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@rkh
Created August 2, 2013 13:55
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  • Don't do live coding.
  • Don't do live coding, ever.
  • If you do live coding and it works well, developers will love you.
  • If you do live demos, make sure your talk is fine if they don't work and that they don't need internet.
  • Slides should be high contrast and easy to read from far away.
  • Try to make your talk a story.
  • Focus on messages, don't do tutorials.
  • Focus on a few points rather than squeezing in everything.
  • Don't put bullet points on your slides.
  • One statement, maybe two, per slide, not more.
  • Entertainment is at least as important as content. This does not always mean just adding memes or cat pictures.
  • Sometimes just content is also pretty amazing, if you can be sure to not lose the audience.
  • Pictures, pictures, pictures. For illustration, for entertainment.
  • Engage the audience, ask questions, make them stand up. Don't make them feel stupid.
  • Talking fast is fine, if your audience is good at English or you are being live translated. Make sure to speak clearly though, so people understand you.
  • Be nervous, but don't let that keep you from giving a kick-ass presentation.
  • Always be excited.
  • Don't apologize for your slides.
  • Don't apologize for skipping a slide or telling things out of order.
  • Don't apologize for finishing early. Actually, try to finish early.
  • Take off your lanyard before starting your talk.
  • Disable notifications.
  • Make sure your display settings work beforehand.
  • Use a presenter view whenever possible. Having a timer, notes and the slides there really helps me not to panic.
  • If you use the browser of terminal, bump up the font size to what you think is appropriate for the room and then a little.
  • If you run into technical issues during your talk, do not stop talking to the audience. They losing interest is the worst thing that can happen.
  • Make sure there is a display adapter for your computer.
  • Bring a remote for going through slides.
  • Make sure your laptop won't go to sleep. On Mac, install Caffeine from the app store.
  • Drink something during the talk. I constantly forget that and regret it later.
  • It is always better to have someone introduce you rather than introducing yourself. However, that is obviously up to the conference.
  • When you have a say in the time slots, 25 minutes is usually better than 45.
  • Make a reference to the country you're in, people love that.
  • If you reference something, make sure people know the reference. If you quote a TV show, maybe make sure people in the country you're in actually know the show. Don't speak of "soccer" in South America, don't speak about "football" in the US.
  • Don't be condescending. Don't make fun of people unless it's Nick Sutterer. Don't make fun of programming languages, etc.
  • Don't be sexist, racist, etc. Should be pretty obvious.
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