You plan to have this talk? How about no.
A year ago I attended a tech conference. The agenda was promising and I was excited about the talks and the content. It was a very technical and seems to be a kind of “hands-on” conference, so I expected to learn a lot of great things and to become a better developer.
Unfortunately, when one of my colleagues asked me in the following day how was it, I couldn’t say that I gained too much from the conference. The talks were wonderful, but looking back- I couldn’t really learn too much and I couldn’t figure out how it can affect me or my work.
In this post I’ll try to group the bad talks that I’ve seen, and go over them:
Intro talks
Those are the most common talks and probably the easiest ones to give. It basically goes like this:
- Here is a new X
- This is why it’s awesome
- Now let me show you how you’re using it in an example project.
The 3rd part is basically slides on slides of code (or configurations) on how to do the basic stuff. Google did around zillion talks like this in the last Google.IO about Firebase.
Why I don’t think it’s effective:
This is not how you learn to code. You can read all The C Programming Language but it won’t be effective if you won’t write a single line of code by yourself. You need to be stuck, to tackled by some problems and understand how to solve them, this phase is crucial and you can’t just skip it.
I also think that putting code in slides is not that practical. There is also a great episode about it in the Toast podcast about No Code on Slides.
How to make it effective:
Most of the time this talks will be great as blog posts. This will also help your audience quickly copy the relevant blocks and try it by themselves (The number of times I copied a code from slides… Oh dear…).
You need an offline copy of this guide. You can’t expect people will start hacking during your talk or remember what you said when they finally decide to try this thing out.
And no- the slides are not enough.
Another solution is to quickly go over the basic stuff and jump to the cool stuff that this thing can do. This might be dangerous- be aware that if it’s too complicated. People might get lost and you won’t be able to do the basic stuff fast enough or they just won’t get the advanced stuff.
Google did it great when they build 3 chat apps simultaneity showing how easy to do it with Firebase.
You can combine the two and build a talk upon your blog post like I did with my Kotlin talk. It was based on my blog post but focus more on the cool things that cannot be achieved in Java.
Super advanced things
One time I was in a talk about problems in Hardware Acceleration on Android. I remember getting out of this talk and taught “Wow, I thought I know everything in Android but I didn’t understand a word in the last hour”. The only thing I took from this talk is to remember that the first thing I need to do, when I encounter a weird problem when displaying complicated view- is to email this guy.
Why I don’t think it’s effective:
The talk could be summed up in “Hi, my name is …, I’m fucking know everything about Hardware Acceleration. If you happen to have a question about it- you can call me”. It could save me 59 minutes.
How to make it effective:
If you have any tips or things that you learn on the hard way that no one knows- I’ll be happy if you’ll share them with me.
Remember- this is probably a cutting edge subject, that probably relevant to a very few. Try to make it as little specific as possible. You and I probably not going to run into the same problems. I would prefer to listen to tips and tools on how to approach this super advanced thing.
How we did things on our company
Sharing the story about how we’re doing X inside our company. Or how we decided to change Z to Y.
Why I don’t think it’s effective:
The origin of those talks is probably right, it meant to be a story. But there’s a different between a story about some girl in NY, to a story about John who lives in an unknown town in a place you’ll never visit.
I was in a lot of talks where unless you were in the exact situation like the presenter (or the company) you can’t really adapt the moral from the story.
How to make it effective:
Focus more on the conclusions, the things that you learned during the journey, the turns that you took, the stuff that you might be needed to do differently.
I’m less interested in what you did exactly because it’s probably was good for you and might not be the same for me.
Make it more generic by explaining more about why did you do some things instead of how you did it. I don’t learn a lot from you choosing X over Y, it will be great if you tell my the pro’s and con’s of each and I’ll be able to choose myself.
Promotional talks
Let me know if this intro sounds familiar:
Hi, we’re X and we want to show you a great something that we have for you.
Why I don’t think it’s effective:
Because it’s not a talk, it’s a selling peach. I came to this talk looking at you as a teacher and you see me as a customer. I wasn’t ready. I hate ads. And now I hate you.
How to make it effective:
If it’s your company conference (or you’re some kind of sponsor), it’s fine (in some levels). There are no free meals, and if you got a free pizza and beer don’t be surprised someone is trying to get something back.
Don’t hide it, be clear in the description of this talk, don’t let me disappoint and realize I was wrong 5 minutes into to talk.
Don’t get me wrong
I really in favor of public speaking and think that there are great talks out there. I don’t want to discourage people (like someone really listen to me or something…). I just want you to bring a better content to a bigger audience.
Actually, it’s just selfish post because I don’t want to be disappointed again in another conference =)
