Presentation Hero

Read this multiple times and follow strickly and will be awesome at presenting.

Before you start

Preparation is everythinng. When should I start preparing? 30 days before your presentation day. Why you need start 30 days ahead?

• Because you will need time to research
• Because you will get feedback and will have homework
• Because even if your deck is amazing, you need do multiple dry runs before presenting.

How many dry runs is enought?

• There is not limit, more preparation is always better.
• You must feel confident and be able to deliver on time
• You should dry run so many times that you can present without slides (presentation zen idea).
• Usually 3 to 5 dry runs is enough

How to deliver a great presentation

A great presentation is just an output of a well-prepared research, poc or piece of work. There is no way you will do an amazing presentation if you the content is not good. A presentation is just an excuse, a reason or a motivation if you will do learn someeting deep and deliver an awesome experience. When you are presenting, you are delivering a story, think about order of things.

0. What you should never (ever) do

• Present content you don’t understand
• You DONT know DEEPLY all the things you are presenting, all the strings, all the algos, all the techniques, all technologies, every single thing you don’t master it.
• Talk about things you did not run a poc or some experiment or have experience with in production
• Have a lot of text and just read all time
• Have a white background with or poor color scheme.
• Splash code in text, dont show code without syntax highlight
• Do no sufer in silence, ask for help
• Dont do the presentation for compliance, do your best, use as a tool for continnuous learning and improvement

1. What you should always do

• Research
  • Do POCs
  • Debug
  • Google it
  • Read about it
• Give Context: What it is? How it works? Showing arch diagrams always good.
• Always have trade-offs (PROS and CONS)
• Comparisons with similar solutins and options always good i.e talking about Kafka, compare with RabbitMQ, Kinesis, ActiveMQ, etc.
• CODE
• Live-demo (which can be recorded)

2. How to prepare

• Record you presenting to your self like a unit test (do that 3 to 5 times) this is also called Dry Run
• Show to someone with more experience - get feedback
• The more you present, the better you get, pratice is the key to success
• Dry Runs: Do many dry runs as necessary, record a video so you see youself presenting and what is working or not, get feedback from other people.

3. How to create a good presentation structure

1. What: Explain what it thing you are presenting.
2. How: Explain how it works and how is the architecture under the hood.
3. Trade-offs: Explain the trade-offs, pros and cons.
4. Code/DEMO: Show code, if possible, live demo is always good.
5. Comparisons: Show comparisons with similar solutions.

4. How to deliver

• Be clam
• Dont rush
• Mind the time (have a clock in front of you) or in yoir phone
• Ask for feedback after the presentation

5. How to improve

• Read the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
• Try to add some humor, data, facts or intersting trivia is always fun
• Watch other people presenting
• Use google for research, read books, read papers, debug the code, do multiple pocs.
• Book time in your agenda to prepare the presentation (review and dry-run too)

6. When you learn to how to present well…

• You will comunicate better
• You will sell better
• You will be more confident