Posts Tagged ‘Software Conference’

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Hi this is David Mudie and I would like talk to you about technical presentations.

I want to take a personal experience of mine as an illustration for technical presentations. As many of you know one of my first public speaking engagements was before a large audience at a software conference. Now I did not want to speak at this software conference – but I did want to make business contacts there. I could not afford the admission price – it was $3000 US, and my company was going out of business. Speakers however, got in for free – so as much as I did not like speaking, I did not like being unemployed more.

The topic of the presentation was a security methodology I had developed, and a piece of software I had written that would support this methodology.

I was accepted for the presentation and I had about five months between receiving acceptance and having to deliver the presentation.

I slowly started working away at the presentation, procrastinating a little bit, because I really didn’t want to do it - but for the most part getting on with it because I realized that I really wanted to get there.

I made a very technical presentation. At the same time I was learning as much as I could about public speaking. It was during this time that I came across a little tidbit of wisdom that I found to be incredibly valuable.

The individual said, “Don’t try to impress your audience with how smart you are… impress your audience with how smart they are.”

I took this piece of advice to heart and realized that the presentation I had been composing was for somebody with my background, my understanding.

It wasn’t going to be useful to the majority of the audience – and so I threw it out. I took my presentation and I boiled it down to two clear, concise points. Points that anybody could understand – even somebody who had never used the software that I was supporting.

The points were:
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