Tips and Tools on Presentations (2025)
Posted by CodyDuncan1260@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 12 comments
Hey Devs,
Looks like work I get to teach a series of lunchtime intro courses going through "Learn Rust in a Month of Lunches".
I'm putting together the materials and thinking about how to structure and present talks well. I care about designing well the audience's experience. That the audience feels engaged, they're learning, and they like it enough to recommend themselves and others to attend the next week.
Got any - Tips? - Tools? - Questions I should be asking myself in the design process?
SweetRefrigerator271@reddit
For the Rust lunches, open with a 60-sec level check (first time with ownership/borrow checker?) and close with a “muddiest point, queue.
Streamalive (the live audience engagement tool) lets you run chat-based polls/word clouds and manage a Q&A queue right from Zoom/Meet, no QR or second screen.
I'd structure each week as 10-12 min concept, 5 min guided code, 2-3 min reflection; carry over any unanswered Qs to kick off the next session."
curios-designer@reddit
A tip that helped me... add a couple of answers during your presentation and ask those questions in between, it helps me in keeping my audience engaged....
In terms of tools, I use Visme for making the presentation interactive and engaging
I also prefer to record myself while practicing my presentation to find ways to make the presentation more engaging.. normal camera function on mac works great for me.
Questions to ask- would this topic help the team to improve there day-to-day work and would your audience find it interesting enough to give up 30 mins of there lunch break
pund_@reddit
10-20-30 rule
keep it short and sweet
Comprehensive-Pin667@reddit
Test the presentation beforehand - preferrably even with one colleague as audience if you can. It helps iron out some problems.
Try to keep the audience engaged by having them code along, asking questions, or similar. Otherwise they will be scrolling reddit.
Make sure to repeat yourself a bit so that when someone inevitably does start scrolling reddit, they don't get completely lost when they realize they should be paying attention.
teerre@reddit
Introductory courses are more like school teaching than technical conferences. The most important part is you being entertaining. Unfortunately that's very personal and doubly so because it's not only what works for you, but also what works for your audience. Some people are funny, some people are really interested in the subject, some people are forced to be there, some people speak really well, some people sound really smart, some people like theory, some people like practice etc. There's a combination of characteristics between you and your crowd that needs to match
What you need to do is find out what works for you and do that by practicing
milkstrawberrytea@reddit
I've done some informal presentations to my team at work and have found that starting with case studies/scenarios relevant to the team results in way more engagement than talking in purely hypotheticals. Essentially, leading with the "how can this actually practically help you immediately" use case helps get buy-in when it comes to paying attention.
CodyDuncan1260@reddit (OP)
This comment thread is to provide more info on the audience, venue, and other constraints of the design.
The venue is a digital Microsoft Teams meeting.
The frequency is weekly, during a lunch period from 12-1.
The audience is primarily experienced C++ and C# engineers. Mostly Mid-level and Senior with one or two Associate and Staff levels.
This is being done for edificatio, enjoyment, and for me to practice some degree of mentorship. There is no mandate from above that our org needs to learn and utilize Rust.
thashepherd@reddit
Consider including an ice breaker that compels people to turn their cameras on. That makes a HUGE difference in engagement.
CodyDuncan1260@reddit (OP)
Per the other comment, most of these coworkers will know or be remotely familiar with each other. There's no ice that isn't already broken.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
Here's a tip that will make your audience happy: don't do a fucking ice breaker. Everybody hates them.
CodyDuncan1260@reddit (OP)
Thankfully, most of these coworkers will know or be remotely familiar with each other. Won't need any icebreakers. 😅
CodyDuncan1260@reddit (OP)
Design choices so far, that I'm not beholden to and willing to change:
I'm skipping anything basic to C++/C# and focusing on the syntax and concepts that are unique to Rust.
It's via a remote video chat meeting, so I'm thinking: - 30 minutes for people to log into the video chat. - 15 minutes present topic interleaved with them trying coding exercises. - 5 minutes for immediate questions, - stop at 10 before for the people with 1:00p.m. meetings.
My initial design choice here is 20 minutes of rapt attention and active engagement; to have them learn by as much listening as doing.