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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?

#151

Post by walshemj »

jxy wrote: post #141
timr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is wrong with reading your slides. Really...don't do it. In fact, your slides shouldn't have much text at all, because it's a distraction from where your audience should be placing their attention: You. Ideally, you should never need to look at your slides while giving a talk. Every time you turn away from your audience, you lose a little of their attention.

Are we actually talking about tech talk? I can understand marketing talks where all you need is you and your words, accompanied with some useless images. It would be an utter waste of time if a tech talk turned up like that.

No I afraid it is not - the fact that its about "technology" does not really change the talk that much when compared to speeches in the roman senate.

You still use the same rhetorical devices and ethos pathos and logos.

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

#152

Post by rmattes »

tchaffee wrote: post #150

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'…

The 'assertion-evidence' approach to creating slides focuses on for keeping text to a minimum and using pictures and other visual aids to support your message. They emphasized it in my engineering school, and I've been using it in workplace presentations for years.

https://www.assertion-evidence.com/

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

#153

Post by carusooneliner »

Simple things that have helped me:

- Right before the talk: get to the room well ahead of time and make sure there are no setup issues with the laptop, audio, projector, etc. I've seen a number of speakers fail to do this basic thing and it dampens their flow, confidence, etc. The audience might even get distracted and the whole show goes awry.

- Prepare and practice the intro speech, don't wing it: if you have a good opening, you'll feel confident and the momentum will carry you through the rest of the talk.

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

#154

Post by bastijn »

- Don't put too much on your slides.

- Don't put too much on your slides.

- Don't put too much on your slides

See if you can do without any bullet list. Now you are forced to talk from your experience in a natural form. You'll be fine.

More serious:

- don't go into the trap of too much introduction and theory before getting to the actual matter. E.g. when doing a talk on GPU image processing don't spend 30 minutes on how a GPU works.

- Know your audience experience with the matter if possible (see above)

- If possible, do demos. If have demos, consider if it makes sense to run them _before_ the tech slides. They tend to make more sense after seeing a live demo.

- If you have demos, rehearse them. Make sure you get the timing right.

- leave room for questions.

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

#156

Post by ThorinJacobs »

The number one thing I love to see when I'm watching a tech talk that is focused on teaching or advertising a particular tech is the Bad Parts. Obviously you don't want to just bash the tech you're there for, but I've seen way too many demos that portray the technology as the One True Technology that will Solve All Your Problems and I usually approach tech talks from a place of skepticism.

Alice Goldfuss' recent talk on containers[1] is a really good example of what I'm talking about - she spends a good amount of time talking about what containers are, and why and when it would appropriate to use them, but she spends an equal or greater amount of time preparing the audience for what challenges they will encounter when implementing containers and talks about when you're probably better off without.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJx_emIiABk

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

#158

Post by jackthetab »

Two things I haven't seen ITT yet:

1. After you tell me what you're going to talk about, tell me why I should be listening to _you_. Why are you an authority on this topic? Unless you're famous, I don't know you.

2. The talk should contain 50% or less of your knowledge on the topic. You want to keep some info "in your back pocket" to ad lib with.

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

#159

Post by white-flame »

timr wrote: post #126
throwaway5752 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way overstated. Just don't only read your slides verbatim. Some people may not be able to see slides because of obstruction or their vision, so repeating key points is almost a courtesy. I appreciate it when a slide is a visual piece with limited text, and the notes are roughly true to the spoken portion (for when slides are distributed after a talk).

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…

If your slide contains a picture, whose details you're describing (say for instance a medical photo or city zoning plan or something), certainly you want your audience's visual attention on it as you're describing its pertinent specifics.

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

#160

Post by mindcrime »

My biggest suggestion is this:

1. Don't read the slides to your audience. Generally speaking, the audience can read.

So what are slides for then? Well, if it's a text only slide, I treat them as being there to be reminders of what I'm supposed to talk about now. And that's it. The content is what I say, not what's on the slide. So there doesn't actually need to be much on the slide at all. Just a couple of bullets to reflect the high points of the conversation. Now graphics are a different story.

There are exceptions, of course. I've been known to do a slide with a massive list of "things" in 10 point font, with like 30 items on it... but when I do that, it's to make a point - a point like "there are a fuck-ton of options for X" or whatever.

The other thing I try to do, is put links and pointers to other resources somewhere in the deck, so that sharing it with the audience actually provides some value. If you adopt the "very information sparse" slide format, then the slides don't really provide much value to the audience after the fact. Whether that's an issue or not is kinda up to you.

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