The Art of Rhetoric, or Tips for Developer Presentations

I consider myself to be a master presenter. I have given presentations to numerous audiences, and have a plethora of different subject areas presented on under my belt. I thought I'd list out a few tips I have for developers who have to give presentations, because I've noticed in the recent past that most of you suck at it, badly. Even people who are famous for giving good presentations are actually pretty awful at the art of rhetoric; I'll avoid names of course, but you'll know who you are based on these tips. ;)

Tip #1: Avoid stuttering, uhs, ahs; in fact, learn how to speak properly, damnit. No one cares if the presentation would change the world if they can't understand the concept because you interjected, "Ahh" ten million times. Stop moving your hands about like a goof, stop tapping the podium, and leave your glasses and  crustache alone. This doesn't take much effort, believe it or not. Just recite the presentation enough times to yourself so that you hammer out these little bits so you remain confident and don't need epic, ridiculous gestures, and ensure that your timing is good so that the extra "uhs" and "ahs" are unnecessary. Speaking of which...

Tip #2: Understand timing. Timing is one of the hardest principles to understand in giving presentations. It's the same way with jokes: If you don't understand where the punchline has to go, the joke will fail. With presentations, you need to correctly divvy up the presentation into the important parts and the details. Details can be important, but in general, they don't need any kind of emphasis or timing effort. The important parts need to have the point slammed home at just the right time. Every presentation should be like a poem or a story about what you're presenting. You need to grab your audience by the short hairs and never let go. This means you are required to break up the presentation into understandable chunks, which leads us to...

Tip #3: Make your presentation digestible. An hour long recitation on the most obscure subject will get you a reputation as a boring, even inconsequential presenter, and will help in making it so you're never invited to present again. Chunking up your presentation into digestible bites with a punchline at the end of each one helps to keep your audience engaged while not overloading them with information that otherwise could cause people to get lost in the details. Make sure that your punchlines work well, too; if they aren't very punchy, you end up just causing it to be a garbled mass of text which you're reading from a sheet of paper or a PowerPoint slide. Hm, I wonder what's next...

Tip #4: Dump PowerPoint for better tools. As Edward Tufte says, PowerPoint is more often used as a tool for the presenter to remember points they have to hit, rather than being helpful to the audience in any way. If you have to rely on a tool like this, then there's something wrong. Here's a surprising thing though: You do not have to know what you're presenting in order to do the presentation well. It becomes problematic if you have to answer questions, but as long as you know the presentation itself well, and as long as you speak with confidence and conviction, you will seem like you know what you're talking about. It's okay to not always know the details of the subject, as long as you present it well. And if you DO have to answer questions at the end, then you damned well better know the subject inside and out. And if PowerPoint is really genuinely useful for you, then at least put your slides online and let people browse them during your presentation; that way, they do not have to follow linearly with you; the person may not have a style of learning which supports linear thinking, so being able to browse back to slides you referenced before can really help. If one of your big problems is nerves, so having a tool like PowerPoint helps you focus, then you might...

Tip #5: Learn to befriend your audience. If everyone in the audience is your friend, then you don't need to feel nervous talking to them. Understand the level they're at and present to that level and that audience, but by all means, make jokes, be friendly, and above all, don't be afraid of mistakes. To err is human, and most audiences will not heckle or do anything like that if you make a mistake. Some people can even manage to seem more endearing when they make mitsakes, usually by coming up with a joke about it on the fly. I wonder if the phrase "on the fly" is derived from a reference to crotch zippers?


I may in the future post more tips as I come up with them, but for now, this should be good enough to start you on your way to better presentations. You don't need good luck; you just need to practice.