Speaking in front of an audience, whether in person or online, can be daunting – but it doesn’t have to be. This workshop will show you how to create and deliver great technical talks, whether you’re speaking at industry conferences, doing a talk at your local meetup group, or just sharing ideas with your own team.

The workshop is presented in two parts, around four hours each, split across two days. On day 1, we focus on structure and presentation – how to create and deliver the verbal part of a talk. You’ll learn how to design a talk; how to gather ideas, create a structure, and develop your material to suit a particular format or time limit. You’ll learn how to use humour and storytelling to connect with your audience, and tips to help you use rehearsal effectively.

At the end of Part 1, everybody in the group will prepare and present a short talk – three minutes, no slides, on a topic of their choice. Overnight, I’ll watch the recordings from these talks and share them with you, along with detailed notes and feedback, which you can review before we move on to part 2.

Part 2 focuses on visual material – slides, multimedia, and live demos. We’ll look at techniques you can use to make your presentations clear, accessible and engaging, and how to use images, animation and photography to support and reinforce the points you’re making in your presentation. We’ll look at tips for presenting code, the challenges of doing live demos, and how to use screen recording and video editing to take your live code presentations to the next level.

During Part 2, attendees will prepare and present another short presentation – this time using slides, multimedia and/or live demos, depending on their choice of topic.

The workshop wraps up with tips for disaster recovery, dealing with unforeseen problems, and some time for discussion and Q&A.