[HN Gopher] How I prepare a talk for a tech conference (2022)
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How I prepare a talk for a tech conference (2022)
Author : fanf2
Score : 215 points
Date : 2024-04-12 10:42 UTC (2 days ago)
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| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Attend grad school. Questions are almost always a way to
| try and prove how smart you are.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You know it. "Well, in my experience doing this since
| 1997..." "Lemme stop you right there."
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| hermitcrab wrote:
| IIRC they have a young girl on stage at the IgNobels and her
| job is to repeatedly shout 'boring' if you overrun your
| timeslot.
| CPLX wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Also disrespectful to any speakers that have to follow.
| mooreds wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > someone has read or at least scanned my speaker bio
|
| I'll do it after, if your talk catches my attention.
| vaylian wrote:
| 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.
| jghn wrote:
| When you're going through the conference agenda, why not
| google the presenters for the talks you find interesting? Or
| read their bios?
| jldugger wrote:
| Sadly, there's too many idiots with good credentials to rely
| on self-reported expertise. Ever seen one of those academic
| lecture intros that wax poetic for 10m about the person
| you're about to hear from? Can you remember any that actually
| established credibility?
| bborud wrote:
| You are arguing in favor of "argument from authority".
| ghaff wrote:
| I usually flash an about me slide for about 15 seconds. In
| general, some context/web site/etc is useful. Much more than
| that is not. Even if you're a supposedly important person, I'm
| probably not that interested in your life history. And if
| you're that important, I probably already know something about
| it.
| 4hg4ufxhy wrote:
| You could just skip to the content and not do this virtue
| signaling
| exe34 wrote:
| I absolutely hate this kind of "oh I'm not going to waste
| your time, honestly, I'm really going to try to make this
| worth your while, wow look at me, I'm amazing!" talk.
|
| This is why I now love attending talks remotely. If you annoy
| me, I can mute you and focus on something else and unmute the
| stream when the next speaker comes up.
| jakderrida wrote:
| I'd add one caveat.
|
| "you came here to learn about <topic>, not me. Feel free to
| Google me if you want. Just please keep in mind that all
| teenagers make mistakes. It's not my fault you only made boring
| mistakes."
|
| To make it work, you need to deliver the last line while
| seemingly preoccupied with something presentation-related.
| Otherwise, it seems hostile. An example could be as simple as
| pretending to change settings on microphone or moving one slide
| back, then forward twice. It conveys it was intended to be
| inner monologue
| nicbou wrote:
| 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
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Guilty as charged. Are you from Brazil, by any chance?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I talk in public a lot (in fact, I just did it this morning).
|
| That said, I'm not really a "keynote" speaker. I've been
| doing it for most of my adult life, in front of small and
| large (but never huge) crowds.
|
| I've definitely had some bombs, but most folks seem to think
| I do an adequate job (the fact I'm not a rubber chicken
| speaker means that it isn't much more than "adequate." I'm
| fine with that).
|
| Most times, I wing it, but when I'm giving an important talk,
| like a tech class, or topic discussion, I practice. The tip
| someone gave about recording themselves is good. It's also
| how I know how long it will take. I'll often use a prompter
| app, while practicing, but don't use it, while giving the
| talk.
|
| I've found a bit of humor (especially self-deprecating humor)
| can "humanize" things, but it should be short vignettes, and
| _know your audience_. If I don 't really know who will be out
| there, I generally don't use humor. Most times, I know my
| audience quite well, and humor is appreciated.
|
| I have found that speaking in the vernacular is generally
| appreciated by folks. There are definitely some folks that
| don't like making difficult stuff easy to understand, but I'm
| just an ol' high school dropout with a G. E. D., so I don't
| really pull off the "talk purdy" kind of thing, so good.
|
| I've found that Keynote/PowerPoint shows can be useful, but I
| seldom use "wall o' text" slides. I use a lot of images and
| animations, and pack my notes (not the slides) with what I'm
| saying. I will usually insert -- CLICK --
|
| in the notes to denote when I advance the animation/slide.
|
| I'll put details and technology rabbitholes into the
| supergraphics.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but
| it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else._
|
| People have widely varying views about what a "conference"
| is, or should be:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376024>
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| A fun thing to do is to include very subtle jokes that only a
| few people in the audience will grok and most people won't
| even notice.
|
| It's very nice to have a few people come up after a talk with
| "I saw what you did there...". It's a great way to connect
| with people who are on your wavelength.
| j7ake wrote:
| How many talks do you give a year? Seems like a waste of time
| to practice the talk that many times.
|
| what works for me and is more time efficient is to get the
| introduction polished, then have a clear take away at the end.
| The middle stuff is better to go impromptu.
| karaterobot wrote:
| When I have a talk to give I can't think of any better use of
| my time than getting it right. If you don't need to practice,
| good on you--a lot of people who don't probably should,
| though.
| Loughla wrote:
| The number of people who believe they are good at impromptu
| speech is WAAAAYYYY larger than those who are actually good
| impromptu speech.
|
| In general, the best speakers are those who a) know the
| material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads.
| j7ake wrote:
| Maybe because I am in research, but the middle parts of
| research talks are talking about their own research. If you
| don't know that material enough to talk about it in detail
| impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that
| topic.
|
| Intros and ends though I agree require careful thought to
| appeal to the right audience and give the right message.
| elijaht wrote:
| > If you don't know that material enough to talk about it
| in detail impromptu then you have no business giving
| talks about that topic.
|
| I don't think this follows. There are many things I am an
| expert in that I'm not an expert in communicating about
| impromptu- I've been to many talks where the speaker is
| clearly an expert but was not prepared to speak.
|
| I certainly think there are people for who expertise ==
| ability to speak about it, but that's certainly not
| always or usually the case.
| jghn wrote:
| I agree with you but that doesn't necessarily invalidate
| GP's point. It all depends on how familiar one is with the
| content.
|
| For one off talks, or decks that one doesn't use often, yes
| you're 100% right. When I'm in that situation I rehearse
| the talk over and over and over again to the point where I
| no longer need notes. My goal is to get to a point where I
| neither sound like I'm reading from a script, nor would I
| get thrown off if I get interrupted.
|
| However for material that I've presented a bunch of times,
| I no longer need to rehearse. There was a period of my life
| where I could on the fly give a talk on a particular topic
| at a moment's notice. Ideally I'd have a bit of time to
| customize some bits to the specific audience/venue, and
| sure I'd rehearse those. But the bulk of it I could stitch
| together content in just about any order on the fly.
| ghaff wrote:
| Exactly. If you hand me a presentation and hopefully some
| notes associated with it and tell me that I need to fill
| in, I can do it but I'm going to need to spend some time
| (and will probably rearrange things a bit).
|
| But if you tell me give some variation on your talk about
| $X, I can probably be ready in about 30 minutes. (And, in
| fact, I've dropped in a conference presentation in
| response to a 3am email because another speaker forgot
| they were supposed to be there.)
| toast0 wrote:
| > However for material that I've presented a bunch of
| times, I no longer need to rehearse.
|
| All of those previous presentations basically count as
| rehearsals. Depends on you, but if it's been a year or
| several since you gave one, it's probably a good idea to
| do at least a mini rehearsal before you do it again, but
| if you're doing one a quarter, once you're good, you
| should be good.
| nickjj wrote:
| > a) know the material inside and out, and b) have
| practiced shit loads.
|
| I remember the first time I went in front of a live
| audience to give a 2 minute intro. It was a meetup with ~60
| people and all I had to do was go up and talk about a
| course I was selling.
|
| On the train ride in, I scripted it out on paper and then
| re-read it like 30 times.
|
| By the time I got off the train and closed the notebook I
| forgot everything and dreaded the walk to the venue. I got
| in front of everyone and tried to recall what I wrote, had
| a quick internal dialog with myself for about 3 seconds and
| mentally noted "you're a moron, just wing it". Then I
| winged it.
|
| In the end it converted ~15% of the room on a tech topic
| that was ancillary to the main meetup's subject.
|
| On that day I learned I can do well writing something out
| on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to deliver
| it live. I have to fall into category (A) and trust myself
| to deliver but really committing to that with no backup
| plan does make every experience interesting to say the
| least.
|
| I've recorded around 300 videos since then and I still need
| to do the intro about 20 times before I get into the flow
| to do the rest of the video in basically 1 take. They are
| usually unscripted with no preparation, I just pick a topic
| and go.
| jldugger wrote:
| > On that day I learned I can do well writing something
| out on paper but I can't remember shit when trying to
| deliver it live.
|
| Fascinating. What _I_ learned from your anecdote is that
| massed practice didn 't work, just as the literature on
| human memory predicts. Spaced repetition still sounds
| like a winner. Practice, sleep, forget almost everything,
| then repeat until it's go time.
| matsemann wrote:
| So you didn't really prepare, forgot your non-existent
| "preparation", and then the take-away is that preparation
| doesn't work..?
| Loughla wrote:
| That is exactly what I'm trying to get across.
| Preparation isn't immediately before the speaking
| engagement. It's days, weeks, or if it's a big enough
| deal, months ahead of time.
|
| I don't know why people don't seem to understand that.
|
| If it's a topic that is low stakes and I know a shit load
| about, I'll practice for a day or two. If it's a topic
| that I know and it's high stakes, I may practice daily
| for two or three weeks.
|
| Everyone who knows me professionally remarks about how
| relaxed I seem when public speaking.
|
| That's because it's all intentional. Every pause. Every
| single thing. I seem relaxed, because I am relaxed.
| selfie wrote:
| I like a joke that is about the subject matter. A subtle pun
| that makes a smile but doesn't interrupt the flow at all.
| Another way to make it entertaining is make it a story. Forget
| jokes, make it about how you had to mop up the leaks in the
| server room as an intern before getting to the rack that had
| the crashed hard disk. Or something.
|
| I remember the first meme like presentations back in 2002 at
| work and I hated it. It's like stop learning, now you have to
| find this picture funny (maybe it was some star wars reference,
| and I haven't watched them), and we will get back to it. It was
| cringe!
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| My favourite little joke from a conference talk I did
| recently on image processing was when talking about greyscale
| images I put up the cover of "50 Shades of Grey" and replaced
| a crossed out "50" with "256".
|
| Made me chuckle anyway...
| selfie wrote:
| Yes this sort of thing! There was one posted on HN back
| where the speaker says, in the middle of other context
| fairly deep in, recognise this number?
| 3.14159265358779323846264338327950288419, and then shows
| that it isn't actually Pi, (one of the digits is swapped,
| he may have swapped a different digit to me). Nice joke
| because is reminds us to challenge assumptions too!
| troupe wrote:
| > I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and
| jokes
|
| It probably matters if it is related to the talk or not. A
| slightly related joke or funny picture at the beginning that
| introduces where you are going and then comes back with a
| deeper meaning at the end is very powerful.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Personally not a fan of memes but a huge fan of jokes... used
| correctly, they can drive home the point. But, they are also
| (for me) difficult to use correctly.
| jldugger wrote:
| > I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and
| jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy
|
| I think it can work in limited contexts. I've given an internal
| talk about SRE using the "this is fine" meme, representing a
| current emotional state, then contrasted that with the reverse
| meme[1] as a visual metaphor. Perhaps this_is_fine.png works
| because it does not rely on outside cultural context.
|
| I've also used HTTP status cat memes on a carousel slide, to
| emphasize that SREs commonly understand them, before
| contrasting that with a custom non-HTTP protocol I support. If
| people laugh or pay attention, so much the better.
|
| > 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.
|
| Agreed that rehearsal really helps and more people should do
| that. I wish I could put that 10+ rounds of practice into
| presenting but I'm typically doing internal stuff not anything
| with an honorarium or ticket price attached. Yet it seems like
| some kind of badge of honor in the tech speaker circuit to
| start building your slide deck the night before. Trust me: we
| can tell, especially when your first five minutes are panicked
| searches for projector compatible adaptors you forgot to pack
| or test.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseMemes/comments/dnlizu/the_th...
| jmugan wrote:
| It's funny, I can't make myself practice the talk out loud, but
| I can make myself go through it mentally a bunch of times. On
| the last mental pass, I guess what the next slide will be.
| Being able to do that enables smooth transitions during the
| talk.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much
|
| The best talk I ever gave was when the scheduled speaker didn't
| show, and the organizer asked if anyone would volunteer. I
| volunteered, and gave an impromptu talk with no prep and no
| slides, just a whiteboard. I simply threw out questions to the
| audience, and let their responses guide things.
|
| It was the best presentation I ever gave.
|
| Too bad the video didn't work, either, and there's no record of
| it.
|
| P.S. When traveling to a conference, I carry along the slides
| from my previous presentations. This enables me to fill in for
| missing presenters. I also had a talk that didn't go over well,
| so I just picked out a previous one and did that.
| jszymborski wrote:
| > I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and
| jokes
|
| I certainly think there is a balance.
|
| If you're not confident about your talk or your ability to
| present it, folks should be disabused of the idea that adding
| some gifs or a "One does not simply" meme will fix that.
|
| That said, I think of my talks as sharing interesting stories.
| When I tell stories, I often crack a few jokes along the way,
| and my presentations are no different. I feel like adding
| humour is often a way of giving people insight into your
| thought process.
|
| Of course, everyone is different, and perhaps you are dead
| serious about your way of thinking about compilers or neural
| networks or whatever your work on.
|
| The author does an excellent job, however, of underscoring the
| fact that jokes can rely on an in-crowd or shared experience
| that some in the audience don't share. It's important in all
| aspects of your talk to keep that sort of thing in mind, and
| make sure your humour isn't just some twitter in-joke.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I suspect there are a bunch of different approaches, and
| different people will find different approaches work for them.
|
| Personally I'm not much of a reherser. I like to make a point
| with each slide, and as long as I know the point, I can
| "freestyle" the actual text.
|
| The exception are high-speed sessions, where I have a slide, or
| two, per sentence. They have to be highly scripted and so I
| practise them a few times. But, while they're a lot of fun, I
| don't do them often.
|
| For me, prep is much more about what to leave out. It's easier
| to do a 2 hour session than a 1 hour, and harder still to do 30
| mins. Slides mostly help to keep me on track and not get
| distracted.
| serial_dev wrote:
| In my opinion listening to yourself can actually help.
|
| You might realize that you are either speaking too fast or too
| slowly. You might notice that you are using your squeaky voice,
| there are ways to improve it. You might realize that you assume
| some piece of tech is known to everyone even though it's pretty
| obscure. You might realize you need one more slide for
| transitioning to a new topic better.
|
| I agree though with your other point, the recording can help
| enforce that there are no redos before a live audience.
|
| Also, if you mess up a sentence or slide all the time, maybe
| your phrasing is too backwards, so you should probably simplify
| it to something that feels natural to you.
| dmckeon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Or if you must, just don't broadcast the Q&A section.
| shalmanese wrote:
| 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?
| teeray wrote:
| My comment reflected the typical, unmanaged conference Q&A
| where every question has an equal platform, regardless of
| merit. _If_ there is a way for the audience to upvote
| questions that are actually good (yes, bad questions exist)
| as you mention with your hand vote, then it becomes
| worthwhile again.
| serial_dev wrote:
| It's also useful if the person asking the question has a very
| thick accent or is not proficient speaking English.
|
| It happened so many times that I had no clue what someone
| asked, and the presenter repeats the question with their own
| words, usually much more clearly communicating the question
| that was asked.
| semitones wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > I would rather not give the presentation than do this. It
| is a cringe and self-embarassing experience.
|
| I'm the same way, and honestly I don't understand why.
|
| I'm not sure it's _embarrassment_ per se, because nobody else
| is in the room.
|
| But something about doing a dry run, in private, is so
| unpleasant that I can't make myself do it. Despite the
| apparent benefits.
| beryilma wrote:
| In my experience, dry-runs, at least in front of an insider
| audience, are not a real assessment of the content, nor the
| delivery. It doesn't feel natural as in front of the real
| audience. Any I rarely get any useful feedback anyway:
| always some stupid, non-consequential remarks that tend to
| turn everything to corporate speak with no allowance for
| personal style.
|
| Fad of the day at my company is evidence-assertion style.
| And I am sick of it...
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Do a dry run with your mentors, colleagues, friends, etc.
| alexashka wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Unfortunately, people often confuse a smooth presentation (and
| clever presenter) with good content. The two are completely
| different things.
| jascii wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I like simple slides with heavy notes. Feels like the best of
| both worlds for both preparation and distribution
| bborud wrote:
| Notes as in "speaker notes"?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Which rules do you think are missing and which shouldn't be do
| e for tech presentations?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| felipefar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
|
| He gives a fantastic meta-talk; you should listen to it.
| beryilma wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| serial_dev wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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-
| tal...
| happytiger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/mas
| ter/n-way...
|
| And the talk (the zone was deadpan, laconic):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTouODWov-A
|
| And the accompanying blog post:
| https://www.evalapply.org/posts/n-ways-to-fizzbuzz-in-
| clojur...
| frou_dh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Some of the advice here is great for meetings as well.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| He didn't say he was terrified of it. Just that it was a
| lot of work. This remains true regardless.
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