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

TLDR; Recognize impostor syndrome and include 'basics' even in presentations for highly skilled people.

I'm in the physical sciences and routinely give fairly math-heavy presentations.

It's easy to think that an audience of Phd's and professors know all prerequisites and just need the hard facts in a rapid succession.

On the contrary over time I found that my audience typically appreciates when I start from the very beginning (in my case meaning advanced undergraduate level or so), and working up to the actual problem setting.

Although my audience is very much expected to know that material they A) get primed for the topic and have a chance to feel good about 'I know this' and B) understand my view of the topic so that we have a common language.

With that I'm ready to frame the technical problem and explain my work.

The last time I did this I actually spent 10 out of 20 minutes on the first part, and the talk was very well received and generated an 'invited paper' request for a journal.

No one has ever complained that my talks are 'too basic'.

EDIT: Btw, the metric I use to measure success is amount of generated questions & engagements in and after the talk. If the moderator has to cut off Q&A for the next speaker you win. If people hunt you down to talk more you win.

I learned how to speak in public by giving classes to auditoriums full of Marines. I absolutely attest to the "start with an attention grabber" method.

Never assume that your audience knows anything of real substance about your talk. You've spent many hours building up knowledge and context about the subject, and your audience is coming in cold. I've rarely been to a talk where the speaker "over explained" the material.

Smart people always vastly overestimate the technical interest level of their audience. Even in audiences composed exclusively of brilliant, technical people, the average level of commitment to whatever you're saying is damned near zero. Accordingly, you must keep your message exceedingly simple. Thinking is hard for everyone, and you have to persuade people to do it. It doesn't come for free.

You may not like "marketing", but you're giving a talk to sell a vision. Always. Once you win people over, they'll seek out the details for themselves.

If your slide has writting on it, people will read your slide instead of listening to you. Keep the writing to a bare minimum and fill in the missing parts. Even better, use a picture that helps tell your story for that slide.

For each slide, think about what the audience take-away is. They should learn something from what you say for each slide.

Mingle and introduce yourself to a few people before your talk but don't tell them you are a speaker. Before you get on stage see if you can find them in the audience and pretend you are talking to them and not a huge audience. If you can't find some known faces, pick one from the first few rows. Helps with the nerves.

Until you get good at speaking, you need a lot of rehearsal for each talk. Present once in front of a willing friend and then after making corrections, get a few volunteers at work to be an audience. As many rehearsals as possible.

Slow down. Pause. People need a little time to digest each idea. Your material is new to them.

Like everything in life, the only way to become good is to make mistakes. With speaking you do that in front of a lot of people. It helps if you can laugh at yourself and be forgiving. The audience will often treat you the way you treat yourself.