Speaking about Speaking, Part 2 — Organizing Content
This is the second in a series of posts about giving talks at technical conferences. Part 1 discusses how I prepare myself before a talk. Future posts will cover preparing the physical space of the stage, giving the talk itself, responding to questions, and learning after the fact.
Content is King
The reason people came to see your technical talk in the first place is for your content. The best presentation style in the world, the funniest jokes, or the wittiest repartee won’t make up for a poorly organized or poorly expressed set of ideas. By contrast, exciting content can make up for a pretty lackadaisical style. It’s best to deliver both, though!
For an entirely new talk, I typically end up spending at least 3 full days writing and revising. I’ve read a rule of thumb that it takes one hour of preparation for every minute of speaking time. That seems a bit on the high side, if it’s a topic you know well. But no matter how you cut it, it is a lot of time and effort — so don’t leave it until the last minute (as I have done on more than one occasion!).
Every writer (and you are writing a presentation) has their own process. Mine is an recursive approach of brainstorming, then organization, then refinement.
Brainstorming
In the brainstorming phase, the goal is to produce all the ideas and topics I might want to discuss, points I might want to make, etc. I write down all the topics or ideas I want to discuss, in no particular order, without editing. These days, depending on where I am, I might use the Notes app on my phone or a Google doc on my laptop. But I’ve actually found time and again that pen and paper in a notebook is still the most flexible — because it allows me to use text, or shorthand symbols, or diagrams.
Whatever the form, it’s best to leave it aside once you’ve exhausted your initial brainstorming and let your mind work on it in the background. Some of my best ideas have come days later.
I also don’t stop to go deep into any particular area at this point. I don’t (re-)read papers or links now; I just make a note to myself to do that later. The idea is to sustain the flow of creative ideas without censoring or interrupting them.
Organizing
In the organization phase, the goal is to produce a candidate skeleton or outline for the talk. I’ll almost certainly end up discarding or merging sections, so I don’t get too worked up about getting them perfect the first time. I simply want to organize my thoughts into sections which make sense, and ideally, flow from one to the other.
I’ll often take a pass through the brainstorming doc and mark each entry with one of the sections (often cleverly named “A”, “B”, “C”, etc.). Then I’ll bring up a different part of my working doc, or a different page in my notebook, for each section. I’ll transfer each brainstorming entry to its appropriate section, and cross it out when I’ve done that.
Inevitably I end up with orphan ideas that don’t fit well into any section. So maybe I’m missing a section, or — more likely — that particular idea doesn’t really belong anywhere.
Once several related ideas are in a section, it often becomes obvious that some things are missing and new ideas occur to me here as well, so the brainstorming — now within a section — begins anew.
Now I try to put the sections into some order that flows and makes sense.
Refining
In the refinement phase, the goal is to take the draft of the structure and make it into an initial draft of the talk. I usually do this section by section to keep myself focused, but I don’t worry too much if I end up jumping around as things occur to me.
Now is the first time I start to use slides. The sections are firmed up enough, and I’ve done enough of the initial organization and ordering, that it’s possible to make draft slides.
This is a brutal process of editing out extraneous thoughts and leaving just the essence. Just as with movie editing, a lot is left on the cutting room floor. I tend to use a poor-man’s version control strategy here, saving different versions of the presentation file as _v0, _v1, _v2, etc.
Presentation Structure
In my presentations, I tend to favor a pretty organized structure with bullets that can be easily read. Some presentations are meant to be heard, others to be read, and mine are definitely in the latter category. If someone only had the slides and did not have the audio or video, I ask myself, could they make sense of it? Do they stand alone and tell a story?
I’ve also heard the opinion that this is a particularly boring way to give a presentation and should be avoided at all costs. All I can say is that it has worked well for me for the past 11 years :-). YMMV. Perhaps it is the former debater in me, but I definitely find it easier to follow an argument that has an explicit structure.
Once upon a time I heard a similar opinion about the “five paragraph expository essay”. In high school, we regularly practiced writing essays with introductions, body paragraphs — each with its topic sentence — and conclusions. It reinforced organization, structured thought, and favored clarity. When I went to university, though, one of the first things my Humanities instructor told us was to throw that all out the window — it was sophomoric and boring and would not be received well.
I’m pretty stubborn, though (runs in the family — see the chapter on my father in Dealers of Lightning, called “The Pariahs”). All I can say is that I continued to write in the way I felt worked well, trying to make a well-formed argument in an organized way. And ironically, that same instructor would return my papers with praise for their clarity (and nominated them a few times for student writing awards ;-). So let’s just say that I’m not entirely sold on the idea that every presentation should replace explicit organization with a sea of images and memes.
Background and Agenda
I start with a slide on Background, to make it clear where the ideas and lessons are coming from. Particularly for a technical talk, context is very important. (It would also be more than a little arrogant to assume everyone in the audience knows my relevant background intimately)
Then I give a short Agenda with “signposts” for each section. Best, as with that high school essay format, to keep the number of sections to 3 or 4. But sometimes you have to break the rules …
As I progress through the talk, I highlight the signpost for the section we are on.
Slide Structure
Within each slide, I like to use animation to progressively reveal each bullet as I talk to it.
I find that this gives a sense of moving forward, and also leaves a more fully-completed thought by the end of the slide.
I also shamelessly use the bullets as cues while presenting to remind myself what I am going to say next. I don’t tend to use speaker notes because the slides themselves are those notes :-). If I am trying to make the slides readable offline by the audience, they can be readable online by me — what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
And while I don’t tend to do a presentation full of them, I do regularly intersperse “tweetable” meme slides for emphasis.
It particularly helps “tweetability” if you include your twitter handle and other contact info on most slides as well.
A Picture Is Worth 10,000 Words
You’ll see that these slides above are mostly words, but combining words and pictures is even better, especially when making a subtle point about architectural technique:
or
I will admit openly, though, that I don’t usually end up doing really good (read: any) diagrams out of the gate. I usually prioritize working hard on the content the first time around, and I always end up being pressed for time. So I don’t usually put in all the diagrams I’d like until the second or third iteration of a talk.
Concluding Thoughts
Much has been written about writing, and there are as many processes for writing as there are writers. If you have read this far, I hope you found some of these tips useful in your own presentations. Please let me know in the comments if you have further suggestions.
So, as I do in most talks, I’ll end with a thank you slide.
