I find code in slides a bit distracting. It's better to have code in a separate editor (which can be run too!).
Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
71–80 of 174 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#72The audience wants you to succeed and are generally very forgiving.
This!
It's one of the most important thing to remember – people paid money and came to listen here, and you've been invited as a speaker, so that means that you have something important to tell, and people really want you to succeed.
I also recommend a fantastic book on the topic by head of TED conferences, Chris Anderson - "The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking". It helped me immensely when I was preparing to my first big public speaking event.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#73There are quite some people who are writing full scripts. That's also what I prefer. It goes like this: Before creating a single slide, write down sentence by sentence, word by word, what story you want to tell. You can use tools to get a very rough metric of how long your written text will translate being spoken. Stop when you reach your talk length. Once you are done, you can start creating slides. Choose what you…
+1 for live coding being really hard. I’ve done many talks and by far the hardest was a live coding talk I did recently.
It has all the same difficulties as a regular talk, but with some added handicaps:
- no ability to make eye contact with your audience and feel the room
- no way to talk over small errors, if you get stuck on a bug it can take you 10 minutes to find your way back out
- very difficult to keep the audience’s attention since all they see is a wall of text
- talking and typing at the same time is really hard, you get to enjoy stammering your way through fumble fingers
In short: only try a live coding talk after you have a lot of presentation experience.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#74From Richard Hamming:
When I first started, I got practically physically ill while giving a speech, and I was very, very nervous. I realized I either had to learn to give speeches smoothly or I would essentially partially cripple my whole career. The first time IBM asked me to give a speech in New York one evening, I decided I was going to give a really good speech, a speech that was wanted, not a technical one but a broad one, and at the end if they liked it, I'd quietly say, ``Any time you want one I'll come in and give you one.'' As a result, I got a great deal of practice giving speeches to a limited audience and I got over being afraid. Furthermore, I could also then study what methods were effective and what were ineffective.
While going to meetings I had already been studying why some papers are remembered and most are not. The technical person wants to give a highly limited technical talk. Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give. As a result, many talks are ineffective. The speaker names a topic and suddenly plunges into the details he's solved. Few people in the audience may follow. You should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a sketch of what was done. Then a larger number of people will say, ``Yes, Joe has done that,'' or ``Mary has done that; I really see where it is; yes, Mary really gave a good talk; I understand what Mary has done.'' The tendency is to give a highly restricted, safe talk; this is usually ineffective. Furthermore, many talks are filled with far too much information. So I say this idea of selling is obvious.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do a live demo, people love live demo's It really depends on the topic of the talk. If it's something that can be demonstrated in a quick and straightforward way, do a demo by all means. But I've seen talks where people were forcing a demo into a talk about complicated concepts. There's little value in seeing someone type in a page of code, compile and run. Or seeing something run without understanding what is happ…
Edit: added headings! STYLE > [slides] are not cue cards for the speaker Personally I disagree with this point and have developed a presentation style I'm happy with based on the slides being my cue cards (average 5-10 presentations / year for the last 15 years). I do NOT read the talk from my slides and can't stand it when speakers do that! But, each slide should jog my memory of everything I need to say at that poi…
> If you're in sales then I see another tactic used instead, which is to memorize the talk
Majority of my talks in the last years have been in academic settings, but I'm definitely on the side of "over-rehearsing" on your scale. I've never done a sales talk in my life.
I guess it depends on how well you can improvise on stage. I never managed to master that. For myself, I can only "stay natural" and not be nervous when I'm well prepared.
> quiz questions, polls
I personally don't like this when listening and rarely do it as a speaker. It can be a double-edged sword. I've often seen speakers fall into the trap of asking "how many of you are familiar with X", and then proceed to spend next 10 minutes explaining X even though it's obvious that the audience already knows X very well. If you're asking questions, you should be prepared to act on the answers.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#76People decide in the first 10 seconds whether they're going to listen to you or use your session to catch up on email. So make your intro good. Catch their attention. Surprise and intrigue them. Memorize and practise your intro over and over again so when you walk on stage you can get comfortable without having to worry about the specific words you're saying. Memorize your conclusion too so you can bring it home with…
I always dislike this advice because
1. I simply don't think its true - there have been many talks where I have become interested 10 minutes in.
2. It puts tremendous pressure on the speaker for some kind of fireworks in their first 10 seconds.
Your 10 seconds went badly? Who cares just make sure the next 10 seconds are interesting, or the next.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edit: added headings! STYLE > [slides] are not cue cards for the speaker Personally I disagree with this point and have developed a presentation style I'm happy with based on the slides being my cue cards (average 5-10 presentations / year for the last 15 years). I do NOT read the talk from my slides and can't stand it when speakers do that! But, each slide should jog my memory of everything I need to say at that poi…
> If you're in sales then I see another tactic used instead, which is to memorize the talk Majority of my talks in the last years have been in academic settings, but I'm definitely on the side of "over-rehearsing" on your scale. I've never done a sales talk in my life. I guess it depends on how well you can improvise on stage. I never managed to master that. For myself, I can only "stay natural" and not be nervous wh…
Fair enough, there is diversity of preferences in both speakers and listeners :)
I agree on familiarity polls that you should adapt content based on audience familiarity with the topic.
Whether or not audience engagement is appropriate also depends a bit on the length of the talk. It can be great for a context switch in a 45 minute talk, like a mental reset button for the audience. If you only have 5 minutes it will detract from things unless you want it to be the main focus.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#78How do you prepare and how long do you ought to spend preparing the talk? I'll quote `techtalk-pse`[1][2]:
[quote]
First, most important rule: Before you start drawing any slides at all, write your talk as a short essay.
This is the number one mistake that presenters make, and it is partly a tool fault, because PowerPoint, OpenOffice, even Tech Talk PSE, all open up on an initial blank slide, inviting you to write a title and some bullet points. If you start that way, you will end up using the program as a kind of clumsy outlining tool, and then reading that outline to your audience. That's boring and a waste of time for you and your audience. (It would be quicker for them just to download the talk and read it at home).
A good talk, with a sound essay behind it, well thought out diagrams and figures, and interesting demonstrations, takes many hours to prepare. How many hours? I would suggest thinking about how many hours of effort your audience are putting in. Even just 20 people sitting there for half an hour is 10 man-hours of attention, and that is a very small talk, and doesn't include all the extra time and hassle that it took to get them all in one place.
[/quote]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Talk_PSE
[2] http://git.annexia.org/?p=techtalk-pse.git;a=blob;f=techtalk...
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#79People decide in the first 10 seconds whether they're going to listen to you or use your session to catch up on email. So make your intro good. Catch their attention. Surprise and intrigue them. Memorize and practise your intro over and over again so when you walk on stage you can get comfortable without having to worry about the specific words you're saying. Memorize your conclusion too so you can bring it home with…
I always dislike this advice because 1. I simply don't think its true - there have been many talks where I have become interested 10 minutes in. 2. It puts tremendous pressure on the speaker for some kind of fireworks in their first 10 seconds. Your 10 seconds went badly? Who cares just make sure the next 10 seconds are interesting, or the next.
I agree. I think better (and much more easily actionable) advice is just to make sure that your first 30 seconds include a clear description of what your talk is about and what kind of conclusion you're going to draw. Long rambling intros do put people off pretty quickly. But I'll still keep listening to a relatively flat, unexciting intro if it's giving me useful information about the rest of the talk.
Re: Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?
#80People decide in the first 10 seconds whether they're going to listen to you or use your session to catch up on email. So make your intro good. Catch their attention. Surprise and intrigue them. Memorize and practise your intro over and over again so when you walk on stage you can get comfortable without having to worry about the specific words you're saying. Memorize your conclusion too so you can bring it home with…
I always dislike this advice because 1. I simply don't think its true - there have been many talks where I have become interested 10 minutes in. 2. It puts tremendous pressure on the speaker for some kind of fireworks in their first 10 seconds. Your 10 seconds went badly? Who cares just make sure the next 10 seconds are interesting, or the next.
The advice is very actionable, and it is something that can be practiced. As far as advice goes, I'd consider it fairly well thought out.
As far as its actual effectiveness, it doesn't seem meaningful to involk anecdotal data (i.e. "I've seen counter examples") as the parent post isn't stating that you must, but rather it's a generally good idea or a hack.
Given the data around interviewers making pass/reject decisions within the first few minutes of an interview, I would find it surprising if it wasn't true.