5 things you need to know when presenting to technical audiences

Alttaf Hussain
Sep 7, 2018 · 2 min read

Know your audience

The most important thing to understand is your audience. Even amongst technical crowds, there are levels to which you drill down. Your tone and pitch must be perfect to keep them engaged at the same time not go way over their heads.

In my view they fall into 3 categories:

  1. The Helicopter Pilot — This is a person who doesn’t want to get bogged down with the details but wants to understand the core concept and how it all fits together, generally speaking this is the most common type of audience. These folks are generally happy with a demo and don’t need further info.
  2. The Watch Tower Guard — This is someone who wants to know how the parts of any idea fit together with details of its implementation. It is not uncommon for these audiences to want to see a coding walk through and explanation of the decisions made and coding clarity.
  3. The Uber driver —This person needs to know exactly how the thing works with blue prints, code and a complete autopsy of the concept. These audiences are generally suited to a workshop rather than a presentation.

Soft skills

As with any type of presentation you have to get the basics right. Your AV has to be on point, you need to speak clearly, at an appropriate volume and make plenty of eye contact with the audience. Don’t rush your words and if you get ruffled just stop and gather your thoughts. When speaking through technical ideas you always have to give context before you get to the details, so always be aware when speaking that there may be people who don’t know what you are talking about. Therefore always give context or set expectations before you present.

Energy & Humour

Make light of the situation don’t take yourself too seriously as this could lead to you having a meltdown on stage. Take your time and try to enjoy it. Make jokes that you would laugh at because the chances are the people you are presenting to are techies like you.

Get your facts straight

Don’t waffle. You will get pulled up on any points that are not clear and if you are not pulled up people will just think you are a blithering idiot who doesn’t really know what they are doing.

Demos

Demos go wrong. It just happens. we have seen it happen at million dollar tech launches. So always have a plan B, screenshots, videos and if all else fails paper.

Conclusion

Presenting to technical audiences is like presenting to anyone else but with the added challenge of pitching it at the right level to hit that sweet spot.

Alttaf Hussain

Keen Technologist in the Digital Identity space. Working for a revolutionary new tech start up YOTI trying to give data back to the users.

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