Tech Presentations Can Be Exciting Too!
Tech presentations don't have to be dull and dry. Last week, I decided to present things differently, making use of stories, sound effects, and even a sprinkle of humour.
Last week, I had to present in front of the whole Product and Tech teams. This isn't my first time. I have done so many presentations over the years, in different languages, different countries, and on different topics. The usual stress that people may feel before is something I'm fortunately exempt from by now... At least, that's what I thought.
I have read many books about the "art of presenting," from the classic “Presentation Zen” and "The Naked Presenter" by Garr Reynolds, to “slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations” by Nancy Duarte, and a lot of other publications that share a lot of advice on how to make good presentations. I even had a 2-day intensive course on public speaking in 2018 by the amazing team at “Speaker Labs” Highly recommended!
But things can get a little bit tricky when you are presenting something technical. Even more so if you have to present in a language you don't feel comfortable with.
The art of storytelling
But last week, I decided to present things differently.
After so many boring presentations, I just wanted people to enjoy this short amount of time they would have to spend with me, and showcase something a little different.
Stories are, or should be, at the core of any existing presentation. That's not something new; it's probably something you've also heard. But in the collective consciousness, it can feel like "something we say, but something we don't do." And this time, I was willing to take the risk of applying something I've always known without worrying about how people would react or think.
I choose my newly Github Action “Info Release Notification” and started to remember all the steps that made me take the decision to build it and what was the problem I wanted to solved.
Those are the steps I would identity following the “Story Mountain” (or any story techniques that is commonly followed)
Exposition (or Situation):
We had a basic Slack notification only showing the project, version release and link to Github
Rising Action:
Project managers would be regularly asking to developers what was exactly released.
Developers would forget to check their changes in production after releases.
Climax:
The constant confusion and inefficiency reach a breaking point, prompting our “SWAT” team to find the best way to create a solution.
Falling Action:
3 days later: a new Github action called “Info Release Notification” is created.
Resolution (or denouement):
Project managers can easily know what was released and when
Developers get automatic alerts to check their features after release
People can access direct link to the JIRA ticket attached to the Pull Request
But once those steps were identified, how to turn those into a interactive - non-boring - presentation?
Tell your story with (special) effects
The biggest tip I usually share with people is to keep each slide as minimal as possible, usually one idea per slide.
For a lot of people, slides are used as presentation notes, the ones you feel you have to read out loud to your audience just to not forget what you were supposed to say... But this is part of the reason why presentations are boring.
Most people know how to read. Reading each and every single bullet point will never make your audience interested. Let me give you a few examples from my presentation.
Right in the Climax phase, I said: “And then the SWAT team came in…”. Below is the slide I showed, extracted from the “S.W.A.T” tv show.
But I also triggered, as soon as I showed the picture, the first few seconds of this sound I found on YouTube using my Stream Deck.
Reactions were amazing! No one was expecting it. And this was just the start.
Another slide was using the “3 days later” from SpongeBob, and of course the iconic voice saying it.
This slide was used to revel the “failing action”. As short as it was, it was enough to transition in showing the new Github Action that had been created.
In another slide, instead of just saying “What if…?”, and you may be see me coming on this one but I used the “What if…?” Tv show logo and the voice. Which to my surprise, made everyone laughing and smiling… and specially myself.
This was one of the awkward moment when I started laughing seeing everyone’s reaction, something I will probably avoid next time.
Another technique I often use is to highlight specific information, specially with short bullet lists. Instead of having only one slide, I create few where the “bold” changes its focus in each. It helps the viewer to understand where were are at but create some “fake” animation.
Of course, you don't have to add sound effects or music in all your presentations. You don't even need to make people laugh. But you do have to tell people a story.
Thinker vs Feeler
The "thinker" vs the "feeler" are two terms I heard for the first time during my "Speaker Labs" course. When you decide to target the feeler, you create stories that will fuel their imagination. They will feel closer to you and your challenges and who doesn't like a good story?
Making presentations, and especially tech presentations with numbers and technical terms, always seems a challenge, and some people may be afraid of not being clear or missing some important information. But in reality, the most important thing is to share YOUR story: what motivated you to have these initiatives, to fix this internal problem, what may happen behind the scenes that no one really knows...
Being a good speaker is not something you are, it’s something you try to become your entire life. I haven’t explored enough or reach anyway close to where I would like to be, but I’m glad to have the opportunities to test different approaches and find what resonates the best with me and my audience in general.
Book Recommendation of the week
The “Missing Readme” by Chris Riccomini and Dmitriy Ryaboy is an amazing book for new software engineer but also the ones that have been doing this job for many years. From making small “incremental changes” to “how to do code review”, the 256 pages explore all the topics in depth that are part of our responsibilities and skillset. I definitely learn or went deeper in some subjects I may have assumed I knew everything.
Interesting Open-Source projects
Markprompt
Markprompt is a platform for building GPT-powered prompts. It takes Markdown, Markdoc, MDX, reStructuredText, HTML and plain text files (from a GitHub repo, website, file uploads or API requests), and creates embeddings that you can use to create a prompt. Something I may try to implement in some documentations.
Tweets to bookmarked
Matt Pocock wrote an article on “Type vs Interface”. What he describes is something our team has always be following. We agreed to use “type” most of the time and use “interface” only when needed. It has worked pretty well for us.
Local Toronto Highlights
In case you come to Toronto, I have recently discovered the Kōst restaurant, on the 44th floor of the Bisha Hotel. I took my wife there for a Saturday Brunch. The food was good and the view on the CN Tower and Toronto was breathtaking.
This is a wrap
This was my second newsletter and I hope you will like the content I curated. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts and ideas so I can make it better!
(Disclaimer: none of the content above has been written or suggested by any AI tool. This is my own and personal content.)
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