How to Give a Good Talk

https://blog.sigplan.org/2025/03/31/how-to-give-a-good-talk/

by pykello • 11 months ago

271 82 11 months ago

blog.sigplan.org

JohnKemeny3• 11 months ago

Every talk must begin with its motivation

Must is a strong word. Surely there exist good presentations that begin with something else.

JohnKemeny3• 11 months ago

The audience cannot care about your work until they understand the ‘value proposition’, to use still more contemporary capitalist jargon.

Hard disagree.

It is easy to imagine a problem that just sounds FUN.

spicyusername• 11 months ago

Then "fun" is the value proposition.

derangedHorse2• 11 months ago

One can argue there’s a value proposition inherent in solving an interesting problem. It reminds me of the paper on optimal tip to tip efficiency:

https://ia800308.us.archive.org/32/items/pdfy-tG1MuMpwvrML6Q...

https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Optimal_Tip-to-Tip_Ef...

IAmBroom• 11 months ago

To you.

These rules are not, "Skip one and you'll lose the whole audience."

They are, "Do this and you'll grab an optimum amount of attention and retention."

mhandley• 11 months ago

It's definitely possible to break the rules. In fact, to give a truly outstanding talk that everyone remembers, you probably have to break the rules (speaking as someone who coded an entire Sigcomm presentation in a 3d game engine). But most early career researchers, for whom this advice is presumably intended, are not good enough at giving talks for that to be a good idea. In fact most tenured professors aren't too. If you do break the rules, you need to have a very clear idea in your head as to how you're going to pull it off, and a good idea of who your audience is and how they'll perceive it, and those are both hard to achieve without a lot of experience.

derangedHorse2• 11 months ago

Listing out the categories of value proposition is useful when considering what to include in a talk, but in my experience, the entertainment part is just as crucial to getting people’s attention. I’d be interested in seeing how people approach entertainment in a technical context and how it can be used to solidify a talk’s main ideas.

bluGill• 11 months ago

There are lots of talks videoed and put on youtube. Cppcon is professionally edited and it shows in quality, others are cell phone in the crowd. Watch a few and you can see plenty of great examples. Almost nobody is singing/dancing, but many are entertaining despite what is ultimately a dry subject

martypitt• 11 months ago

I've given a few talks at semi-big conferences, and I've always worked hard on the "entertain" part - I think it's really important.

BUT (and it's a big but), it adds a second axis of subjectvity. Already, I'm out there talking about a thing which I think is "interesting" and "worthy" subject matter of other peoples time. Now, I'm adding "and is delivered in an entertaining way".

For me - that's humour - both in the delivery, and in the slides I show. But - like anything - it doesn't always land.

And, when it doesn't -- it's a very very long awkward talk. I've been on speaking circuts where a conference goes to multiple cities (same country), and the talk went down very well in one city, and bombed in another. Things like timing matter (after lunch sucks).

Also, The author lists the requirements as "inform, educate and entertain" -- and I'd add -- "in that order". I've cut things from my talk because they were funny (IMO), but ultimately didn't support the content of the talk enough. After all -- This is a tech talk, not a standup routine.

All three are very hard to do well -- but I do agree with the author in that's it's the speakers job to do all three.

indiosmo• 11 months ago

Andrei Alexandrescu comes to mind as someone who does this often. Plenty of talks on youtube.

TheAmazingRace• 11 months ago

The co-creator of D 2.0? That guy is a legend.

ludicity• 11 months ago

I've only given talks to small audiences but they were very well-received. I often focus on humour, partially because I don't really have the background to deep-dive technical material hard enough for that to be interesting in-and-of-itself (maybe this is imposter syndrome).

It is very important though. It's very easy to lose an audience, and the truth is a lot of the speakers before you will likely range from slightly boring to extremely boring. The audience can be primed to totally clock out if you don't grab them immediately and keep them for the whole thing.

n4r9• 11 months ago

I read some advice from an experienced academic about this which stuck with me (unfortunately can't remember who!).

If you want to keep people's attention, make every slide as minimally simple as possible. Like one diagram and maybe a few words. Listing out bullet points of full sentences might feel efficient but it's no better than just saying what you would have written. And lots of text is a lot more glaze-inducing for most of the audience. You can point to supplementary docs for detail.

Another idea is to break up longer talks (30min+) in two with some slides of nice photos you've taken.

raesene93• 11 months ago

Another reason to avoid walls of text on slides, is that attendees will spend the time reading the slide, not listening to the talk.

If you want to have something for attendees to refer back to after the talk, a complementary blog/whitepaper is a better idea than putting all your details in the talk slides

matwood• 11 months ago

A pet peeve of mine are slides with walls of text. I put a few bullets or graphic on a slide mainly as a signpost for myself. By the time I give a presentation I've practiced enough that I can see any slide and go from there.

phrotoma• 11 months ago

You want to watch a few talks by James Mickens.

raesene93• 11 months ago

he does great talks, but important to note that not everyone can emulate him well :)

raesene93• 11 months ago

One point that's important on the "entertain" front is that it doesn't need to mean humour/jokes. More likely it's things like well designed slides, interactive elements like demos or anecdotes to break up technical content.

Humour can work in presentations but it's really hard to pull off well. A lot of jokes rely on things like shared background/experience/cultural touchstones, so tricky to do in a conference where you might not know those things about your audience.

If you do use humour, I'd recommend not making it core to the talk, so if people don't get the jokes, it doesn't ruin the talk for them. Also generally use it sparingly, the odd meme can be funny, one on every slide probably not a great idea.

seyz• 11 months ago

TL;DR: A good conference talk delivers value by informing (what you did and why it matters), educating (portable insights), and entertaining (keeping attention) all while aligning with the community’s shared values.

dvcoolarun• 11 months ago

I believe giving a talk in a boring manner never helps; it should be influenced by humor, like learning from comedians and how they practice public speaking.

jmmv• 11 months ago

The content in the article is good and important. That said, I don’t find it “practical” enough so… I’ll link to my own tips on preparing and giving presentations ;-)

https://jmmv.dev/2020/07/presentation-tips.html

https://jmmv.dev/2020/07/presentation-preparation.html

(These were originally Twitter threads so apologies for the abuse of emojis hehe.)

I used to dread speaking in public but have come to enjoy it, and all of the above tips have made it easier over time. I think the vast majority of them came to me from more experienced presenters (and even a class I took in college about public speaking).

As others have mentioned in the discussion below, keeping it fun and providing the motivation for the talk are important. And my pet peeve is to remind people that “your slides are not the presentation: what you say is”.

Nemi• 11 months ago

These are all great tips, and mirror my admittedly few attempts at public speaking. But one thing that really must be internalized is that, for an hour presentation, you should spend many many hours preparing. If you do this, you will be engaging, cool and calm, and can easily add in humor. Without the preparation you will be stressed and your audience will be bored, or worse, embarrassed for you.

parpfish• 11 months ago

i've found that something even better than excessive preparation (excessive prep is great -- specially pay attention to transitions and segues!) is letting yourself be honest about the content.

my most stressful talks were the times i was early in my career and i had to present the results from some analysis or experiment that i knew was kind of weak or relied on some iffy assumptions. i felt like i had to blow everybody away and i was always dreading some sharp-eyed audience member asking a pointed question that would make the whole thing blow up. my imposter syndrome didn't help, but i felt like i was some sort of slick salesman that had a pull a con and then sneak out without getting caught.

instead, be willing to say i don't know. be upfront with things that make you uneasy. it disarms your sharpest critics and makes it less about an antagonistic you-vs-the-audience and turns it into more of a collaborative you-working-with-the-audience.

radlad2• 11 months ago

I used to dread speaking in public but have come to enjoy it, and all of the above tips have made it easier over time.

I'm just going to drop a quick tip that might be helpful to people with severe anxiety around public speaking: beta blockers (specifically propranolol.) Even when prepared and knowledgeable, and in a small group setting, I often found my leg shaking uncontrollably, and my throat locking up on me, leading to stammering, etc. Beta blockers effectively managed these involuntary symptoms, which also improved my confidence, and vastly improved my presentations, without sedating effects.

WaltPurvis• 11 months ago

Interesting. Do you just take one, shortly before your talk, or do you take it consistently, or what? I know a couple people who take propranolol every day to manage an elevated heart rate, but what kind of protocol do you follow?

socalgal22• 11 months ago

I find it fascinating that people, myself included, get nervous about speaking in public. Logically, I and most people can talk at the dinner table in front of my family. Most people can be at a party with friends and announce something "Time for Cake!", "Hey! Group Photo!". Most people can be in group of 4-8 friends and say something to all of them "Hey, how about pizza?" etc.... Most people can be in team meeting and state what they are working on, what problems they're having, and give their opinion.

In a certain sense, public speaking is no different than those situation. Even better, the people you're in front of you don't really care about, where as you do care about your family and friends. In other words, it should be that embarrassing yourself in front of friends and family "should" be the worse thing since you will have to face them again where as you won't have to face these strangers you're speaking in front of.

And yet, even though I've given ~10 public talks I still feel those butterflies, at least until the talk actually starts. Once it starts, for me, they go away. That assumes I know my topic. I'd say a best person talk at a wedding is more nerve wracking, for me, than a talk about anything I'm working on. I can talk about what I'm working on easily because I know it inside and out. Sure I need to practice my talk but if someone came up to me in a hall and asked me about my work I could talk their ear off with no practice. Conversely, the wedding talk topic is not a topic I know inside and out, hence it's harder, at least for me.

I know it was certainly nerve racking the first time I had to give a public talk at school. I wonder if the teacher had asked in private, something like

Teacher: Are you nervous about your talk?

Student: Super nervous

Teacher: Do you have a favorite video game?

Student: Yea, Minecraft

Teacher: What do you love about it.

Student: (with teach prompting, goes on for 5-10 minutes what things they love about Minecraft, things they made, experiences they had...)

Teacher: You just gave a public talk to an audience of 1. Just organize and practice a little and you'll do great!

I don't know if that would help but I'd like to think it would.

macintux2• 11 months ago

Thanks for reminding me that I have a gist I (occasionally) keep updated with resources like yours. Added to https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837.

sethammons• 11 months ago

point 7 on the q&a slide, very nice. I hadn't heard that one before

bprater• 11 months ago

Start your talk by telling a little story about yourself and bridge it to your topic. In many of the talks I've listened to - I've felt more connected instantly to the speaker than any other technique, including comedy.

ehutch793• 11 months ago

Please don't. I don't want to hear about your fathers love of swedish joinery for 10 minutes (yes this happened)

IshKebab• 11 months ago

I think the emphasis is on "little". I don't mind 30 seconds of talking about your father's love of Swedish joinery. Also it needs a payoff. There's no point just explaining how your father loves Swedish joinery apropos of nothing.

arduanika2• 11 months ago

Pro-tip: do this for online recipes too. People love it!

leak• 11 months ago

I highly recommend Toastmasters. Best place to practice giving a speech in front of a group of people that you don't know. They have chapters all around the world.

https://www.toastmasters.org/

ozim• 11 months ago

Feels like a cult, never heard a bad thing about them.

Just my internal guts feeling that probably is wrong.

giancarlostoro• 11 months ago

Yeah, agreed. But it also gets you comfortable presenting, I was recommended them by a trusted friend as well. The overtly marketing hype on their website reminds me of those motivational speaker cults.

triceratops2• 11 months ago

They don't take all your money or isolate you from your friends and family. If it's a cult, it's of the harmless variety.

thimkerbell• 11 months ago

Be alert for any recommendations to sound more certain than you are.

jamesblonde2• 11 months ago

Had great fun with them when I was 16 years old. They brought us to the pub for a few drinks. The good old days.

high_byte• 11 months ago

reminds me of "How to Speak"

https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY

macintux2• 11 months ago

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095849

arduanika2• 11 months ago

Yeah, I saw "How to Give a Good Talk" today and though, wow, that's still on the front page? But no, we've moved on to another take of the same topic.

I would highly recommend the video. It's not really fair to compare them, because TFA here is short and sweet, but I got a lot more out of the video.

ciberado• 11 months ago

Let me also share the English version of my own list of tips, tricks, checks, etc. I’ve been compiling it over the past 15 years while teaching, doing consulting, presenting results to clients, and so on. Every now and then, I find it useful to read it again to be clear on how to prepare presentations.

https://github.com/ciberado/100-trucos-para-hacer-mejores-pr...

I will be grateful if you help me to enrich it by opening Issues or creating PRs.

ehutch793• 11 months ago

Ugh, I watch a lot of conference videos, I have more donts than dos. Things that make me turn off a video.

- Yes, tell me who you are, and why i should listen to you. But keep it to 1 slide, and 1 minute. I shouldn't be able to walk away and come back literal 5 minutes later and have you still yammering about yourself. especially for a 15 minute lightening talk.

- Your talk title should be the agenda. I do NOT need a slide by slide table of contents for your talk, or you reading out the table of contents.

- Accents, even heavy ones, aren't much of a problem. Looking anxious isn't a problem, i feel you there. However, You mumbling is. Being overly monotone is. Looking bored yourself doesn't help. People are there because they _know_ you have something their interested to say, you can be confident that people will listen.

- Get to the point. Seriously. I shouldn't be able to scrub ahead 10+ minutes and not have you talking about the topic at hand. Please don't explain the basics, like what a web browser is, when your audience is a web dev conference.

-Cut the fluff. Especially if you're adhd or other neuro diverse, you need to work to stay on topic. It _might_ help if you write a script, and have someone go through and mark anything off topic. Even if you don't use the script on stage, writing it and having it might anchor you to the topic at hand.

You don't need to be perfect on stage. We'll all forgive a lot that happens in a talk. We've all experienced the wrath of the demo gods. We get it, you're cool. BUT only if you're actually giving your talk. Note that most of my complaints circle around not actually giving your talk while you're on stage.

monocasa• 11 months ago

Cut the fluff. Especially if you're adhd or other neuro diverse, you need to work to stay on topic. It _might_ help if you write a script, and have someone go through and mark anything off topic. Even if you don't use the script on stage, writing it and having it might anchor you to the topic at hand.

This one depends. I agree with you probably 4 out of 5 times it happens, but that other 20% are probably some of the best, most memorable talks.

sharkjacobs• 11 months ago

I don't know of any examples which match what you're describing, except for some things which were captivating train wrecks, and I don't think they accomplished what the speaker was trying to do very well.

Do you have any examples you could link to, or were they all live events?

baxuz2• 11 months ago

Accents, even heavy ones, aren't much of a problem.

I strongly disagree. I stopped watching Chrome DevTools update videos a few years back because I have difficulty understanding the presenter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOodTLAjPsE

triceratops2• 11 months ago

Sounds fine to me. Not even in the top 10 heaviest accents I've heard in my career.

socalgal22• 11 months ago

Is this a problem solved by current or near current tech? Like (1) you can read the transcript or captions (2) you can get it respoken by some tech?

I guess I'm used to those accents though.

I wouldn't have brought this up but I recently ran into an auto translated youtube video. I have my youtube set to Japanese. I watched a presentation I know was in English but Youtube presented it with Japanese voices. I didn't actually want that and couldn't find how to turn it off but I was still impressed. So maybe that can add dialets so you can choose California English and someone else can choose Singlish and someone else can choose Scotish English, etc...

agos• 11 months ago

that's a really tough accent. luckily the video has excellent subtitles, which reminds us that accessibility is important for everyone, not only for the impaired

hluska• 11 months ago

Your donts are all about nervous people lacking experience. But people who are nervous about speaking will read this, recognize themselves and be even less likely to gain the experience to overcome their nerves.

Each of those can be fixed with practice. You don’t need notes or a script, you just need appropriate practice. There are proven methods, many opportunities to practice them and even more people who will help. Most importantly though, it’s okay to screw up when you’re nervous and each of these donts is totally fine. They’re things to work on and reasons to keep practicing with reasonable, skilled speakers.

jasonlotito2• 11 months ago

Each of those can be fixed with practice.

Practice can and should be done before giving the presentation to the public. You should record yourself and watch it back.

If you consider practice to just be giving presentations in front of people at a conference, I'm sorry, but no. For example, if you want general practice: seek out your local Toastmasters.

Your donts are all about nervous people lacking experience.

They aren't. Many of them has nothing to do with lacking experience.

You don't need notes or a script,

Technically, no, but that's like saying you technically don't need a windshield on a car, or doors, or numerous other things. I have no issue getting up and giving a presentation, and I still use notes.

Most importantly though, it's okay to screw up when you're nervous and each of these donts is totally fine.

It depends on the context. I'm sorry, but using a conference as your means of practicing is not considerate. People spent money to be there. Often thousands in tickets, travel, and hotels. Speakers frequently get compensated as well. So no, it's not totally fine.

At a local meetup which is usually free? Sure. At some presentation you give at work? Great. There are numerous other ways to get practice, but the context of this thread is conference talks.

As someone who has helped people become speakers at conferences and colleges, I think rather than babying them, it's important to provide clear and actionable guidance.

johannes1234321• 11 months ago

You don’t need notes or a script, you just need appropriate practice.

Especially inexperienced speakers should prepare notes or script to give it a structure and transmission from topic to topic.

Else one quickly ends up with a talk like "uh, now what's on this slide, oh, yeah" which takes out any flow and doesn't present a good flow of thought.

How much those notes are used and how much one can deviate makes the expert. But the better talks are well prepared.

You need to know what you want to talk about. What the key points are.

neilv• 11 months ago

You don't need to be perfect on stage.

Yes. Focus on giving a talk of value, and reasonably engaging, but don't be afraid to be humble and authentic, and don't try to be a TED-grade smooth salesperson.

See my TED talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=onion+talks

zduoduo• 11 months ago

I found this article really helpful, and a lot of the advice made me nod along. The point about “making sure your audience knows what to take away” is something I realize many people, including myself, often overlook. I used to think preparing slides was enough, but now I see that giving a talk is more like having a conversation—you want people to feel comfortable and engaged. I also like the reminder to add a bit of humor and warmth. Next time I get the chance to speak, I’d really like to put this into practice.

0xbadcafebee• 11 months ago

On Entertainment: Go find your favorite YouTube educator and imitate them. For me, that's https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion . I will never be as good at delivery as him, but I aspire to teach so much, so clearly, in such a short time, without making you board.

alexashka• 11 months ago

Step 1. Have something of non-trivial value to others

Step 2. Doesn't matter

This applies not only to giving a good talk but living a good life. Unless you were born beautiful - step 1 takes 10-20 years of conscious effort to develop. Everything else is marketing/advertising, otherwise known as lies (99% of what's on HN, for example)

loughnane• 11 months ago

This title reminds me of Patrick Winston's "How to Speak" lecture at MIT.

It's the best of its kind that I've seen. An hour long and I've watched it several times. Even my highschooler was impressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

EDIT: no way, it was just posted yesterday. Glad it got the attention.

bsoles• 11 months ago

Having gone to many international academic conferences, I learned to distinguish the quality of the talk from the quality of the content.

I have seen good speakers with fluff content and terrible speakers with useful content. At this point, as long as the quality of the content shows and is discernable, I don't mind bad but sincere speakers. I even kind of like it...

Raphell• 11 months ago

The most helpful advice I’ve heard is not to aim for perfection. When you focus too much on structure and technique, the talk often feels stiff. What really connects with people is speaking about something you truly care about. The first time I gave a talk, I memorized the entire script and completely blanked on stage. Later, I spoke from the heart instead and it worked much better. Instead of trying to impress the audience, it might be more important to ask yourself why this matters to you.

Leftium• 11 months ago

Not bad, but I find this better: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/cdnstudents/...

1. Picture the problem

2. Promise the potential

3. Prove the performance

4. Push the purchase

Although focused on "pitches," all talks/presentations are "selling" an idea. (Including that article itself!)

How to Give a Good Talk

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