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Ask HN: What's a good topic for a technical presentation?

4 points by presidentender ↗ HN
My company holds a monthly lunch/technical presentation, with the lecture given by an employee. Four of my clients have yet to approve hours, so next week is my turn. What topic can I talk about that won't put a group of custom software and web programmers to sleep?

6 comments

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xox
Your thoughts on some language or technology that you are interested in but that is not used at your office.
presidentender
That's a good idea. My concern is losing or boring people.
shmichael
Javascript is always a nice topic to discuss. Depending on the technical level, you could take it in different directions:

* "good" paradigms in Javascript (using concepts of functional programming). I always recommend Crockford's Javascript: The Good Parts - http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748

* Demonstrate some interesting JS libraries such as mootools or Raphaël - http://raphaeljs.com/

* For less technical folks, you could demonstrate new JS graphical capabilities, such as the porting of Quake and the chrome experiments gallery - http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

presidentender
Javascript is particularly good because we have a lot of it kicking around, but nobody seems to like to read or write it (copying and pasting javascript is much more popular).
HeyLaughingBoy
Avoid languages. I have yet to see a language presentation that didn't devolve into a discussion of some esoteric "feature" that was cool but almost completely useless.

Instead choose concepts, e.g., functional programming and use a well known language to illustrate its benefits.

Or choose a new, interesting and relevant technology to discuss.

What would I like to see? A presentation on what it takes, from start to finish, to develop and release a simple iPad application, along with a short sample app you've written for illustration. Fit that in an hour and you'll have a packed room.

frossie
Lunchtime? As in, people are eating? The sleep risk is real with those. War stories, whether they had a happy ending ("I fixed it") or not ("I learned from it"). If you don't have your own, you can walk though someone else's provided enough technical information is available - for example the lost NASA Mars Rover is a good way to explain race conditions, depending on your audience.