Listening to Long Technical Talks

UNIT-II

5. LISTENING TO LONG TECHNICAL TALKS

Technical talks cover a wide range of technical concepts and ideas from how a technology or process works, to how to perform a specific task, to lessons learned in a project.

They are typically broadcast live, recorded and posted so that everyone can watch them.

How to prepare a technical talk:

Goals: Convey good, new and useful information Keep the audience attention

Write a thesis: Write a thesis on the select topic. Collect information and derive new information. A clear, simple thesis will help guide the audience.

Research: Gather any information relevant to the thesis. Don't worry about form or structure. Focus on surveying any possible topics to cover.

Outline: Take all that information and arrange it roughly but orderly. Don't worry about polishing. Some slides can say "diagram of X" or "code sample Y".

Rehearse: Give the talk as if the slides were finished. Remove the unnecessary slides. Include the important information left out.

Practice: Even a single rehearsal makes a big difference in talk quality. It's like testing the speaker's code before pushing it to prod.bas agbelwood swing10

Polish: Fix all the problems discovered in rehearsal. Fill in "todos" with actual diagrams and code. Finalize the slide content.

Repeat: Rehearse until the speakers feel comfortable with the talk. Rehearsals are a must if the topic is difficult or unfamiliar.

Slide Tips:

Use a few words: It's called a "talk", not a "read." Don't include all information. Include only the clues. If the audience could get all the content from just the slides alone, then there is no need of a speaker.

Take advantage of the medium. Use text to emphasize major points but use the speaker's voice to elaborate.

Minimize the speaker's code samples: Show as little code as possible or abbreviations ("...") to shorten code samples.

Reveal content incrementally: If a slide is prepared with five bullet points, audience will read all five at once and will not concentrate on what the speaker speaks. If the slide reveals one by one, the audience will follow along with the speaker.

The same applies for code. Either reveal code piece-by-piece or progressively highlight different portions of the code.

Don't worry about making beautiful slides: Don't concentrate on decorative aspects. Audience comes for information not to see decoration. White backgrounds with black text are enough.