8 ms·

How I prepare a talk for a tech conference (2022)

237 points by fanf2 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago
I more agree than disagree with most of the points--at least for the typical conference presenter. The one thing I'd add (though this is more in the hands of the conference organizers) is that shorter (25-30 minute) presentations are often better than 45-50 minute ones. Some of this relates to what the post says at the beginning. If it's a bad presentation, I've wasted less time. But the other thing is that a presentation can cue me in to something being interesting more than it can teach me everything about that something. I've been seeing this as a general trend although I have colleagues who hate that trend and respond by trying to cram 60 minutes of content into 25 minutes grumbling all the way. And, oh, stay on schedule. It's really rude to the next presenter (and your audience) if you don't. I might end up going a minute or 2 over if I get off-track but I feel badly when I do.
- exe34 3y ago
  I 100% blame people not staying on schedule on the organisers. I'm autistic, I'd happily cut off your microphone on time, not matter if you're the pope or a Nobel laureate. This is why I'm not allowed to chair sessions.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Oooh, can I recruit you to cut off question askers who aren’t asking questions? Talks need someone not shy about enforcing that it’s question after the presentation, not offtopic rambling time.
    - skeeter2020 3y ago
      Attend grad school. Questions are almost always a way to try and prove how smart you are.
      - kstrauser 3y ago
        You know it. “Well, in my experience doing this since 1997…” “Lemme stop you right there.”
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Or analyst conferences, etc. Generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of public raising of hands type Q&A's. They turn into more of a comment than a question and showing off sorts of things as you say. Maybe a few pre-submitted questions electronically or just save them for later 1-on-1s.
        exe34 3y ago
        I quite like the way that in some sessions they make you submit questions into a webpage and the chair will pick the questions to ask - it really makes a difference when they can say "there's a few other comments you can read online", rather than drag on the q&a session.
        abnercoimbre 3y ago
        Yeah at my indie conferences [0] if we live-stream the event that means we have an online audience too. I require everyone to submit their questions to a private chat server, even if you're there in person, and I curate them in real-time. [0] https://handmadecities.com https://handmadecities.com
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    IIRC they have a young girl on stage at the IgNobels and her job is to repeatedly shout 'boring' if you overrun your timeslot.
    - exe34 3y ago
      That's amazing!
- CPLX 3y ago
  I run a company that produces conferences in about 20 cities annually. We run our conferences absolutely ruthlessly on time, like to the minute. We prep every speaker for it, we have a countdown clock on stage and we interrupt to end a session if we have to, though that doesn’t happen much given we communicate clearly about this in advance. It’s shocking how many conferences don’t do that. I’m still amazed when I go to other events and see things get 15 or 20 or even 30 minutes behind the published schedule. It’s just so disrespectful to the audience to do that in my opinion.
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    Also disrespectful to any speakers that have to follow.
mooreds 3y ago
I have spoken a few times. My favorite self intro is: Slide with title "about me" Next slide: "who cares" Then I say "you came here to learn about <topic>, not me. Feel free to Google me if you want".
- dustincoates 3y ago
  I care. I want to know that the person who is talking can back up the content and has experience with the subject matter.
  - mooreds 3y ago
    Fair. I guess I assume: * someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio * folks want to get straight to the content * my expertise is shown by the fact I'm speaking and the content I'm conveying But maybe I'm wrong.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      > someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio Probably not. As I wrote in another comment, a quick context-set and contact information in probably useful but quick is the operative phrase especially for any background that isn't directly relevant to the material at hand.
      - exe34 3y ago
        > someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio I'll do it after, if your talk catches my attention.
  - vaylian 3y ago
    Any claims made during the presentation, including claims of professional experience, can be completely made up. Besides, if someone was allowed to present at a conference, then that means that they have already been reviewed and approved by the conference organizers, which means that speakers do not need to convince you, that they know what they are talking about.
nicbou 3y ago
The author's writing style matches how she prepares her talks. That post is very straightforward. I agree with everything she wrote. I think that it also applies to other kinds of communication. I particularly like the bit about examples. I think that stories and metaphors are much more powerful than plain statements. It really drives the point home, especially when it's somewhat abstract. My all-time favourite is Steve Job's "bicycle of the mind".[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8
- skeeter2020 3y ago
  They seem to have a consistent "voice", which is going to please some and piss off others, and that's way better than having nobody care.
karaterobot 3y ago
I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. Just make it more interesting, or shorter. I also agree with the bit about not feeling it necessary to make eye contact with audience members: as an audience member, I feel like the speaker is about to call on me when that happens, like at one of those hateful interactive theater performances everyone dreads. Just talk to "the room" if you can. It's always amazing to me when I see a talk by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much. I think it's usually better when you've run through it so many times so that you can deliver it without any notes, but it's still concise and complete. I practice double-digit amounts of times for every talk. My tip is to record yourself practicing. Don't watch the recordings, no need for that. The thing is that blinking red circle seems to psychologically qualify as an audience (to me anyway) and it focuses me in on the performance part of giving a talk. One effect is that if I mess something up, and I'm recording it, I start improvising my way back on course rather than just starting over. There seems to be more consequences if you record it. I dunno, helps me.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. One or two well-placed jokes can be great if they’re a very minor part of the presentation. When someone has their slides stacked with memes or spends large amounts of time on vacuous entertainment content, it always feels disappointing. There was a period of time where our biggest local JavaScript conference felt like one big entertainment competition. Presenters were singing songs, playing guitar, showing several minutes of clips from TV shows, and telling jokes more than they were presenting anything useful. The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else.
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    Guilty as charged. Are you from Brazil, by any chance?
dmckeon 3y ago
Pet peeve: During Q&A, the presenter should repeat the question. Even if the asker has a microphone, they are often not clearly audible. Repeating the question, or a brief version of it, lets the audiences, both present and via video, hear it clearly, and shows that the presenter heard and understood it before they answer it.
- samatman 3y ago
  Hard agree. The OP is full of good advice, but this is the single most actionable thing I could say about tech talks. Maybe 10% of presenters do this; everyone should. Another advantage is that the speaker doesn't always get the question. Either can't hear it well, or the question itself is weird, complex, off-topic, or some variation on not-even-wrong. So they end up answering something else. If they repeat/summarize the question first, at least they're answering a question, and when this happens, the question which gets answered is often better than the one which was asked.
- teeray 3y ago
  Hot Take: there should be no Q&A. Best-case scenario, the questioner uncovers some omission that the speaker tweets out later. Average-case is irrelevant questions or some super-specific case that makes the speaker question if they can bill consulting hours to the questioner. Worst-case is giving a self-aggrandizing questioner a microphone to attempt to upstage the speaker. None of these are a benefit to the audience except in the first (uncommon) case. Just go find the speaker later and ask questions if you have them.
  - jldugger 3y ago
    Or if you must, just don't broadcast the Q&A section.
  - shalmanese 3y ago
    Hard disagree, the point of the talk is the Q&A, otherwise I can just watch it on YouTube. I design my talks so the rehearsed content is only the preamble. The rest of the time is spent in discussion. For an allocated amount of time, I create a talk that is 1/3rd the time and then supplemental material that can fill another 1/2 if the crowd can’t be warmed up. But there’s an art to Q&A that’s as hard as public speaking but practiced by 1/10th the people. A simple hand vote is the most basic tool. After a Q, I’ll summarize it and ask how many people face this problem? Etc. why get an audience of people in a room if you don’t use them?
semitones 3y ago
> I also think legitimacy by proxy is gross I disagree, legitimacy by proxy is a very useful initial signal. Someone who works on the gRPC team at a large API distributor is more likely to have better advice on best practices for protobufs, than someone who works on optimizing ray-tracers for TempleOS. Relying on proxies, and likelihoods, is crucial for the timely processing of information. We heavily rely on at least some level of trust - otherwise we would have to completely verify every single thing that anyone says, before we can begin to do anything with the information.
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  Exactly what I thought. Exceptions are always possible, but more people need to channel their inner baysian and assign appropriate prior probabilities. Someone with impressive and relevant credentials gets a higher prior from me that their talk will be worthwhile. Doesn't mean that prior is 100% or that some nobody's prior is 0%.
- bborud 3y ago
  Trust comes from the meat of the talk minus the charisma of the speaker. If what is being said is important enough to perhaps impact your work, you need to verify what is being said anyway. Association alone isn't very convincing. If people really feel they need to establish credentials they should talk about what they do. It is almost like at a job interview. I don't need to know that you worked for X - I want to know what you did at X. Introductions should be no more than what you can fit into one breath. After that it is just some person going on about themselves, and that isn't very attractive. Get to the meat first, and then we can talk.
jasonlotito 3y ago
As someone who has given numerous talks at conferences, 100% yes. This is all good advice. "What new skills do I want my audience to have, and know how to use, when they leave this room?" That's effectively the same thing as the way I look at it. "What actionable thing do I want people to take away from this talk?" I will add: Practice! You should have given your talk multiple times before you ever give it publicly, and you should have watched it. That means recording yourself and watching yourself and listening to yourself. Yes, this takes time. But it's important. Also: do NOT plan to do live demos or live coding. You can easily record these and present them and know they work. They are edited, there are no mistakes, and things happen. You can even make the joke that it was "live coding when you recorded it." Yes, if you have to answer a question with some live coding, fine. But it doesn't need to be live. No one wants to watch you typo stuff, complain about the network, etc. Just record it. If "recording it takes too much time" then doing it live is going to suck.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are demo gods out there. Kelsey Hightower comes to mind. But, yeah, generally speaking, it's a high-wire stunt you probably shouldn't attempt to pull off--especially without a reliable smooth plan B. As someone who has presented a LOT, practice is useful. I always do at least a bunch of mental run-throughs. That said, a real run-through, which I don't always do, results in a better Take 2. So, yeah, do a real rehearsal when you can. (I won't practice dozens of time though. At peak I presented a lot and practicing for a given presentation that much would have been impracticable.)
- beryilma 3y ago
  > I will add: Practice! You should have given your talk multiple times before you ever give it publicly, and you should have watched it. That means recording yourself and watching yourself and listening to yourself. Yes, this takes time. But it's important. I would rather not give the presentation than do this. It is a cringe and self-embarassing experience. Once, I almost quit my job because certain types of high-level presentations at my company requires dry-runs and I refuse to do it. And I regularly give presentations at a few conferences a year with sufficiently good delivery.
alexashka 3y ago
All else will be forgiven if you have something of genuine value to present. Remember - Stephen Hawking presented his findings. It wasn't his awesome presentation skills.
- beryilma 3y ago
  Unfortunately, people often confuse a smooth presentation (and clever presenter) with good content. The two are completely different things.
- jascii 3y ago
  That seems a bit counter-evidenced by the fact that he reached an audience much larger than his chosen fields. He had an unique ability to explain complex matters in a very concise manner, which is an awesome presentation skill in its own right.
kstrauser 3y ago
I was walking over to the conference room where I’d agreed to demo a project at a huge convention. I saw other people with their laptops and card tables. Visitors would drop by and ask questions. Demonstrators would answer them and show how they worked. Piece of cake. One of my friends casually mentioned that the A/V team had our podium set up. Podium? For what? So that you’ll have some place to set your laptop when you’re presenting the project to the large room we booked! That’s how and when I found out I was giving a tech talk. It went well. Honestly, that’s about as much advance notice as I like. You can’t worry or procrastinate too much when you’ve got about 20 minutes to get ready.
skeeter2020 3y ago
The best piece of advice here is meta: whatever you do make bold choices. I don't like a lot of the speaker's decisions, and (aside from the memes and gifs where I do strongly agree) go the other way, and that's OK, they're still going to engage me. The number one job of the speaker is to stake out a position that might be contriversial or not universally accepted, and drive deeper thought, discussion, conversation and progress. And practice. Please practice. That's what makes the timing impactful & the jokes work.
mvkel 3y ago
The advice feels solid, well at least it speaks to Chelsea's personal approach to making a presentation. Authenticity counts for a lot. But those slides; the walls of text. If I'm reading what's on the slide, I'm not listening to what you're saying. Worse, I'm trying to do both, so neither is leaving an imprint in my brain. Text-heavy slides are great if I'm emailing a deck to someone, but for presenting, 5-6 words max per slide.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The answer is ideally that you have a presentation deck and a linked article/blog but that's asking a lot of presenters who don't have the article/blog published somewhere anyway.
  - elijaht 3y ago
    I like simple slides with heavy notes. Feels like the best of both worlds for both preparation and distribution
    - bborud 3y ago
      Notes as in "speaker notes"?
      - ghaff 3y ago
        I assume so but the sort of notes I'd put together for myself are probably different from an alternate form of the material for someone else absent actually listening to the presentation.
cmgriffing 3y ago
I think some of the bits of advice here apply more to "soft" topics like tech debt, etc. Things that feel more like storytelling rather than informational. Technical presentations have a different set of "rules".
- com 3y ago
  Which rules do you think are missing and which shouldn’t be do e for tech presentations?
pyuser583 3y ago
Lots of different views on how to do a talk. This goes against some mainstream advice such as: establish your credentials. But rule number 1 for any talk is "know your audience." Since the audience is tech people who care about tech issues, talking about tech is a better way to establish your credentials than listing your CV. But then again, how the people in the audience know you aren't just talking smartly? My favorite tech talks are by people who jump straight into the tech issues without introduction. But I'm fully aware there's a chance they could be straight up bullshitting.
- jghn 3y ago
  > some mainstream advice such as: establish your credentials. I've found that this is domain specific. You see it more for tech conferences for instance, but less so in biotech conferences
- tootie 3y ago
  I think the missing context here is the why. Laying out your credentials is probably a good idea if the intent of your presentation is to advance your career. Which I gather is the main reason most people do it. Her advice is centered on delivering value to an audience. The part that got me was right at the start: "Why: I get very little out of 95% of them. I much prefer online recordings, which can come vetted/recommended. Also I can bump them up to 1.5x or 2x speed, so that at least if the talk isn’t that good I waste less time on it." I also just don't enjoy these conferences at all. I rarely attend and have zero interest in ever speaking. Watching recorded presentations is far superior.
- toast0 3y ago
  I think a very brief CV makes sense. Hi, I'm X, I work on Y at Z and maybe I worked on Y' at Z', welcome to my presentation on Topic establishes some context. And lets you know if you're in the wrong room. I don't think you need much more than that at the beginning. Maybe in the depths of the presentation you talk about options for a solution and how you tried some of the options on a project/at a company, when it's relevant. We don't usually need to know a lot of other stuff from a CV, such as how long you were anywhere or where you went to school or a lot of details about job responsibilities. Just a little info to have some idea of the scope of 'databases' and 'embedded' for you --- there's a lot of computer words that have similar but different meanings depending on your industry.
deleted 3y ago
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felipefar 3y ago
Most articles about public speaking, including this one, have interesting advice, but they miss the point on the most important factor in a presentation: the content. If you do everything that the author recommends, but you don't have anything valuable to share, your talk will flop. So make sure you have something important to tell people. What I'd really like to read is an account of how to make interesting content, how to arrive at great conclusions while working on great problems.
ashton314 3y ago
The best advice I’ve ever seen for technical talks is from the indomitable Simon Peyton-Jones of Haskell IO Monad and C# LINQ fame: https://simon.peytonjones.org/great-research-talk/ https://simon.peytonjones.org/great-research-talk/ He gives a fantastic meta-talk; you should listen to it.
beryilma 3y ago
I strongly believe that there are only two true rules when it comes to presentations: (1) know who your audience is, and (2) tell something that the audience will find useful. Not eloquent, cute, clever, or impressive; but useful (to them). All these theories, rules, and advice about giving presentations are just useless fads that are often impractical and unnatural for most people. People often confuse an eloquent and natural speaker with having a "good" presentation. I have been to many talks (Tufte, for example) where the presenter talks smoothly for an hour, yet in the end does not say anything useful to me. Your are entertained, in a sense, but you don't actually learn anything. To many presenters, the presentation is actually about themselves rather then giving something truly useful to the audience. A lot of people can talk well, but I rather have somebody that can teach me something, even if the delivery is not perfect.
- pjot 3y ago
  I’ve seen Tufte and learned a ton - the presentation was almost _too_ information dense (which is his intent). Curious why your experience was different.
  - beryilma 3y ago
    Among other things, passing around with white gloves Galileo's something something first edition book does not teach me anything. But in general he had a lot of one off examples and interesting pictures, but without a solid and applicable theory behind them. He was an articulate speaker but I did not feel like I learned anything from the talk. I have also "read" his books but the only thing that I remember and make use of is the idea of information density on charts.
- serial_dev 3y ago
  > the presenter talks smoothly for an hour, yet in the end does not say anything useful to me Why would you throw Kevlin Henney under the bus?
adityaathalye 3y ago
This is sane advice. Lots more sane advice out there in the world. Yet, there is an element of YMMV. Like, I only ever do live demos, including lots of live coding. My "slides" are my org-mode file, with org-babel, and org-tree-slide. My premise is that, in-conference, peoples' eyes will glaze over sooner or later because of information overload from other talks and/or intense social engagement. So I need to land one maybe two engaging moments. Interested parties will engage in the "hallway track", post-talk. At-home viewers will scrub through the recording. All people have access to slides and/or a detailed blog post. Disinterested parties are free to use "the law of two feet" and leave if it's not working for them. My talks have never been polished diamonds --- all elements of serendipity and demofail are embraced. So far, nobody has booed me off-stage, and I've always had fun after-talk conversations. Also, in terms of actually doing the thing, this is what my, ah, "process" ends up looking like [1]. I discovered many people relate to it. [1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-talk/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-tal...
- happytiger 3y ago
  Mad respect for live demoing in a talk on conference Wi-Fi. There is something to authenticity and embracing potential failure that flies in the face of the well manicured presentation culture we have today that needs to come back. As long as the talk can be done, or there is a plan b, why not? I think a lot of concern stems from wasting other people’s time: which is valid. But presenting is also a deeply culturally engrained performance art that sometimes sacrifices authenticity for appearances.
  - adityaathalye 3y ago
    The trick is to assume conference WiFi does not exist and work against an all-local setup. Cache all the things :) The other trick is to make material available to everyone, post-haste. This is especially important for remote talks [1]. Apropos embracing failure. I work hard to set up a smooth path. I don't want things to fail. Yet, I actively chose to be open to it because undoing the failure has a habit of creating a learning moment for someone among the dear listeners (they too try to debug in their head, and arrive at their own insight). [1] In 2022, I gave a talk as a live demo at a remote conference. Three different networks at three different locations in my area flaked on me. My home network because of digging in my area, another mid-way through my talk because of power failures, and an otherwise-pretty-good wireless network because it lost packets exactly over my presentation and was just fine ten minutes after. This was after I prayed to the demo gods at the start. See slide #5: https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-ways-to-fizz-buzz-clj.pdf https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-way... And the talk (the zone was deadpan, laconic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A And the accompanying blog post: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojure/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojur...
frou_dh 3y ago
I despise it when a conference presenter starts off by saying that they threw the slides together on the way there. Often as if they're oddly proud of that. It's basically coming out of the gate saying that you don't respect the time/attention of the audience.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  > It's basically coming out of the gate saying that you don't respect the time/attention of the audience. Are there other plausible explanations? E.g., perhaps the presenter struggles with ADHD-based procrastination, and is only able to make slides under imminent deadline pressure. Or maybe they tend to be neurotic and over-think things, and are experimenting with being more spontaneous in their preparation. (Asking as a neurotic ADHD person with moderate social anxiety.)
  - frou_dh 3y ago
    Just let people make their own mind up about the quality of the slides. Half the audience will probably think they are fine, and it won't be the first time the other half has seen mediocre slides.
bborud 3y ago
Some of the advice here is great for meetings as well.
iamflimflam1 3y ago
The key for me is to practice and rehearse. Once I'm actually doing a talk the notes become superfluous, but all the practice means that, despite the terror and the fight or flight response cutting in, there's enough in my subconscious to carry me through. On another note, there's now a huge pressure on people to do presentations - many requirements for senior engineer include things like presenting at meet ups and public speaking. I find this very unfair on people. If you don't enjoy doing something then you really shouldn't feel obligated to do it. Talking at a meet up or a conference is very different from running a meeting or doing a presentation at work.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The only way to deal with the terror is to keep doing it. The terror will go away and you will start enjoying them.
  - iamflimflam1 3y ago
    Maybe for some people. But I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine - I'd seen him talk multiple times, extremely polished and confident. I asked him how he managed to do it so well and he said "I don't do talks anymore.". Despite being very good at it he decided that putting himself through the wringer was just not worth it.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      He didn't say he was terrified of it. Just that it was a lot of work. This remains true regardless.

237 points by fanf2 3y ago

I more agree than disagree with most of the points--at least for the typical conference presenter. The one thing I'd add (though this is more in the hands of the conference organizers) is that shorter (25-30 minute) presentations are often better than 45-50 minute ones. Some of this relates to what the post says at the beginning. If it's a bad presentation, I've wasted less time. But the other thing is that a presentation can cue me in to something being interesting more than it can teach me everything about that something. I've been seeing this as a general trend although I have colleagues who hate that trend and respond by trying to cram 60 minutes of content into 25 minutes grumbling all the way. And, oh, stay on schedule. It's really rude to the next presenter (and your audience) if you don't. I might end up going a minute or 2 over if I get off-track but I feel badly when I do.

exe34 3y ago
I 100% blame people not staying on schedule on the organisers. I'm autistic, I'd happily cut off your microphone on time, not matter if you're the pope or a Nobel laureate. This is why I'm not allowed to chair sessions.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Oooh, can I recruit you to cut off question askers who aren’t asking questions? Talks need someone not shy about enforcing that it’s question after the presentation, not offtopic rambling time.
  - skeeter2020 3y ago
    Attend grad school. Questions are almost always a way to try and prove how smart you are.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      You know it. “Well, in my experience doing this since 1997…” “Lemme stop you right there.”
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Or analyst conferences, etc. Generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of public raising of hands type Q&A's. They turn into more of a comment than a question and showing off sorts of things as you say. Maybe a few pre-submitted questions electronically or just save them for later 1-on-1s.
      - exe34 3y ago
        I quite like the way that in some sessions they make you submit questions into a webpage and the chair will pick the questions to ask - it really makes a difference when they can say "there's a few other comments you can read online", rather than drag on the q&a session.
        abnercoimbre 3y ago
        Yeah at my indie conferences [0] if we live-stream the event that means we have an online audience too. I require everyone to submit their questions to a private chat server, even if you're there in person, and I curate them in real-time. [0] https://handmadecities.com https://handmadecities.com
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  IIRC they have a young girl on stage at the IgNobels and her job is to repeatedly shout 'boring' if you overrun your timeslot.
  - exe34 3y ago
    That's amazing!
CPLX 3y ago
I run a company that produces conferences in about 20 cities annually. We run our conferences absolutely ruthlessly on time, like to the minute. We prep every speaker for it, we have a countdown clock on stage and we interrupt to end a session if we have to, though that doesn’t happen much given we communicate clearly about this in advance. It’s shocking how many conferences don’t do that. I’m still amazed when I go to other events and see things get 15 or 20 or even 30 minutes behind the published schedule. It’s just so disrespectful to the audience to do that in my opinion.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  Also disrespectful to any speakers that have to follow.

mooreds 3y ago

I have spoken a few times. My favorite self intro is: Slide with title "about me" Next slide: "who cares" Then I say "you came here to learn about <topic>, not me. Feel free to Google me if you want".

dustincoates 3y ago
I care. I want to know that the person who is talking can back up the content and has experience with the subject matter.
- mooreds 3y ago
  Fair. I guess I assume: * someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio * folks want to get straight to the content * my expertise is shown by the fact I'm speaking and the content I'm conveying But maybe I'm wrong.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    > someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio Probably not. As I wrote in another comment, a quick context-set and contact information in probably useful but quick is the operative phrase especially for any background that isn't directly relevant to the material at hand.
    - exe34 3y ago
      > someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio I'll do it after, if your talk catches my attention.
- vaylian 3y ago
  Any claims made during the presentation, including claims of professional experience, can be completely made up. Besides, if someone was allowed to present at a conference, then that means that they have already been reviewed and approved by the conference organizers, which means that speakers do not need to convince you, that they know what they are talking about.

nicbou 3y ago

The author's writing style matches how she prepares her talks. That post is very straightforward. I agree with everything she wrote. I think that it also applies to other kinds of communication. I particularly like the bit about examples. I think that stories and metaphors are much more powerful than plain statements. It really drives the point home, especially when it's somewhat abstract. My all-time favourite is Steve Job's "bicycle of the mind".[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8

skeeter2020 3y ago
They seem to have a consistent "voice", which is going to please some and piss off others, and that's way better than having nobody care.

karaterobot 3y ago

I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. Just make it more interesting, or shorter. I also agree with the bit about not feeling it necessary to make eye contact with audience members: as an audience member, I feel like the speaker is about to call on me when that happens, like at one of those hateful interactive theater performances everyone dreads. Just talk to "the room" if you can. It's always amazing to me when I see a talk by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much. I think it's usually better when you've run through it so many times so that you can deliver it without any notes, but it's still concise and complete. I practice double-digit amounts of times for every talk. My tip is to record yourself practicing. Don't watch the recordings, no need for that. The thing is that blinking red circle seems to psychologically qualify as an audience (to me anyway) and it focuses me in on the performance part of giving a talk. One effect is that if I mess something up, and I'm recording it, I start improvising my way back on course rather than just starting over. There seems to be more consequences if you record it. I dunno, helps me.

Aurornis 3y ago
> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. One or two well-placed jokes can be great if they’re a very minor part of the presentation. When someone has their slides stacked with memes or spends large amounts of time on vacuous entertainment content, it always feels disappointing. There was a period of time where our biggest local JavaScript conference felt like one big entertainment competition. Presenters were singing songs, playing guitar, showing several minutes of clips from TV shows, and telling jokes more than they were presenting anything useful. The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Guilty as charged. Are you from Brazil, by any chance?

dmckeon 3y ago

Pet peeve: During Q&A, the presenter should repeat the question. Even if the asker has a microphone, they are often not clearly audible. Repeating the question, or a brief version of it, lets the audiences, both present and via video, hear it clearly, and shows that the presenter heard and understood it before they answer it.

samatman 3y ago
Hard agree. The OP is full of good advice, but this is the single most actionable thing I could say about tech talks. Maybe 10% of presenters do this; everyone should. Another advantage is that the speaker doesn't always get the question. Either can't hear it well, or the question itself is weird, complex, off-topic, or some variation on not-even-wrong. So they end up answering something else. If they repeat/summarize the question first, at least they're answering a question, and when this happens, the question which gets answered is often better than the one which was asked.
teeray 3y ago
Hot Take: there should be no Q&A. Best-case scenario, the questioner uncovers some omission that the speaker tweets out later. Average-case is irrelevant questions or some super-specific case that makes the speaker question if they can bill consulting hours to the questioner. Worst-case is giving a self-aggrandizing questioner a microphone to attempt to upstage the speaker. None of these are a benefit to the audience except in the first (uncommon) case. Just go find the speaker later and ask questions if you have them.
- jldugger 3y ago
  Or if you must, just don't broadcast the Q&A section.
- shalmanese 3y ago
  Hard disagree, the point of the talk is the Q&A, otherwise I can just watch it on YouTube. I design my talks so the rehearsed content is only the preamble. The rest of the time is spent in discussion. For an allocated amount of time, I create a talk that is 1/3rd the time and then supplemental material that can fill another 1/2 if the crowd can’t be warmed up. But there’s an art to Q&A that’s as hard as public speaking but practiced by 1/10th the people. A simple hand vote is the most basic tool. After a Q, I’ll summarize it and ask how many people face this problem? Etc. why get an audience of people in a room if you don’t use them?

semitones 3y ago

> I also think legitimacy by proxy is gross I disagree, legitimacy by proxy is a very useful initial signal. Someone who works on the gRPC team at a large API distributor is more likely to have better advice on best practices for protobufs, than someone who works on optimizing ray-tracers for TempleOS. Relying on proxies, and likelihoods, is crucial for the timely processing of information. We heavily rely on at least some level of trust - otherwise we would have to completely verify every single thing that anyone says, before we can begin to do anything with the information.

mr_mitm 3y ago
Exactly what I thought. Exceptions are always possible, but more people need to channel their inner baysian and assign appropriate prior probabilities. Someone with impressive and relevant credentials gets a higher prior from me that their talk will be worthwhile. Doesn't mean that prior is 100% or that some nobody's prior is 0%.
bborud 3y ago
Trust comes from the meat of the talk minus the charisma of the speaker. If what is being said is important enough to perhaps impact your work, you need to verify what is being said anyway. Association alone isn't very convincing. If people really feel they need to establish credentials they should talk about what they do. It is almost like at a job interview. I don't need to know that you worked for X - I want to know what you did at X. Introductions should be no more than what you can fit into one breath. After that it is just some person going on about themselves, and that isn't very attractive. Get to the meat first, and then we can talk.

jasonlotito 3y ago

As someone who has given numerous talks at conferences, 100% yes. This is all good advice. "What new skills do I want my audience to have, and know how to use, when they leave this room?" That's effectively the same thing as the way I look at it. "What actionable thing do I want people to take away from this talk?" I will add: Practice! You should have given your talk multiple times before you ever give it publicly, and you should have watched it. That means recording yourself and watching yourself and listening to yourself. Yes, this takes time. But it's important. Also: do NOT plan to do live demos or live coding. You can easily record these and present them and know they work. They are edited, there are no mistakes, and things happen. You can even make the joke that it was "live coding when you recorded it." Yes, if you have to answer a question with some live coding, fine. But it doesn't need to be live. No one wants to watch you typo stuff, complain about the network, etc. Just record it. If "recording it takes too much time" then doing it live is going to suck.

ghaff 3y ago
There are demo gods out there. Kelsey Hightower comes to mind. But, yeah, generally speaking, it's a high-wire stunt you probably shouldn't attempt to pull off--especially without a reliable smooth plan B. As someone who has presented a LOT, practice is useful. I always do at least a bunch of mental run-throughs. That said, a real run-through, which I don't always do, results in a better Take 2. So, yeah, do a real rehearsal when you can. (I won't practice dozens of time though. At peak I presented a lot and practicing for a given presentation that much would have been impracticable.)
beryilma 3y ago
> I will add: Practice! You should have given your talk multiple times before you ever give it publicly, and you should have watched it. That means recording yourself and watching yourself and listening to yourself. Yes, this takes time. But it's important. I would rather not give the presentation than do this. It is a cringe and self-embarassing experience. Once, I almost quit my job because certain types of high-level presentations at my company requires dry-runs and I refuse to do it. And I regularly give presentations at a few conferences a year with sufficiently good delivery.

alexashka 3y ago

All else will be forgiven if you have something of genuine value to present. Remember - Stephen Hawking presented his findings. It wasn't his awesome presentation skills.

beryilma 3y ago
Unfortunately, people often confuse a smooth presentation (and clever presenter) with good content. The two are completely different things.
jascii 3y ago
That seems a bit counter-evidenced by the fact that he reached an audience much larger than his chosen fields. He had an unique ability to explain complex matters in a very concise manner, which is an awesome presentation skill in its own right.

kstrauser 3y ago

I was walking over to the conference room where I’d agreed to demo a project at a huge convention. I saw other people with their laptops and card tables. Visitors would drop by and ask questions. Demonstrators would answer them and show how they worked. Piece of cake. One of my friends casually mentioned that the A/V team had our podium set up. Podium? For what? So that you’ll have some place to set your laptop when you’re presenting the project to the large room we booked! That’s how and when I found out I was giving a tech talk. It went well. Honestly, that’s about as much advance notice as I like. You can’t worry or procrastinate too much when you’ve got about 20 minutes to get ready.

skeeter2020 3y ago

The best piece of advice here is meta: whatever you do make bold choices. I don't like a lot of the speaker's decisions, and (aside from the memes and gifs where I do strongly agree) go the other way, and that's OK, they're still going to engage me. The number one job of the speaker is to stake out a position that might be contriversial or not universally accepted, and drive deeper thought, discussion, conversation and progress. And practice. Please practice. That's what makes the timing impactful & the jokes work.

mvkel 3y ago

The advice feels solid, well at least it speaks to Chelsea's personal approach to making a presentation. Authenticity counts for a lot. But those slides; the walls of text. If I'm reading what's on the slide, I'm not listening to what you're saying. Worse, I'm trying to do both, so neither is leaving an imprint in my brain. Text-heavy slides are great if I'm emailing a deck to someone, but for presenting, 5-6 words max per slide.

ghaff 3y ago
The answer is ideally that you have a presentation deck and a linked article/blog but that's asking a lot of presenters who don't have the article/blog published somewhere anyway.
- elijaht 3y ago
  I like simple slides with heavy notes. Feels like the best of both worlds for both preparation and distribution
  - bborud 3y ago
    Notes as in "speaker notes"?
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I assume so but the sort of notes I'd put together for myself are probably different from an alternate form of the material for someone else absent actually listening to the presentation.

cmgriffing 3y ago

I think some of the bits of advice here apply more to "soft" topics like tech debt, etc. Things that feel more like storytelling rather than informational. Technical presentations have a different set of "rules".

com 3y ago
Which rules do you think are missing and which shouldn’t be do e for tech presentations?

pyuser583 3y ago

Lots of different views on how to do a talk. This goes against some mainstream advice such as: establish your credentials. But rule number 1 for any talk is "know your audience." Since the audience is tech people who care about tech issues, talking about tech is a better way to establish your credentials than listing your CV. But then again, how the people in the audience know you aren't just talking smartly? My favorite tech talks are by people who jump straight into the tech issues without introduction. But I'm fully aware there's a chance they could be straight up bullshitting.

jghn 3y ago
> some mainstream advice such as: establish your credentials. I've found that this is domain specific. You see it more for tech conferences for instance, but less so in biotech conferences
tootie 3y ago
I think the missing context here is the why. Laying out your credentials is probably a good idea if the intent of your presentation is to advance your career. Which I gather is the main reason most people do it. Her advice is centered on delivering value to an audience. The part that got me was right at the start: "Why: I get very little out of 95% of them. I much prefer online recordings, which can come vetted/recommended. Also I can bump them up to 1.5x or 2x speed, so that at least if the talk isn’t that good I waste less time on it." I also just don't enjoy these conferences at all. I rarely attend and have zero interest in ever speaking. Watching recorded presentations is far superior.
toast0 3y ago
I think a very brief CV makes sense. Hi, I'm X, I work on Y at Z and maybe I worked on Y' at Z', welcome to my presentation on Topic establishes some context. And lets you know if you're in the wrong room. I don't think you need much more than that at the beginning. Maybe in the depths of the presentation you talk about options for a solution and how you tried some of the options on a project/at a company, when it's relevant. We don't usually need to know a lot of other stuff from a CV, such as how long you were anywhere or where you went to school or a lot of details about job responsibilities. Just a little info to have some idea of the scope of 'databases' and 'embedded' for you --- there's a lot of computer words that have similar but different meanings depending on your industry.

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felipefar 3y ago

Most articles about public speaking, including this one, have interesting advice, but they miss the point on the most important factor in a presentation: the content. If you do everything that the author recommends, but you don't have anything valuable to share, your talk will flop. So make sure you have something important to tell people. What I'd really like to read is an account of how to make interesting content, how to arrive at great conclusions while working on great problems.

ashton314 3y ago

The best advice I’ve ever seen for technical talks is from the indomitable Simon Peyton-Jones of Haskell IO Monad and C# LINQ fame: https://simon.peytonjones.org/great-research-talk/ https://simon.peytonjones.org/great-research-talk/ He gives a fantastic meta-talk; you should listen to it.

beryilma 3y ago

I strongly believe that there are only two true rules when it comes to presentations: (1) know who your audience is, and (2) tell something that the audience will find useful. Not eloquent, cute, clever, or impressive; but useful (to them). All these theories, rules, and advice about giving presentations are just useless fads that are often impractical and unnatural for most people. People often confuse an eloquent and natural speaker with having a "good" presentation. I have been to many talks (Tufte, for example) where the presenter talks smoothly for an hour, yet in the end does not say anything useful to me. Your are entertained, in a sense, but you don't actually learn anything. To many presenters, the presentation is actually about themselves rather then giving something truly useful to the audience. A lot of people can talk well, but I rather have somebody that can teach me something, even if the delivery is not perfect.

pjot 3y ago
I’ve seen Tufte and learned a ton - the presentation was almost _too_ information dense (which is his intent). Curious why your experience was different.
- beryilma 3y ago
  Among other things, passing around with white gloves Galileo's something something first edition book does not teach me anything. But in general he had a lot of one off examples and interesting pictures, but without a solid and applicable theory behind them. He was an articulate speaker but I did not feel like I learned anything from the talk. I have also "read" his books but the only thing that I remember and make use of is the idea of information density on charts.
serial_dev 3y ago
> the presenter talks smoothly for an hour, yet in the end does not say anything useful to me Why would you throw Kevlin Henney under the bus?

adityaathalye 3y ago

This is sane advice. Lots more sane advice out there in the world. Yet, there is an element of YMMV. Like, I only ever do live demos, including lots of live coding. My "slides" are my org-mode file, with org-babel, and org-tree-slide. My premise is that, in-conference, peoples' eyes will glaze over sooner or later because of information overload from other talks and/or intense social engagement. So I need to land one maybe two engaging moments. Interested parties will engage in the "hallway track", post-talk. At-home viewers will scrub through the recording. All people have access to slides and/or a detailed blog post. Disinterested parties are free to use "the law of two feet" and leave if it's not working for them. My talks have never been polished diamonds --- all elements of serendipity and demofail are embraced. So far, nobody has booed me off-stage, and I've always had fun after-talk conversations. Also, in terms of actually doing the thing, this is what my, ah, "process" ends up looking like [1]. I discovered many people relate to it. [1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-talk/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/how-to-give-a-conference-tal...

happytiger 3y ago
Mad respect for live demoing in a talk on conference Wi-Fi. There is something to authenticity and embracing potential failure that flies in the face of the well manicured presentation culture we have today that needs to come back. As long as the talk can be done, or there is a plan b, why not? I think a lot of concern stems from wasting other people’s time: which is valid. But presenting is also a deeply culturally engrained performance art that sometimes sacrifices authenticity for appearances.
- adityaathalye 3y ago
  The trick is to assume conference WiFi does not exist and work against an all-local setup. Cache all the things :) The other trick is to make material available to everyone, post-haste. This is especially important for remote talks [1]. Apropos embracing failure. I work hard to set up a smooth path. I don't want things to fail. Yet, I actively chose to be open to it because undoing the failure has a habit of creating a learning moment for someone among the dear listeners (they too try to debug in their head, and arrive at their own insight). [1] In 2022, I gave a talk as a live demo at a remote conference. Three different networks at three different locations in my area flaked on me. My home network because of digging in my area, another mid-way through my talk because of power failures, and an otherwise-pretty-good wireless network because it lost packets exactly over my presentation and was just fine ten minutes after. This was after I prayed to the demo gods at the start. See slide #5: https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-ways-to-fizz-buzz-clj.pdf https://github.com/adityaathalye/slideware/blob/master/n-way... And the talk (the zone was deadpan, laconic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A And the accompanying blog post: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojure/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-clojur...

frou_dh 3y ago

I despise it when a conference presenter starts off by saying that they threw the slides together on the way there. Often as if they're oddly proud of that. It's basically coming out of the gate saying that you don't respect the time/attention of the audience.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
> It's basically coming out of the gate saying that you don't respect the time/attention of the audience. Are there other plausible explanations? E.g., perhaps the presenter struggles with ADHD-based procrastination, and is only able to make slides under imminent deadline pressure. Or maybe they tend to be neurotic and over-think things, and are experimenting with being more spontaneous in their preparation. (Asking as a neurotic ADHD person with moderate social anxiety.)
- frou_dh 3y ago
  Just let people make their own mind up about the quality of the slides. Half the audience will probably think they are fine, and it won't be the first time the other half has seen mediocre slides.

bborud 3y ago

Some of the advice here is great for meetings as well.

iamflimflam1 3y ago

The key for me is to practice and rehearse. Once I'm actually doing a talk the notes become superfluous, but all the practice means that, despite the terror and the fight or flight response cutting in, there's enough in my subconscious to carry me through. On another note, there's now a huge pressure on people to do presentations - many requirements for senior engineer include things like presenting at meet ups and public speaking. I find this very unfair on people. If you don't enjoy doing something then you really shouldn't feel obligated to do it. Talking at a meet up or a conference is very different from running a meeting or doing a presentation at work.

WalterBright 3y ago
The only way to deal with the terror is to keep doing it. The terror will go away and you will start enjoying them.
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  Maybe for some people. But I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine - I'd seen him talk multiple times, extremely polished and confident. I asked him how he managed to do it so well and he said "I don't do talks anymore.". Despite being very good at it he decided that putting himself through the wringer was just not worth it.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    He didn't say he was terrified of it. Just that it was a lot of work. This remains true regardless.