10 Simple Things to Improve Your Tech Talks

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  1. Practice your talk before speaking. Several times. Record yourself. Watch it. At a conference, people paid $$$ for this.
  2. Assume wifi is unavailable for your talk. Don't depend on it to run demos.
  3. Assume you'll get few or no questions. Given a 45 minute slot? Aim for 40 minutes.
  4. If you insist on live coding, make sure you've written down the code ahead of time. We don't want to watch you debug in real time.
  5. If your talk title says it's about X, don't make the first quarter/half not talking about X. We probably came to listen to you talk about X, not your life story. Exceptions exist, but do so carefully.
  6. Waiting for audience participation is awkward. "Can anyone see what's wrong?" Just move on.
  7. The best slides are ones that are useful after the talk. You can export with speaker notes! Have speaker notes!
  8. Be professional. Know how your computer works. How the presentation software works. Show up ahead of time, make sure tech is ready.
  9. Don't save your talk for a big conference. Run through it at a user group or meetup. Adjust. Improve. Repeat.
  10. You can't please everyone. Present for a target audience. Title and description should aim to entice that target audience.