You've decided to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and talk about a topic for thirty to fifty minutes. You're going to convey your unique, personal experience and everybody is going to afterwards feel as if they've learned something new.
For most talks at user groups, this doesn't happen, and it's easily fixable.
You absolutely, no questions asked, need to:
-
Know what you're presenting: rehearse it to yourself, once, out loud. If that's too awkward for you it's going to be more awkward when you're back-pedalling and skipping sections in front of thirty to fifty of your peers. If you have demonstration content, test it from beginning to end, especially the bits that you assume will 'just work'.
-
Think about how your presentation will look through a projector and at a distance. Black on white is safer than white on black because white text "glows" and bleeds together. Big fonts. No videos. If you're working a terminal or an editor, make the font bigger than it has any right to be. If people are reading more than a few lines of code, they're not paying attention to you anyway.
-
Don't depend on working, fast, unrestricted internet access unless you confirm it with the venue first. Many corporates have egress firewalls: the upshot of this is that SSH will not work.
-
This is not show and tell. The internet is full of information that is much quicker and easier to digest than listening to a stranger for thirty minutes. Identify what it is about your experience, product or process that makes it unique and focus on it.
Consider performing a short talk (sometimes called a "lightning talk") if you feel the above isn't appropriate for your content. You can get away with a lot more if you're only trying to hold people's attention for five to ten minutes.
Some people can present on the fly with nothing more than a vague idea and a whiteboard. This will probably not be you on your first presentation to a large group. If you can present on the fly, you may find that ability is limited specifically to people that you're already familiar with, so don't depend on it if working with a new group.
I'm not expecting that only great presenters talk at informal gatherings. That's obviously unreasonable. I'm asking that people stop making basic mistakes that inhibit our ability to retain information or gain value from your presentation.
To be honest, I don't even like sitting through a 30 minute shit presentation from my friends, but then I have never been renowned for my patience. At a user group many of the people don't know each other, you'd like to think that new comers would be impressed by what they see and want to pass the word and come back themselves. That is really only going to happen if there is a reasonable standard.
That being said, if you are actually planning on circulating this Michael, I would probably change the tone. Possibly you could focus on the fact that it is hard to get up in front of people and awesome that people choose to take that on and share their ideas but that there are things they can do that will make themsleves more comfortable (like rehearsing, etc) and that will also make the presentation much more enjoyable for them as well as viewers. Another approach is to just say how it is going to be. It is fine to do an impromtu-ish chat about something you are working on or thinking about but maybe that could be telegraphed in advance so people could decide if they wanted to come.
Probably the most important thing is that the group be clear about what standard they expect, it probably doesn't really matter what that standard is as long as it is clear and people can decide whether they are up for sitting through talks of the given length and anticipated standard.