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How to Give a Good Talk

(blog.sigplan.org)
271 points pykello | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 18:42 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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derangedHorse ◴[03 Sep 25 11:35 UTC] No.45114549[source]▶
Listing out the categories of value proposition is useful when considering what to include in a talk, but in my experience, the entertainment part is just as crucial to getting people’s attention. I’d be interested in seeing how people approach entertainment in a technical context and how it can be used to solidify a talk’s main ideas.
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1. ludicity ◴[03 Sep 25 12:44 UTC] No.45115046[source]▶
I've only given talks to small audiences but they were very well-received. I often focus on humour, partially because I don't really have the background to deep-dive technical material hard enough for that to be interesting in-and-of-itself (maybe this is imposter syndrome).

It is very important though. It's very easy to lose an audience, and the truth is a lot of the speakers before you will likely range from slightly boring to extremely boring. The audience can be primed to totally clock out if you don't grab them immediately and keep them for the whole thing.