[HN Gopher] Tech talks don't have to be boring
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Tech talks don't have to be boring
Author : herodotus
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-03-11 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (billwadge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (billwadge.com)
| twstdzppr wrote:
| This is one of my favorite tech talks:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHRO5WQGh0k&t=1s
|
| GopherCon 2018: Kavya Joshi - The Scheduler Saga
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree with most of this, but I vehemently disagree with the 12
| slides. Especially if you follow the rule that there is only one
| point on each slide, that's an awfully shallow talk if you only
| have 12 points.
|
| I've given talks all over the world and many were highly rated,
| and I usually average 2 slides per minute. A 40 minute talk will
| have almost 80 slides in it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm usually more like one per minute or two. I have noticed
| that as conference talks have generally gotten a bit shorter
| though I haven't tended to really cut back on the number of
| slides. A lot depends on my style for a given presentation. I
| do generally keep the word density down in any case but some
| presentations have more supporting text than others.
|
| He does also argue for very simple slides so he's really almost
| arguing for not using slides at all other than to reinforce
| some specific points.
| cruano wrote:
| It's like the author didn't read his own advice, he says
|
| > Everyone with functioning eyesight is a visual learner.
|
| And also
|
| > Eight is the maximum number of slides you should give in a
| talk, whether 20 minutes or 50 minutes.
|
| So which one is it ? you want people staring at the same 12
| slides over 50 minutes or you want to actually show them
| something ?
| metalrain wrote:
| Yes, tech talks don't need to be boring and I agree on many
| points on the post. But also not just 12 slides, more like
| hundreds of slides.
|
| One example I have is Chandler Carruths talk in CppCon 2019
| "There Are No Zero-cost Abstrations" https://youtu.be/rHIkrotSwcc
| Chandler presents his point clearly and goes deep enough into the
| subject.
| feoren wrote:
| Hard disagree with rule #2:
|
| > 2 - Present at most 12 slides, no matter the length of the talk
|
| The longer you sit on one slide, the more boring your
| presentation gets. Make hundreds of slides! Most should flow
| directly into the next (adding a single bullet, highlighting
| something else, emphasizing different parts of a visualization,
| etc.)
|
| That "rule" is directly in conflict with rules 4.5 and 7:
|
| > 4.5 - Visual, visual, visual
|
| > 7 - No complex slides, whether text or images
|
| You can't get by on 12 slides if each slide is supposed to be
| super visual but also not complex. Make 100!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Don't read text from a slide
|
| This. So much this. _I can read_ , man. I can read while you're
| talking. I can read it faster than you can say it. So if you read
| the text, you're going to take longer than I am, and then I'm
| going to have to wait for X seconds while you slowly get around
| to finishing telling me what you've already told me. And every
| one of those seconds, you're losing more and more of my
| attention.
| liggitt wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPaby7suOc&t=13s is a
| fantastic parody talk, and this is one of my favorite moments
| of it
| seumars wrote:
| One reason tech talks are specially boring to me is that the vast
| majority are about tooling/implementation, instead of
| topics/ideas. Another is that a surprisingly (to me) amount of
| people who do these talks do it just for content creation
| purposes.
| bsder wrote:
| > Another is that a surprisingly (to me) amount of people who
| do these talks do it just for content creation purposes.
|
| Well, creating even a mediocre talk takes a _LOT_ of effort. As
| a speaker, what do _I_ get out of it? Presenting at anything
| "open source" almost certainly means I'm not getting paid for
| it. And, unless I can give a talk at least twice, I can't
| amortize the cost of it.
|
| My two biggest problems in giving a tech talk are:
|
| 1) The audience is all over the map
|
| If you give a talk about doing something in USB on Linux, some
| of the audience won't know what USB stands for. Some of the
| audience probably write driver code. This is a _VERY_ difficult
| audience to communicate to.
|
| 2) Covering something meaty but not taking 3 hours.
|
| Choosing USB on Linux again. To not take 3 hours, I have to
| dispense with the USB basics and launch directly into the
| specifics on Linux. Even that probably means that I'm talking
| about character devices on /dev that a lot of people have never
| dealt with. And after _that_ , I can get down to talking about
| the cool thing that I _actually_ wanted to talk about.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The audience is all over the map
|
| Yep. And lots of people don't pay attention to the difficulty
| rating which is usually there. (And what is there is often
| inaccurate--relative to what?)
|
| I've given talks where I've simultaneously had feedback that
| the talk went over someone's head and that it was too high-
| level/fluffy.
| sergius wrote:
| Find the presentation: Instantly Better Presentations by Damian
| Conway in YouTube from 2011. Notes are in
| http://damian.conway.org/IBP.pdf
|
| It will be the best 50 min investment you can make to make you a
| better presenter.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| i think like many things in life, step 1 is be charismatic.
|
| these steps work well for making up the difference
| jjcm wrote:
| This is a good primer for people who don't know how to present.
| It's very much the "intro paragraph, 3 body paragraphs,
| conclusion paragraph" kinda guidelines they teach you in school
| for writing papers - applicable only when you have no experience.
|
| Once you gain some experience, 4 is the only one I would say is a
| hard rule. Experience will teach you how to break all of the
| other rules effectively, as every other rule entirely depends on
| context. The main reason why tech talks are boring are two
| reasons - inexperienced presenters, and that engaging talks take
| time to prepare.
|
| One tip I'll give for people is don't rely a script. If you have
| a script, you're writing emotion and adaptability out of it.
| Teaching content is a dance with the audience - you have to adapt
| to how they respond in order to present effectively. Give
| yourself an outline, and in your head run through twenty
| different ways you'd present that information to people. Knowing
| how to dynamically present your slides means you can engage with
| your audience far better and you can take time to read the room.
| If you present a talk twice, it should be different each time as
| the context changes.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| It does not help that there are two number 4s in the article,
| but I'm assuming you mean the "don't read text off a slide"
| one, which yeah has very few situations where it would make
| sense to break.
| bade wrote:
| Oooops!
| tomerv wrote:
| I disagree, a script is a great tool, especially if you're not
| an experienced speaker. You just need to put emotions in it,
| and know how to act them out correctly, in many ways like an
| actor. The actor on a stage (or in front of a camera) doesn't
| react to the audience, but can still tell a compelling story.
| This takes practice, which takes time. Sadly, too many speakers
| don't even do a dry run before their presentation.
| feoren wrote:
| > One tip I'll give for people is don't rely a script.
|
| I always write out a script before an important presentation. I
| number it with the corresponding slide numbers and read it out
| loud as I'm presenting. And now you're probably imagining
| falling asleep to the quiet droning of a disinterested high-
| schooler reading out loud in literature class, but that's only
| because most people never practice reading out loud
| effectively. I've practiced it a lot, and now my reading aloud
| sounds much _better_ than me just speaking naturally. Practice
| it!
|
| You're right that it's important to be able to adapt a bit, but
| usually that just means answering a question or two and getting
| back to the script, or skipping around the script a bit.
| bnchrch wrote:
| I think all audience driven endeavours should be passed through
| the lens of "is it entertaining?"
|
| That doesnt mean you have to sacrifice information or rigor. But
| if excellent information is said and nobody was listening was it
| ever really said at all?
| matt7340 wrote:
| This has absolutely been my experience as well. The one thing
| to be careful about is losing sight of the content while making
| it entertaining. I've swung a little too far a few times, and
| risked my tech talk looking more like a standup routine.
| ketcomp wrote:
| I would like to nominate a Scott Hanselman keynote (or
| conference talk) as an example of one such talk. I think he
| blends humor well with information dense presentations.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Mike Monteiro was good (but I haven't heard much from him,
| lately). He seems to channel "The Angry Designer." I enjoyed
| his "F**k You, Pay Me" talk[0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U
| FastMonkey wrote:
| This makes sense if you're talking to business people. They don't
| know or care about the details, they're looking for something
| with basic graphics, a few big numbers, and some soundbites. I'd
| feel ripped off I spent my time at a tech talk in my area that
| did that.
| flakiness wrote:
| My tips for consuming "boring" tech talks is just to listen it,
| without watching the video. You can do some attention-light tasks
| like housekeeping or exercise while listening.
|
| The problem of the boring tech talks is that they demands a lot
| of attention (visual) but doesn't return enough stimulation. Your
| mind starts wandering without the enough
| stimulation/entertainment. So just give them less attention.
|
| Not all the tech talks are good speaker, and not all tech topics
| are good fit for an entertainment. I'm fine to accept that fact
| and adjust how to consume them.
|
| That's said, I hope there are more audio-focused tech
| presentations out there. If you know any good series or
| something, please let me know.
| tnzk wrote:
| 100% agree. Maybe podcasts would suit better for this purpose?
| I suggest Modern Web[1] and Soft Skills Engineering[2]. Both
| are also available outside Spotify.
|
| [1]
| https://open.spotify.com/show/5FGA58foRFkJ6IgJbCFYgm?si=tDKE...
|
| [2] https://open.spotify.com/show/59I1XnvAB9fQzSj9SIKCoI?si=v58
| -...*
| imperistan wrote:
| I've been thinking about doing that with the video lectures
| recommended by Teach Yourself CS [0] but I was afraid I would
| miss too much by only listening. I drive for two hours twice a
| week so it would be a great way to pass the time and learn
| something at the same time. Did you ever try it with a complete
| lecture series?
|
| [0] https://www.teachyourselfcs.com
| djohnston wrote:
| BCI drone tech talks set the bar.
| elcapitan wrote:
| I watch quite a few tech talks (via Youtube, mostly conferences),
| mostly to familiarize myself with concepts, and tbh I rarely have
| issues being "bored" by talks like the ones described as boring
| in this post.
|
| I get bored, however, by fluffy talks that have lots of memes and
| pictures and big text and anecdotes. In any reasonably complex
| actual tech talk, you'll have concepts that need slides with a
| bit of text and maybe even formula (or code), simply because the
| audience will sometimes get distracted or forget what you said a
| minute ago. I find that perfectly fine and better than the
| alternative.
|
| So overall this seems to be advice for people who wish their tech
| talks were actually TED talks.
| anyfactor wrote:
| I used to be super into conference talks. But now I just google
| the title and skim an article on it. I sometimes see talks of
| handful of professional conference speakers instead of people
| who looks like they were forced to give a speech.
|
| If you are into Python, Raymond Hettinger and Brandon Rhodes is
| all you need.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Yeah the second I see a random animated gif or a reference to
| marvel or something like that it's like someone flipped a
| switch in my brain to "off". I almost immediately check out. I
| just want you to tell me what the thing is, what it does, and
| how to use it, I don't need to see that "shut up and take my
| money" meme again.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps we can collectively train a Deep Learning model to
| skip those boring parts ...
|
| But collaboratively editing the videos would already be a
| step forward.
|
| If only YouTube allowed us to write some plugins ...
| Hjfrf wrote:
| Sponsorblock is a similar premise, just crowdsourced rather
| than ai.
| bade wrote:
| Well I can tell you this advice would improve my student's talk
| 100%.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The worst is when someone derails their own talk by putting up
| pics of their dog or cat and saying "oh yeah, there's my cat,
| Marbles, he's super cute and thinks he's helping". Of course
| they can't just do it one time, so they have to sprinkle
| Marbles the cat through the entire presentation. The audience
| gets distracted, everyone says "aww", and by the end you
| realize you didn't absorb any value from the last 20 minutes.
| rpmisms wrote:
| This annoys me too, especially since you can add a pet as
| fluff (pun intended) to a talk, while also integrating them
| as an example. I use my dog to demo things all the time.
| "here's our sample user, Lucy. She's not too smart, so let's
| see how she navigates this UI". That's just a good speaking
| tactic.
| drewcoo wrote:
| And that is incredibly effective. You're using your dog
| pics to anchor ideas in people's heads!
|
| When people remember your preso, they'll remember the dog
| images, but those will all represent some meaningful take-
| away from the talk.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Exactly! Brian Holt did this effectively in his
| (excellent) React course for Frontend Masters. He started
| off by introducing his dogs... And then built a pet
| adoption app. Brilliant, lots of hooks (literal and
| figurative) involving cute puppies literally built in to
| the project.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Yeah this is a great example of how to do it. Just enough
| of a change up to refocus attention on what you're saying.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yeah at least that's more clever and legitimately humorous.
| rpmisms wrote:
| And more importantly, it's on-topic. Adding flavor to a
| presentation can be tricky, you can't just toss unrelated
| information in there and keep the audience focused, you
| have to integrate it into the data you're presenting.
|
| We're engineers, social intelligence isn't our specialty,
| but this is pretty easy to codify.
| rg111 wrote:
| The moment I read the headline, the first words to come to my
| mind were - "How to Grow a Language" by Guy Steele. Hadn't the
| author heard _that_?
|
| Then, when I read the piece, most were already known to me.
|
| One should watch the marvelous guide by Patrick Henty Winston-
| "How to Speak".
|
| He also has a book called- "Make it Clear". I highly recommend
| this.
| bade wrote:
| By all means check out Winston, he's the master. Yes, you can
| find most of my rules elsewhere. But people don't know them. My
| student didn't. And my guess he picked up his bad habits
| listening to bad talks by clueless people. So these principles
| bear repeating.
| thebeardisred wrote:
| Hear hear! I came to mention "How to Speak"
| (https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY) but it makes even more sense to
| amplify you thoughts.
| alexashka wrote:
| The format is bad - you can't fix it.
|
| If you have something to say, write a blog post, make a short
| audio/video clip.
|
| Going up on a stage and presenting is so yesterday. We have near
| infinite movies and tv shows to watch and we don't, because
| boring, and you expect to keep people's attention with your
| presenting-this-for-the-first-time-lol thing?
|
| Get with the times folks - if you have something to say, just go
| ahead and say it in 30 seconds and give me a link to a 5 minute
| thing, that gives a link to a 30 minute thing. It's called the
| internet - you don't need to mimick presenting in front of a
| class - that was a necessary format due to limitations, not an
| ideal format because of how great it worked.
| jedberg wrote:
| People learn things differently. Some people learn a lot better
| in a lecture than reading it. Also it gives you a chance to
| interact with the speaker and other audience members at the
| same time and ask questions and have a discussion. It also lets
| the speaker tailor the talk to the audience and their
| questions.
|
| Both formats have their place, and often a talk is turned into
| exactly what you describe -- a blog post with a text
| description, a highlight reel, and the full talk (that you can
| watch at 2x speed if you really want to).
| ghaff wrote:
| Conferences serve a lot of different purposes. Now, aside from
| more in-depth workshops, I do think that presentations could
| often be shorter and more about why you should check something
| out, what its purpose is, etc. and point people to more
| detailed resources for a deep dive rather than trying to cover
| everything in 40 minutes or whatever.
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