Tell a story
Give the talk a narrative: why you did what you did, what the main challenges were, and the decisions you made along the way. A bare list of results with no throughline is hard to follow and easy to forget.
Delivering a Technical Presentation
A technical talk works when the audience follows your reasoning and leaves holding the key technical points. These ten tips cover the whole arc: the story you tell, the slides you show, the language you use, and how you rehearse.
Ten tips for a technical talk
From the narrative and your slides to your technical language and delivery.
Justify the real choices, not the obvious ones
Avoid trivial statements that amount to “good things are good and bad things are bad.” Spend your explanation where two or more valid options existed; you do not need to explain why you picked the obviously good option over an obviously bad one.
Practice, and watch yourself back
Rehearse out loud and record yourself. Some habits and tics, in your speech and your delivery, you simply will not notice until you watch the recording.
Keep slides light
Do not overload a slide with information, and do not overuse heavy or decorative graphics. A crowded slide competes with you for the audience’s attention instead of supporting you.
Show only what the audience should read
Do not put anything on a slide that you do not expect the audience to read or understand. If it is not meant to be read, it does not belong there.
Speak in precise technical language
Remember that this is a technical presentation. Phrase your statements in clear technical language, using the right concepts and terms rather than vague paraphrase.
Pronounce names and terms correctly
Make sure you know how the key model names, methods, and concepts are pronounced in English. Mispronouncing the core terms quietly undercuts your command of the material.
Deliver the real technical content
Make sure no important technical information is missing. The talk is technical, so your job is to actually deliver the technical points, not to talk around them.
Spend time where the information is
Optimize the information content of the talk: give more time to the richer, more informative items, and less to the routine ones. Not every point deserves an equal slice of the clock.
Show it, do not just say it
Use visualizations, graphs, and diagrams wherever they fit, instead of or alongside text. A good figure often carries a technical point better than a paragraph does.