Titbits to Improve a Technical Talk

Titbits to Improve a Technical Talk:

A brief self-introduction is enough. "Hello, my name is -------- and I work on Artificial Intelligence, -----------  My contact information is ----------- My email id is My website is ---------

Don't burden the audience with so much of information in one sitting.

Slides plastered with words (like long quotes), large complex architecture diagrams, and live coding demos that span hundreds of lines of code - these all seem reasonable because the speaker is familiar with the topic and the audience does not know much. Talk burdened with information may lose audience. Keep it simple and take time explaining it.

If the speakers get up on stage and act like a zombie, the audience will get bored. Instead, get pumped up and excited! People love an animated speaker. The audience likes a lively speech.

The speaker should not stick to notes or script always. Key note points are fine. The speaker should have a mental sketch on what to speak and what to speak one by one.

The speaker should complete the talk before the audience loses attention. Allow the audience to ask questions afterwards. Interactive session in any talk is important. The speech can be interactive or at least there can be an interactive session for ten to fifteen minutes at the end.

Start to give speech with low-stakes environment. An internal talk at the speaker's company is a great way to start. Small local meet-ups are often looking for speakers.

Plan the maiden speech for fifteen minutes. If the speaker attempts to speak for an hour in his first speech, there may be problems for him/her.

Some of the technical talks are

1. What is neural architecture search?

2. What deep mind's alpha code is and isn't?

3. What Al researchers can learn from the self-assembling brain?

Example 9

Engineers beyond engineering the art of being an engineer: Philippe Rival at

TEDXImperialCollege

https://youtu.be/cOIJGGgaSIY

Example 10

TEDXUIUC - David E. Goldberg - 7 Missing Basics of Engineering

https://youtu.be/Rp9PfqUQ8a4

Exercise

1. Give a short technical talk on "What is Data Augmentation"?