu.be/o_TH-Y78tt4 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyL9EC0S0c * https://youtu.be/a-BOSpxYJ9M * https://youtu.be/kb-m2fasdDY

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#134

Post by timr »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #130
timr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. Your goal should be to have no text, and never look away from your audience during a talk. You can (and should) repeat key points, but every time you read, you lose your audience. And yes, you can have a little bit of text -- but since most people go too far in the other direction, it's best to aim to eliminate text entirely. Slides should be simple graphical content to provide signposts and communic…

I think you're overshooting in your advice in the service of preventing the bigger mistake of turning around and reading slide contents verbatim (on which I certain agree with you). That's fine, but for veteran presenters, I think your advice is wrong. First, you should have text because you lose your audience no matter what (sneezing, emails, bathroom, etc). You should let them recontextualize and that involves judi…

"Also, everyone asks for slide decks after talks and they should be useful in that case even without a recording"

I am happy to provide copies of my slides, but no, I am under no obligation to make them useful without me presenting them. They're my tools, not your reference.

IMO, this expectation has been driven by bad presenters leading people to believe they can get the same content without bothering to show up to the talk. Maybe that's true, but if it is, you should wonder why you're giving the talk at all.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#135

Post by daphneokeefe »

framebit wrote: post #105

A little bit of stage fright is generally healthy. It shows that you care enough to be concerned and you're not getting too cocky. That's an old lesson I learned doing (of all things) middle school acting class and it's proven itself to be true over and over again. Think about your slide and presentation style. For example, I have enormous decks for most of my talks (think like 55 slides for 30 minutes) but I burn th…

When the slides contain a lot of text, it is not possible for me to simultaneously read and comprehend the slide and understand what the speaker is saying. The slide appears, I start reading. You start talking, so I have to decide where my attention goes. Often it is neither the slides nor the speaker, just a jumble of words coming at me. Then the next slide comes up...

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#136

Post by vfulco2 »

Don't do a Ubuntu update the day of the speech. I did then closed my laptop, headed to the venue to give a 30 minute workshop on best practices in resumes and the reasons for a LinkedIn Profile in front of 40 people, and bootloader was corrupted. Thankfully I had backup of folder (reveal.js presentation written with rmarkdown) on USB. I usually zip up and email a copy to the organizer, just in case.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#137

Post by ufo »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #40
gnur wrote: post #19

Always do at least 1 full rehearsal with a timer, preferably two full rehearsals where the first one you do keep a timer but also have a notebook (physical) present to quickly write down adjustments you want to make. Do a live demo, people love live demo's, but be prepared for when disaster strikes (it will), if possible run your live demo on a physical device with you during the presentation. Most places allow you t…

> Do not use a linux machine Much of the time, there's a machine already there ready to go. If that's the case, probably best to use it. Seems to me that these days, the safest way to handle your slides is to have them on the web, with a backup on a USB drive. No need to worry about operating systems or video modes. The site's IT guys already did the work. There are various shiny frameworks to do this (revealJS.com e…

This is also what I like to do although I prefer using static PDFs because they are the most portable and fool proof format

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#138

Post by geronimo404 »

can keep in mind transitions between slides, whether working your way through the current slide as intended or digressing. these transitions can contain a purpose for arriving at the end of the current slide + relevance to the upcoming ones

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#139

Post by mamcx »

framebit wrote: post #105

A little bit of stage fright is generally healthy. It shows that you care enough to be concerned and you're not getting too cocky. That's an old lesson I learned doing (of all things) middle school acting class and it's proven itself to be true over and over again. Think about your slide and presentation style. For example, I have enormous decks for most of my talks (think like 55 slides for 30 minutes) but I burn th…

This is a good resource about how do better slides:

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/01/con...

Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?

#140

Post by miketuritzin »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #135
framebit wrote: post #105

A little bit of stage fright is generally healthy. It shows that you care enough to be concerned and you're not getting too cocky. That's an old lesson I learned doing (of all things) middle school acting class and it's proven itself to be true over and over again. Think about your slide and presentation style. For example, I have enormous decks for most of my talks (think like 55 slides for 30 minutes) but I burn th…

When the slides contain a lot of text, it is not possible for me to simultaneously read and comprehend the slide and understand what the speaker is saying. The slide appears, I start reading. You start talking, so I have to decide where my attention goes. Often it is neither the slides nor the speaker, just a jumble of words coming at me. Then the next slide comes up...

I feel like the solution to this is to have slides without a lot of text on them, but then include what you say in the "speaker notes" section when you distribute them so that people who didn't attend the talk understand them.
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