I just finished my first talk. I had not prepared half the slides necessary the day of, nor practiced anything but the intro. I thought it would take 45 minutes but I went over to 1hr30mins. Only 10 mins of that went into livecoding, which I rehearsed a dozen times.
I had one part where I intended to livecode a hello world app for threeJS. The whole code was printed in my hand, so I read it through and typed it out. 3 minutes later, it didn't compile and I could tell my audience was getting bored, so I bailed and showed the end result.
At the end of it, I was told it was one of the better talks given at my local meetups and it was more like 3 talks in one. So that was a huge compliment. I didn't catch anyone falling asleep or leaving either, so that's a good sign. I kept it engaging by asking a question every 10-15minutes to test if my audience knew anything about the topic, at the 20% 40% 60% 80% and 100% points of the talk. I tried to tailor analogies based off things my audience would know, or the responses I got during q/a.
This past weekend I went to a google cloud conference and watched a dozen presentations. Some were good and informative, others way too slow-paced and/or hard to read on screen. Quality varied greatly. None of the presenters asked questions during talk. I feel like there was a missed oppurtunity here
I personally think the 80/20 rule applies here - 80% slides, 20% livecoding + asking questions to the audience. It's boring listening to one person talk the entire time, no matter how engaging they might be. The best presenters takes feedback from the audience straight into code. Those are always fun.
As a side note, the livecoding should really happen somewhere halfway during the presentation. Ideally, everything should be recorded on video anyhow as a backup.
I think it's also important to know your environment as well. I have a natural tendency to want to walk around if possible while presenting, because standing still is boring for the audience. Sometimes, the projector is incredibly hard to read due to poor lightning as well. So it's important to consider what color your slides are going to be. Font sizes, transitions, content per slide, opacity for highlighted code sections, etc should also be considered. Pure black backgrounds aren't that great, personally a linear-gradient darkgrey is more inviting. Important transition points should use a different slide color.
Lastly, bringing tools with you the day of talk. Laser pointer, extension pole, pointing to the slides, your phone + notes linked to slides.com, hardware for recording, tripod, lapel mic, camera, backup chargers, a mouse, downloaded slide assets for offline viewing, ready to show-code on vscode, memorized shortcut keys and/or extensions to show what keys are pressed, printed notes, etc. There's a surprisingly huge checklist of items you should have available as a presenter, at least if you treat it seriously.
I had one part where I intended to livecode a hello world app for threeJS. The whole code was printed in my hand, so I read it through and typed it out. 3 minutes later, it didn't compile and I could tell my audience was getting bored, so I bailed and showed the end result.
At the end of it, I was told it was one of the better talks given at my local meetups and it was more like 3 talks in one. So that was a huge compliment. I didn't catch anyone falling asleep or leaving either, so that's a good sign. I kept it engaging by asking a question every 10-15minutes to test if my audience knew anything about the topic, at the 20% 40% 60% 80% and 100% points of the talk. I tried to tailor analogies based off things my audience would know, or the responses I got during q/a.
This past weekend I went to a google cloud conference and watched a dozen presentations. Some were good and informative, others way too slow-paced and/or hard to read on screen. Quality varied greatly. None of the presenters asked questions during talk. I feel like there was a missed oppurtunity here
I personally think the 80/20 rule applies here - 80% slides, 20% livecoding + asking questions to the audience. It's boring listening to one person talk the entire time, no matter how engaging they might be. The best presenters takes feedback from the audience straight into code. Those are always fun.
As a side note, the livecoding should really happen somewhere halfway during the presentation. Ideally, everything should be recorded on video anyhow as a backup.
I think it's also important to know your environment as well. I have a natural tendency to want to walk around if possible while presenting, because standing still is boring for the audience. Sometimes, the projector is incredibly hard to read due to poor lightning as well. So it's important to consider what color your slides are going to be. Font sizes, transitions, content per slide, opacity for highlighted code sections, etc should also be considered. Pure black backgrounds aren't that great, personally a linear-gradient darkgrey is more inviting. Important transition points should use a different slide color.
Lastly, bringing tools with you the day of talk. Laser pointer, extension pole, pointing to the slides, your phone + notes linked to slides.com, hardware for recording, tripod, lapel mic, camera, backup chargers, a mouse, downloaded slide assets for offline viewing, ready to show-code on vscode, memorized shortcut keys and/or extensions to show what keys are pressed, printed notes, etc. There's a surprisingly huge checklist of items you should have available as a presenter, at least if you treat it seriously.
I wrote a post about my first talk and things I wish I did right. https://vincentntang.com/things-wish-knew-first-tech-talk/