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Ask HN: How to give a good tech talk?

3 points by CapacitorSet ↗ HN
I'll be giving my first talk in less than two months. What suggestions do you have? What are your rules of thumb for writing good presentations and carrying out good talks?

For context, the talk will be about improving an existing process (making malware analysis faster) using a tool I made. My audience will be made of programmers, whom I expect to be experienced but not to have specific experience in the fields of my talk (malware analysis and Javascript metaprogramming).

4 comments

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aarohmankad
How experienced is your audience in the technology presented in your talk? What's your talk on?

Less experienced: I would go with a step-by-step walkthrough of a basic example, with some "Going Forward" inspiration at the end.

More experienced: I suggest doing a deep-dive into an aspect of the technology that may be taken for granted. A lower level understanding is usually appreciated. Maybe address some newer features that can improve a developer's workflow with the technology.

CapacitorSet
My audience is made of people experienced in technology and programming, but from various backgrounds - I expect that not many of them will be familiar with the specific topic (malware analysis and advanced JavaScript features).

Edit: I edited the OP to add info about my talk and the audience.

aarohmankad
Your talk sounds very interesting! Any chance it will be uploaded?

My suggestion: If your audience will experience a major speed/efficiency/accuracy improvement using your tool, you should definitely have rigorous before/after comparisons. Also show how it's easier to use your tool than any existing tool (if true).

CapacitorSet
Thanks for the interest! I'll publish it as part of the documentation for the existing tool when I'm done. If you're interested and want to delve into the source code yourself, it's on GitHub at https://github.com/CapacitorSet/box-js, though the code itself is not well documented.