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I tried that - called it Tech Shorts (lightning talks) at small company. Found the largest issue was Passiveness in the engineering crowd. Ended up giving abo

I tried that - called it Tech Shorts (lightning talks) at small company. Found the largest issue was Passiveness in the engineering crowd. Ended up giving about 50% of the talks myself, not because I wanted to, but because there were so few people who were willing to step up and present. About 70% of the engineering team would attend (~50 people), so it was well received. Will try a new iteration next time. What made your attempt successful, in your opinion.

warent 6y ago
This doesn't surprise me at all. The intersection of engineers and public speakers is pretty tiny. It's not recreational; it's high pressure. You need to find something fun and laidback. Something low stakes, like a semi-weekly video game competition.
- mtippett 6y ago
  It's not high pressure, really it isn't. It's the same as when you talk in a team meeting, just more one-sided. The pressure that people feel is mostly self imposed. Most of the time the audience is there to learn given they have a gap. Most people are projecting their fear onto the presenter. Unless you are an actual leader of an organization, you are just one of the team. (I'm a reformed strong introvert)
  - warent 6y ago
    I'm not sure if your comment is directed at me or used for rhetorical effect. Either way it's confusing and a little bit offensive. The first thing is that there's a signal here that you believe there's something defective about introversion (i.e. that introversion is something to be reformed). To those who don't know, it's just a neutral personality trait (one of the Big Five--low extraversion) with its own pros and cons. There's nothing wrong with it and it can be happily embraced. The second part is that you seem to have the common confusion of conflating introversion with poor public speaking (or at least an aversion to it). They're unrelated. Introversion just means interacting with people expends energy. The actual aversion to public speaking comes from lack of skill, anxiety, and awkwardness. I grant you that those things might be more prevalent in introverted people because it is easier to keep to yourself and not build those skills, but they're still two different things. Finally, saying it isn't high pressure comes across as somewhat lacking in empathy. People feel different ways about different things, and invalidating those experiences is not helpful. Personally, I have improved my public speaking a lot over the years by forcing myself to do talks, toastmasters, host meetups, etc. Now I'm pretty good at it and comfortable with it, but there was a ton of pressure and anxiety around it before. Even though it's better now, that doesn't make those experiences less real for myself or anyone else.
derefr 6y ago
> Passiveness A lot more people have some degree of social anxiety than one might think, especially in IT. Lightning talks originate—and work well in—the sort of tech-bro workplaces where there’s an Xbox, foosball table, and bar in the breakroom. Half the “culture fit” criterion of hiring for those places is just an attempt to filter out potential hires with any amount of social anxiety; so the average level of it in such places is low. But other than in that little ecological niche, you’re not likely to see many engineers who are fond of public speaking, even when they have something they know and would love everyone else to learn about. On the other hand, though, many of these same more anxious people are fond of writing. Unlike public speaking, which is a live performance, a written piece can be composed—worked out slowly, checked for errors, re-drafted, thrown out with no repercussions, etc. Many engineers who aren’t at-all interested in giving a lightning talk, might instead quite like to blog about what they’re doing in some official capacity. And they would like it even more, I expect, if they didn’t have to have final responsibility for what was presented (because there’s always still the anxiety that someone might spot a flaw in your argument that you didn’t); but rather if their prose was handed off to a managing editor for the blog, to work up into a final article. Which means that a lot of these same engineers would be fine composing a lightning talk, as long as they didn’t have to be the presenter, and also weren’t put on the spot to answer questions afterward†. Find someone in your org who just loves talking—maybe a salesperson, maybe your CEO!—and have the engineer in question work with them to transfer the knowledge necessary to give the presentation. As a bonus, the presenter gets to be educated in this stuff from the source, one-on-one; which can very much help improve the depth of their knowledge, when that same person is communicating with your customers! † Q&A is a very valuable part of a talk, and the knowledge required to answer arbitrary questions really has to come from the engineer themselves, rather than a presenter. I’d suggest still doing Q&A with the engineer, but asynchronously, so you’re not putting the engineer in question “on the spot” in front of an audience. Maybe set up a mailing list or group-chat channel, that everyone attending the talks can subscribe to, to ask questions relevant to the latest talk. Then there’s no time-pressure on the engineer’s part to respond, but everyone still gets to ask questions, and to hear the answers to others’ questions.
- jrwoodruff 6y ago
  Another option is pre-recording your presentations. Shoot for a 15 minute presentation, followed by questions and conversation. Think a dev recording their screen, showing the work and talking over what they're doing, mixed with a few powerpoint slides. This gets over the hump of public speaking, creates an artifact that can be sent out as a follow up, and gets to the goal of having shared knowledge of a topic and a sense of community outside of normal silos.
ipnon 6y ago
I don't get paid to give tech presentations. Preparing for them would affect the work that I am responsible for. So giving tech presentations would ultimately make me look worse at my company. This explains the passiveness at my company.
- troycarlson 6y ago
  This is my observation across several companies/teams. The options seem to be either sacrifice "real work" time to make a good presentation or make a half-ass presentation and have people criticize the low quality. Do people here think "no prep" presentations could work? Where it's agreed that nobody will do any prep but simply talk about something they're knowledgeable about? Or share their screen and walk through their current project? Everyone in the audience knows that the presenter wasn't "allowed" to prepare so the expectations are lower, but people still get exposed to other engineers' work.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    In medium-large companies, work and promotion are about showing off. Even if you do real work it's more important to be noticed than to do it. In that light, I don't understand how you and the OP could consider that it's preventing to do real work. Powerpoint is the real work. And it shouldn't be difficult to justify spending 1-2 days on it, with 100 people assisting to the presentation as witnesses, unless your manager really doesn't want you to give presentations (it's showing off your team so it's good for your manager too). I get it that it's not part of the engineer mindset of course. If I have to give some advice to strong engineers who do good work, that would be to take credit for your work.
    - walshemj 6y ago
      It is a part of the "engineer mindset"
    - mtippett 6y ago
      That captures a lot of what I was trying to capture. However, the intent was for people to cover work that they are doing (lowering prep time, immediate understanding), tech they are researching (again lower prep time, immediate understanding). A lot of technical presentations we did are no different than what you would do explaining tech within your team. A few diagrams, and understanding of the core of the tech. Scaling to more than the safety of the team is really where I think people would rather have 3 meetings with 3 different teams to do a knowledge transfer than take the risk of being in front of collecting 5-10 teams worth of engineers. Looking over the comments, the real gap I expect is the lack of peer management support and encouragement. And expectation that mentoring and teaching peers should be part of the leadership expectations. My view are is the the strongest engineers are the ones that accelerate and multiple the work of themselves and their peers, but there are a lot people who subscribe to the "army of one" 10x engineer philosophy.
emptysea 6y ago
We have something similar at my current place where every week or two someone presents. It ends up being the same people presenting and I don’t think it is because people are afraid of public speaking, but instead people don’t care about the talks. At most 1-2 people (~20 person eng team) will ask a question, engage with the speaker, say thanks, etc. but most people either don’t attend the video call, or do so with video and microphone off for the entire time. I long for a group of engineers who care about honing their tools, finding better solutions, making things reliable and efficient, etc. It becomes draining to have the same people present over and over again. /end rant
- godelski 6y ago
  When talks are given through video I actually attend a lot more than when they are in person. I put them on, turn off my music, and listen while working. I've actually learned a lot of stuff this way. Of course I'm not putting 100% effort into work, but that's fine. And if it is a talk I'm not interested in that percentage of focus on work is much higher. Just because people are lurking doesn't mean they don't find value in your talks.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > but instead people don’t care about the talks. Are you taking into account this kind of comment by Dan Luu[1]: "Most people consider doing 30 practice runs for a talk to be absurd, a totally obsessive amount of practice, but I think Gary Bernhardt has it right when he says that, if you're giving a 30-minute talk to a 300 person audience, that's 150 person-hours watching your talk, so it's not obviously unreasonable to spend 15 hours practicing (and 30 practice runs will probably be less than 15 hours since you can cut a number of the runs short and/or repeatedly practice problem sections). One thing to note that this level of practice, considered obessive when giving a talk, still pales in comparison to the amount of time a middling table tennis club player will spend practicing." From that, you might ask your presenters to do 2-4 hours of rehearsal, and for the talk to generate $2,000 of value before it's worth running / worth attending. I feel many talks are "what the presenter wants to talk about" not "what the audience wants to hear". At least at a tech conference or on YouTube you can self-select so those two overlap. Inside a company, less so, so it's more important that they are done well, actionable, preferably short. They can't solely be mandatory. or solely fun for the presenter. And they certainly can't be spinning a tale of a utopian future for the company which is worse for me personally, or teasing me with a future tool or process or change which is better for me personally but which the company won't permit or won't get behind or actively opposes. [1] https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/

warent 6y ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. The intersection of engineers and public speakers is pretty tiny. It's not recreational; it's high pressure. You need to find something fun and laidback. Something low stakes, like a semi-weekly video game competition.

mtippett 6y ago
It's not high pressure, really it isn't. It's the same as when you talk in a team meeting, just more one-sided. The pressure that people feel is mostly self imposed. Most of the time the audience is there to learn given they have a gap. Most people are projecting their fear onto the presenter. Unless you are an actual leader of an organization, you are just one of the team. (I'm a reformed strong introvert)
- warent 6y ago
  I'm not sure if your comment is directed at me or used for rhetorical effect. Either way it's confusing and a little bit offensive. The first thing is that there's a signal here that you believe there's something defective about introversion (i.e. that introversion is something to be reformed). To those who don't know, it's just a neutral personality trait (one of the Big Five--low extraversion) with its own pros and cons. There's nothing wrong with it and it can be happily embraced. The second part is that you seem to have the common confusion of conflating introversion with poor public speaking (or at least an aversion to it). They're unrelated. Introversion just means interacting with people expends energy. The actual aversion to public speaking comes from lack of skill, anxiety, and awkwardness. I grant you that those things might be more prevalent in introverted people because it is easier to keep to yourself and not build those skills, but they're still two different things. Finally, saying it isn't high pressure comes across as somewhat lacking in empathy. People feel different ways about different things, and invalidating those experiences is not helpful. Personally, I have improved my public speaking a lot over the years by forcing myself to do talks, toastmasters, host meetups, etc. Now I'm pretty good at it and comfortable with it, but there was a ton of pressure and anxiety around it before. Even though it's better now, that doesn't make those experiences less real for myself or anyone else.

derefr 6y ago

> Passiveness A lot more people have some degree of social anxiety than one might think, especially in IT. Lightning talks originate—and work well in—the sort of tech-bro workplaces where there’s an Xbox, foosball table, and bar in the breakroom. Half the “culture fit” criterion of hiring for those places is just an attempt to filter out potential hires with any amount of social anxiety; so the average level of it in such places is low. But other than in that little ecological niche, you’re not likely to see many engineers who are fond of public speaking, even when they have something they know and would love everyone else to learn about. On the other hand, though, many of these same more anxious people are fond of writing. Unlike public speaking, which is a live performance, a written piece can be composed—worked out slowly, checked for errors, re-drafted, thrown out with no repercussions, etc. Many engineers who aren’t at-all interested in giving a lightning talk, might instead quite like to blog about what they’re doing in some official capacity. And they would like it even more, I expect, if they didn’t have to have final responsibility for what was presented (because there’s always still the anxiety that someone might spot a flaw in your argument that you didn’t); but rather if their prose was handed off to a managing editor for the blog, to work up into a final article. Which means that a lot of these same engineers would be fine composing a lightning talk, as long as they didn’t have to be the presenter, and also weren’t put on the spot to answer questions afterward†. Find someone in your org who just loves talking—maybe a salesperson, maybe your CEO!—and have the engineer in question work with them to transfer the knowledge necessary to give the presentation. As a bonus, the presenter gets to be educated in this stuff from the source, one-on-one; which can very much help improve the depth of their knowledge, when that same person is communicating with your customers! † Q&A is a very valuable part of a talk, and the knowledge required to answer arbitrary questions really has to come from the engineer themselves, rather than a presenter. I’d suggest still doing Q&A with the engineer, but asynchronously, so you’re not putting the engineer in question “on the spot” in front of an audience. Maybe set up a mailing list or group-chat channel, that everyone attending the talks can subscribe to, to ask questions relevant to the latest talk. Then there’s no time-pressure on the engineer’s part to respond, but everyone still gets to ask questions, and to hear the answers to others’ questions.

jrwoodruff 6y ago
Another option is pre-recording your presentations. Shoot for a 15 minute presentation, followed by questions and conversation. Think a dev recording their screen, showing the work and talking over what they're doing, mixed with a few powerpoint slides. This gets over the hump of public speaking, creates an artifact that can be sent out as a follow up, and gets to the goal of having shared knowledge of a topic and a sense of community outside of normal silos.

ipnon 6y ago

I don't get paid to give tech presentations. Preparing for them would affect the work that I am responsible for. So giving tech presentations would ultimately make me look worse at my company. This explains the passiveness at my company.

troycarlson 6y ago
This is my observation across several companies/teams. The options seem to be either sacrifice "real work" time to make a good presentation or make a half-ass presentation and have people criticize the low quality. Do people here think "no prep" presentations could work? Where it's agreed that nobody will do any prep but simply talk about something they're knowledgeable about? Or share their screen and walk through their current project? Everyone in the audience knows that the presenter wasn't "allowed" to prepare so the expectations are lower, but people still get exposed to other engineers' work.
- user5994461 6y ago
  In medium-large companies, work and promotion are about showing off. Even if you do real work it's more important to be noticed than to do it. In that light, I don't understand how you and the OP could consider that it's preventing to do real work. Powerpoint is the real work. And it shouldn't be difficult to justify spending 1-2 days on it, with 100 people assisting to the presentation as witnesses, unless your manager really doesn't want you to give presentations (it's showing off your team so it's good for your manager too). I get it that it's not part of the engineer mindset of course. If I have to give some advice to strong engineers who do good work, that would be to take credit for your work.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    It is a part of the "engineer mindset"
  - mtippett 6y ago
    That captures a lot of what I was trying to capture. However, the intent was for people to cover work that they are doing (lowering prep time, immediate understanding), tech they are researching (again lower prep time, immediate understanding). A lot of technical presentations we did are no different than what you would do explaining tech within your team. A few diagrams, and understanding of the core of the tech. Scaling to more than the safety of the team is really where I think people would rather have 3 meetings with 3 different teams to do a knowledge transfer than take the risk of being in front of collecting 5-10 teams worth of engineers. Looking over the comments, the real gap I expect is the lack of peer management support and encouragement. And expectation that mentoring and teaching peers should be part of the leadership expectations. My view are is the the strongest engineers are the ones that accelerate and multiple the work of themselves and their peers, but there are a lot people who subscribe to the "army of one" 10x engineer philosophy.

emptysea 6y ago

We have something similar at my current place where every week or two someone presents. It ends up being the same people presenting and I don’t think it is because people are afraid of public speaking, but instead people don’t care about the talks. At most 1-2 people (~20 person eng team) will ask a question, engage with the speaker, say thanks, etc. but most people either don’t attend the video call, or do so with video and microphone off for the entire time. I long for a group of engineers who care about honing their tools, finding better solutions, making things reliable and efficient, etc. It becomes draining to have the same people present over and over again. /end rant

godelski 6y ago
When talks are given through video I actually attend a lot more than when they are in person. I put them on, turn off my music, and listen while working. I've actually learned a lot of stuff this way. Of course I'm not putting 100% effort into work, but that's fine. And if it is a talk I'm not interested in that percentage of focus on work is much higher. Just because people are lurking doesn't mean they don't find value in your talks.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> but instead people don’t care about the talks. Are you taking into account this kind of comment by Dan Luu[1]: "Most people consider doing 30 practice runs for a talk to be absurd, a totally obsessive amount of practice, but I think Gary Bernhardt has it right when he says that, if you're giving a 30-minute talk to a 300 person audience, that's 150 person-hours watching your talk, so it's not obviously unreasonable to spend 15 hours practicing (and 30 practice runs will probably be less than 15 hours since you can cut a number of the runs short and/or repeatedly practice problem sections). One thing to note that this level of practice, considered obessive when giving a talk, still pales in comparison to the amount of time a middling table tennis club player will spend practicing." From that, you might ask your presenters to do 2-4 hours of rehearsal, and for the talk to generate $2,000 of value before it's worth running / worth attending. I feel many talks are "what the presenter wants to talk about" not "what the audience wants to hear". At least at a tech conference or on YouTube you can self-select so those two overlap. Inside a company, less so, so it's more important that they are done well, actionable, preferably short. They can't solely be mandatory. or solely fun for the presenter. And they certainly can't be spinning a tale of a utopian future for the company which is worse for me personally, or teasing me with a future tool or process or change which is better for me personally but which the company won't permit or won't get behind or actively opposes. [1] https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ https://danluu.com/p95-skill/