My Gripes With Tech Talks

published on Dec 08 2024

I often go to conferences (have been to three this year), and watch a lot of technical presentations on YouTube. In other words, I watch a lot of people engage in public speaking. It brings me no joy to say that many people doing these talks (at conferences or in other contexts), struggle with giving a proper technical presentation.

I don't mean to say they don't understand the topic they are speaking about. What's lacking is the ability to present it in a manner that ensures the audience who are not already experts in that one specific subject, retain something at the end of the talk.

This problem, while sort of shallow and "cosmetic", actually hinders the spread of valuable knowledge that these accomplished professionals are trying to disseminate. As someone who has been a speaker before, it frustrates me that totally fixable issues make technical content less accessible and less enjoyable.

In fact, it frustrates me enough that I've decided to write about it. It's not that I'm some sort of public speaking guru - I'm a regular engineer who sometimes has to present technical topics to a technical audience. I just have a few annoyances that I've accumulated over the years as a listener. If you ever give a talk or preso, I hope this list will help you make your stuff better. Also, please remember that all of this is coming from a genuine place - I deeply appreciate people sharing their expertise no matter how it's packaged, and am only trying to give constructive feedback.

Slides

There are so. many. bad. slides. The one issue I see most often is cramming a lot of information into a slide and then expecting the audience to parse that information while also following along with what the speaker is saying.

Problem is, I don't possess a superhuman ability to parse and understand a text-and-diagram-ridden projector screen in under 5 seconds. So I have a choice: either read the slide and lose track of what's being said, or ignore the slide and listen to the speaker intently. The latter isn't really a solution though, because the speaker might somehow rely on an assumption that I have actually read the information in front of me.

Another problem that I see often is the speaker just reading back their slides in a monotonous voice. This is more tolerable than the above-mentioned onslaught of information, but makes for a kind of dull listening experience, which risks losing the audience's attention (though watching this type of talk on YouTube late at night makes for a great sleeping aid).

As an aside, should mention that I just generally kind of hate slides. Maybe it's a cultural thing. When I studied at the university back in the day, our lecturers would never use slides, only blackboard and chalk. That let me give my undivided attention to the speaker, and actually follow along as they proved a theorem or whatever -- the proof materialized slowly in front of me instead of popping up at the press of a button. I find that way of teaching - and yes, when given a talk, you are teaching - more effective than a slideshow.

Be that as it may, slides are usually the only presentation tool afforded to you, and you should try to get better at making them. I personally like it when speakers keep their slides as light as possible: as a rule of thumb, the audience's attention should be on you and your words, not the slides. So, only include illustrations, (small) code snippets, and brief sentences summarizing the main points you're about to make (preferably in large, easy-to read font). No detailed tables or data dumps, no walls of text, and if you decide to include a graph, it should be on a separate slide and you should explain to the audience how to read it. Details can be left in speaker's notes.

Ideally, slides should serve only an illustrative purpose. Don't read from them, use them as a guide. Ideally, one should be able to get the gist of what you're saying by only listening to you speak. It's okay to need visual aid in a few places, but if the talk is completely impenetrable without slides, or if the content of the slides and the talk are exactly one and the same, then it's a sure signal that things have gone south.

Rehearse. Your. Talk.

You know what I don't like? Hearing "uuuum"s and "uuh"s after every sentence, along with the occasional "like". This "verbal cruft" might be imperceptible in everyday situations, but in a structured setting it somehow becomes very distracting. Now, I realize that most people will speak like that if put on the spot. Unless public speaking or media appearances are a regular part of what you do, you will fall into these patterns of speech - without even realizing it - on the rare occasion that you do have to talk to an audience. I struggle with this a lot, and the thing that helps me is knowing ahead of time what exactly I need to say.

There's one wrinkle in all of this: in order to know what you need to say, you have to prepare well in advance. You need to have everything planned out, and do more than a few "dry runs". Amazingly, it turns out, a lot of people don't do this and just wing it, or only give themselves a few days to prepare. But a few days is simply not enough to prepare an accessible and eloquent presentation on a complex subject.

Unless you are on a short notice, there is really no excuse to not rehearse the shit out of your talk. Normally, you'll know that you'll be speaking months in advance. Make use of that time. Prep your slides and rehearse parts of the talk as you write them. When you have the entire thing ready and planned out, do more rehearsals WITH A TIMER. See if you're fitting in the allotted time limit. Record yourself and watch it back with a critical eye. Adjust based on your observations.

One important thing to mention here is that I'm NOT telling you to remember every single line word-for-word. Of course, if you happen to find just the right turn of phrase, feel free to memorize and use it, but what I'm definitely NOT suggesting is memorizing the whole script and reading it back in a droning manner. Just have a general idea of what your next few sentences are going to look like - this will be enough for you to speak confidently, without falling back to prolonged "uuuuh"s.

Rehearsing is really a cheat code. At the base level, it will help you stay on track, sound confident, get rid of verbal cruft and avoid fumbling your words. More importantly, it can help you imporove the actual content of your talk: once you listen to yourself speak, you'll start getting an idea for what needs tweaking, what needs to be cut, etc.

Bottom line: rehearse. your. damn. talk.

Diction Issues

There are four problems with how people tend to speak that make it difficult for me to understand what they're saying: mumbling/slurred speech, speaking too softly, speaking too fast and speaking too slow. Like with verbal cruft, it's almost imperceptible one-on-one, but becomes magnified during a large structured monologue. I think these problems are generally easy to fix if you're consciously aware of them, but you have to be aware of them first. And the only way you'll become aware is if you practice in advance. By the way, did I tell you to rehearse your talk?

Note that I do NOT count accents as "diction issues". When presenting in a language that is not native to you, you could have a pretty thick accent, but if you work on your speech cadence, volume and enunciation, you can be more legible than a native speaker who doesn't work on those things. Listeners can adapt to peculiarities of an unfamiliar accent after just a few minutes.

Knowing what to say

Also known as "knowing what to NOT say".

If you've somehow ended up as a speaker at a technical conference, it is safe to assume that you possess a certain level of expertise on some specific subject and could talk about it for hours. The flip side of this - it can be daunting to try and express all of that knowledge in a structured way, for an audience that hasn't spent the past N years of their life thinking about the same problems. What details should you call attention to? What should you gloss over? Another issue that can creep up is plain old vanity: you might be tempted to show your industry colleagues just how smart and cool you are.

To deal with this, before starting to work on a presentation, ask yourself what is the one thing you'd like to impart on the audience when all is said and done. Work backwards from that. Before including something, consider whether it serves your stated goal. Skip on things that are mere distractions, or just serve to feed your ego. In fact, tell your ego that producing a tight, accessible, well-researched talk with no irrelevant fluff is what makes one cool, smart and attractive :-)

Humor

I've seen a fair share of delighfully funny talks. Humor can be very effective at breaking ice, or keeping the audience engaged.

The only problem is when people think they are being funny but actually they're really not. I'm not talking about cringe-inducing puns or dad jokes here, but stuff that veers into being crude, gross or offensive. Even if it's legitimately funny, not everything that belongs in a comedy club also belongs in a professional setting. Different people have different senses of humor, your audience didn't come to be entertained, so don't risk alienating them for the sake of a stupid joke.

At SIGGRAPH 2024, one of the presenters made an off-color sexist joke during his talk, and a few women from the audience got up and left. I don't know what could possibly possess a fully grown adult to blurt out embarassing shit like that to a large audience, in a professional setting, with rolling cameras. As a result, what should have been a nice educational and informative time, turned into a negative experience and instead of respect the speaker garnered the scorn of his peers. Just don't be that guy.

You're probably thinking: "this couldn't be me. I would never do that". But no, you're wrong. It could totally be you. Therefore, if you even have to think whether a joke is too risque, just skip it. This is not a comedy show after all.

Don't be Afraid

I don't mind being the center of attention whatsoever. I have never had stage fright and can't offer any insights on how to overcome it. But I know it's a real issue for a lot of people. The best I can offer here - just know that it's not an adversarial environment. The audience is rooting for you, and those who aren't are mentally checked out. The same applies to questions. It's not an exam, you're not being graded, and "I don't know", or "let's talk offline" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

So, to recap: know what to say, rehearse your talk, make good slides, be respectful and do not be afraid. Now go knock that preso out of the park :-)

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