

Tips for speaking at tech conferences - rytis
http://pydanny.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-tips-for-speaking.html

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ben_hall
From my experience of speaking at tech conferences there are a few points I
don't agree with, but that may be my own experience.

1) Black backgrounds work best in a dark room but rubbish in a daylight room.
I think Presentation Zen also made this point. If you can, think about having
a theme switch can be easily swapped.

2) Don't fear the terminal, just fear the default colours. Modified it. More
important than colours is font size - make it BIG! This is the same for your
IDEs. iTerm2, increased size and full screen mode are great for presentations.

3) I think it's best to take questions there and then as other people in the
audience may be wondering the same thing. If you've missed something then it's
easy to fix and clarify which would allow everyone to move on with you. If you
leave it to the end, people will be distracted for the rest of your
presentation and that's much harder to fix at the end.

If the questions get too specific then simple say "Can we take this offline
afterwards or grab a beer later" and move on.

For me the most important thing is to remember that the audience have taken
there time to see you. If you have a 60 minute slot and 100 people, that's 100
hours your wasting by giving a rubbish talk. Make every minute count.

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tintin
I always use white text on a black background for presentations. I thought
that would give the best contrast. Does anyone know why black on white would
be better?

~~~
goblin89
AFAIK light text on dark background might improve contrast between different
colors, which is useful when coding; however, for better overall contrast and
readability, dark on white is preferable.

\- Various studies suggest that white on black is easier to read and
comprehend, which is important in presentations, especially for people who
stand far from screen.

See: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498698/white-light-vs-
bla...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498698/white-light-vs-black-dark-
backgrounds-health-effects), [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-
colorizing-and...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/code-colorizing-
and-readability.html)

\- In printed media, the general recommendation is to use larger font for text
displayed on dark or complex backgrounds, as it's considered harder to read.
(This is from my experience and what they taught us at university, so no
references here.)

Also, if there's need to include inverse text which should look to reader the
same size as regular one printed elsewhere on white, the slightly larger /
‘bolder’ font is used. The same size font would actually be perceived as
smaller.

(Edit: formatting.)

