on giving technical presentations (a rant)

my 2c (rant) on givingtechnical presentations

my first and last text-only slidedeck ;)

hastily typed byAnge Albertini

www.corkami.com

disclaimer:I’m no award-winning

presenterbut I saw too many ‘awesome presentations’

where the person on stage just read out loud a blog post

instead of giving a good presentation.and they presented the same thing the month before.

TBH we were just listening to show respectfor the technical level of the presenter,

but the prezo really sucked.

reminder:don’t take it personallyjust a generic rant from a normal guy:

I have no cert, no fancy education,I never presented at $LeetCon

you can close this window now.

tell a story…rehearse a lot…

a picture is worth…bullet points…

don’t be an assh*le...the usual advice

<insert fancy title here>with buzzwords!

or cool sentences like:“...for fun & profit”

“yo dawg, I herd you like...”

How many great music bands called their first albums “1”, “2”, “3”...did that matter ?

my bio is awesomeI’ve been XX years in the industry

I code/break stuffmy employer is awesome and hiring

does saying that make any difference?

let’s make my bio bigger with really unrelated stuff

wow, so you’re awesome at $sport ?

ever heard Tom Morello mentioning he attended Harvard during a concert ?

or Brian May talking about astrophysics between 2 songs ?

my life is awesomeAKA: do you really need yet another real life pic?

I’m really happy to see a picture of your desk!oohh, I have the same mousepad !

and that toy that anybody can get at thinkgeek!!just for a prezo that can be summarized in 5 mins?

define the audienceboth lower and upper limits of technical details

use non-technical analogieswhen possible

we’re techies, but it’s always nice to be able to explain it to non-techies.

and our kids.

refrain from showing something too technicalif only one person in the audience gets it,

then better just mention itand put it in an extra document

it’s about following an argument,not random knowledge stuffing

don’t show off with unrelated stuff,it’s just a distraction

despite the potential WOW effect

showing code doesn’t make it always better

processing any programming language takes time,so you may want to:- focus on describing what’s happening- show the code in extra ‘offline’ document

clean-up screenshotsdo you really need to show IDA offsets?

(or the full IDE/desktop/whatever)

every time?

nvm, we can set ProcessDetails=0 in eyes.cfg

limit text as much as possibleAKA: are you a lawyer redacting a EULA?

keep extra details for an extra document such as :- extra slides after the conclusion- offline version of the slides- article- detailed blog post

but this deck is text-only !!!it wasn’t presented live anywhere ;)

slides shouldn’t be boring.PoCs should be sexy.

but it’s OK, if you have nothing to show.(or just add another meme !!!)

add another meme plzthey’re so funny !!

we’ve never seen them before !!

“sorry, I started my slides yesterday”

“I’m too leet for those of you who invested a lot of effort to come and attend”

“this is the same presentation I did last year”

“I’m too leet to make some extra effort”or maybe

“the person who did the actual research had no more time for it,

I’m just the show puppet”

“I actually improved this prezo,but I kept it for $leetcon”

“I’m really too leet for you, s*ckers”

“I don’t have the time for fancy slides”

a suggestion to save your precious time:- go back to your work desk- paste your slides’ text into pastebin- tweet the linkvoilà!

demos failure canhappen to everyone

but at least, a fallback slide/video recording would have been nice

aka “when a guitar string is broken on stage, the drummer starts a solo”

you may never be completely ready...

but well prepared may be enough...

make a test presentationwith your friendsto feel more comfortable…

to see the public’s reaction…to answer further questions in advance...

vendor pitch?don’t even get me started

Conclusion

reminder:don’t take rants seriouslywe still love you for your awesome research

provided it’s really awesome, that is:not just your fancy smile or haircut.

the endyou can close this window now...

hey, you jumped to the end!

(awww, french guys aren’t funny anyway)