So you want to speak at software conferences?

I used to go in talks in the late 2000s and the difference with talks now in the mid-2020s is that the speakers now are so good and well-crafted, the slides way more professional, and the storytelling is so compelling, and... that's the issue(?) for me.

The strange loop maybe was the last bastion of tech conference where I could check in those kinds if speakers.

There are so many aspects of topic accessibility and formatting that some of the open-ended parts of a technical argument or some not-said parts are not in the presentations anymore.

Beforehand I used to go to some talks and literally take notes on 90% of the things, and back home I started to do some research about it, and eventually I learned 70% of it, and I started to have at least 2% that made some difference in my daily work.

Now the talks are so well structured that I do not see most of the time the open-ended unsaid topic that could be an intellectual side quest, given how well the presenter placed it and made it uninteresting for me, or they do not talk about this open-ended aspect at all, and it never sparked my curiosity.

Maybe it's not such a sophisticated analogy, but the old format would be like reading a book and piecing together a lot of not-explicit points from the author, and the other one is like having the same book in a cinematic experience with a well-crafted screenplay, costumes, dialog, and so on.

> Finally: respect your audience. Whether you’re talking to five people at a meetup, fifty at a community event, or five thousand at a huge international conference: those people are the reason you get to do this. They have given up their time - and often a substantial amount of money - to hear what you have to say. They deserve your best shot, every time

This is the same thing I say except, them _choosing_ to attend your talk, and opting in to giving you their time and attention is a signal that they _want_ you to succeed. They are HOPING you deliver your message, and that your demos all work, and that you conclude well. If kept in mind, I believe this can help alleviate some of the anxiety.

Sidebar: I've done this for a very long time and I still get nervous at the beginning of every talk. And I will be the first to admit—you WILL run into the occasional show off in the audience who is intent on demonstrating to you (and to the rest of room) how much smarter or more experienced they are than the speaker. That will happen—but it's an aberration.

>The best speakers really do just never bother with it in the first place.

This person has a preference which is not universal despite them stating it like a universal truth. I have also watched hundreds of presentations (and presented dozens), so I'm at least as equally qualified to say:

A fade between slides, fading-in bullet points or a picture on a slide as they become relevant, underlining/bolding/changing the color of a word to draw emphasis to it after the fact, etc. All of these can be perfectly fine. In fact, I think these small details can turn an okay slide deck into a well polished one.

>[...] had to wait fifteen seconds or so for his dumb, contentless transitions to play out, each slide he advanced, [...]

But yes, don't make your transitions 15 seconds. And if you're going backwards or skipping ahead, you can skip animations. You don't need to let it play out.

Also important to keep in mind that a good (or bad) slide deck alone does not make a good (or bad) presentation. The speaker and their knowledge + passion for the topic is what is important. A good slide deck is just a bonus.

2. How much time (points) will this presentation take to get to prod. Then how many points (time) will it take to deploy to prod. Do we need a spike for this presentation. I’m going to put it in the backlog and close it out since we’ll never get to it.