| >> 3) Speak about something you know very well. +1 (or something you are passionate about) >> 4) Reharse. One of the biggest problem with presentation newbies is that they're unable to keep the proper timing. You may not need full rehearsal. However: (A) Measure your velocity (slides per minute). Add ~30% for audience interactions including Q&A, and another ten minutes for setup issues. (B) Watch out for excessive Uh's, Um's, "you know", etc. Remind yourself, giving tech talks is nothing special. You need to be natural and just walk in. >> 5) Don't waste your audience time. Keep your talk as short as possible; don't try saying everything, try to say the most important and useful things. +1. Distilling and simplifying the messages is super-critical. Your audience would still probably not understand most of the talk. So you need to overdo on this to compensate. >> 6) Focus on your speech, not on the slides. The slides should support you, you should not be reading slides aloud. Focus on the slides too. In my experience, making the slides self-sufficient does no harm. Rather it helps in two ways: (A) It prepares you more. Even if your slides are self-sufficient and "filled", you'll still have more to say than the slides anyways since during preparations, your research efforts and mental churn will fill you with a lot more thoughts than what the slides say. (B) Slides become ready for offline sharing after the talk, giving you more bang for the buck. |