119 What Are Some Tips for Great Presentations?

How do I make a better presentation at work? What can I do to improve the outcomes of my presentations? These are the questions we are going to answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

What are some tips for great presentations? How do I improve my presentation skills? This is a question that kind of comes out of last week's topic, where one of the topics we talked about, or one of the points we talked about, was luncheon learns and being able to present something you're learning to your coworkers. And that leads to how do you do how do you make good presentations? How do I not fall flat on my face when I present? So let's talk about that in this week's episode of DevQuestions. Now, if you have a question, go to suggestions.imtimcorey.com, leave your suggestion there, and hopefully you'll see your question answered in a future episode of Dev Questions, or if it's a question that you want to see code for, may a Monday video. All right, so let's dive in the topic of tips for great presentations, tips for improving your presentations. Number one, relax. I know it's hard, especially when you're not used to it. When you kind of lock up and you feel like, oh my goodness, I'm giving a presentation. You know, you feel it in the pit of your stomach, you feel sick, you feel nervous, whatever it is. I've been there. Okay. I have been there. And I get it. It's it's easy to say relax, and yeah, it's a really a different thing to actually relax. And some of this will come with practice rather than just doing something beforehand. I get it. But there is something to be said for consciously relaxing, breathe, let your shoulders loosen up, realize that the audience is rooting for you. The audience does not want to see you fail. The audience wants to see you succeed. You can do this. So number one, take a breath, relax. Take the time to understand that this is going to be okay. You're not going to get shot. You're not going to die on the platform. Even if you blank out entirely, it's not the end of the world. And in fact, we've all done it. So relax. You'll make it. Number two, know your audience. When you present in front of somebody or to someone, you should know who they are, know what their skill levels are, know what they know or don't know about the topic, because that's going to change how you present something. Let's give an example. So I have a video on YouTube about minimal APIs. Now, how I present that topic will differ depending on who is in the room or who I anticipate watching the video. If it is people that are my colleagues, let's say, which I don't have any currently that are doing C sharp, but let's say it's my friends who are fellow MVPs. I would present minimal APIs differently than to a person who is brand new to even API. You see that by knowing who your audience is, you can better tell your presentation. And sometimes people get a little frustrated with me on YouTube because they say, well, this wasn't a great presentation. This I didn't learn much. Well, maybe you weren't the target audience. Because on YouTube it can be anybody, right? Well, yes and no. I actually know who my target audience is on YouTube. My target audience is people who are learning C. That may seem like it's obvious, right? Well, yes and no. I don't target towards people who are learning other languages. That's number one. Now, the next thing is who in my audience is this video for? Because this video won't be for everybody. Well, minimal APIs build on top of API, which builds on top of ASP.NET Core, which builds on top of C sharp. So if I'm going to teach minimal APIs, I have to assume you know some C sharp. And probably you should know some ASP.NET Core, and you should probably know how an API works. Well, that could be what I focus in on. People who know how to build APIs already, I'm going to teach you how to build a minimal API. But with me, I kind of expand it a bit. I say, well, I could teach people who know a little bit about ASP.core and just kind of fill in some gaps as well, where maybe you don't get everything, but you get some things out of it. So I can kind of expand my zone a little bit in my teaching, but by knowing the audience and knowing this is generally the person I'm talking to, even if there's others in the room, this is my core audience. Knowing that will help you shape your presentation. Number three, know your goal and be specific. What is the outcome that you want to see at the end? What is the thing that people should walk away with? And the more specific and clear it is, the better. When I taught about minimal APIs, it was an intro to minimal APIs. That was kind of the topic was introducing minimal APIs and how they work. So what was my goal at the end? My goal at the end was for people to know what minimal APIs were, roughly when to use them, and how to use them to get started. I wasn't teaching everything, but I wanted you to be able to get started building a real minimal API. That was my goal. So by identifying what the end was, I could start at the beginning and say, okay, if you don't know what a minimal API is, and I want you to get to the point of being able to build a real minimal API, what steps do we have to take? And you can start drawing in that roadmap, which comes with number four. Have an outline. Know what the key points are along the way from point A to point B, from the start of your presentation before you give it, to at the end, what should they walk away with? Having your landmarks along the way will really help guide your conversation. Now, if you are watching this episode of Dev Questions or have watched others versus listening to the podcast, if you're watching this, you'll notice I look down every once in a while. Do you know why that is? Because I have an outline. I outline the points. And in fact, you can see I have my outline here of the points I want to cover in this topic. And it's not every word I'm going to say. It's just here are the landmarks from the beginning to the end, from the start of my presentation to my goal. So that's number four. Create an outline. Number five, anticipate the questions and answer them. When you are building a presentation, think through and try to empathize with your audience. Where are the spots that they might get stuck? Where are the things that that might be an assumption that they're going to say, wait, that's an assumption. What's that assumption? Or what about that assumption? Where you start to question the areas that are you don't know, that you're like, I'm kind of skipping over this. And if you have to say that. But if you have to just say, I don't know what that does, but I know it works. You know, so if you're giving a presentation on minimal APIs and you don't understand dependency injection, but you know how to use it, you could say that. The point of this video isn't about dependency injection, but we have to use it. And so we're going to use it, but this is an area I need to focus more in on before I can really explain how it works. Okay. But anticipate the questions and either address them or try to answer them. Have an answer ready for them. By doing so, you will gain a deeper knowledge of a topic, and also you will have a better understanding of what the audience might be thinking. And hopefully, you can answer some of those questions before they ask. Often people say to me, Tim, you've got long videos, and there's a lot of great stuff in them, but they're long. Why can't you shorten it down? Well, one, it's because of who my target audience is. My target audience is people who are learning C sharp. And here's where I really focus in. I say, who are learning C sharp to actually use it in the real world. So if you're gonna use something in the real world, I'm gonna prepare you to use it in the real world. So that's part of it. But also another part is I'm filling in the gaps. I'm answering the questions before you have them. So when you watch a video of mine, you might say, Well, I never even thought about that, but that's a good point. Or why do you go off on that tangent there? Well, because I'm answering questions that people will have about this topic. You can't answer every question, you can't go down every rabbit hole. But if it's relevant to the topic, if it broadens out an understanding, it's sometimes important to do. So, number five, anticipate the questions and hopefully answer them. Number six, we talked already about it, but eliminate assumptions. When you say dependency injection just works, try to eliminate that thought process. Try to identify how does it work, why does it work? Because otherwise, you build a fragile ecosystem. If you decide that you're gonna say dependency injection just works and you don't know why, but it just does, and then you build a whole application on top of it and it breaks, it's like a you build a house of cards. It all kind of comes crashing down. You don't know why, you don't know how to fix it, you're kind of left in a lurch. So when you're teaching something, don't build on top of a shaky foundation. Eliminate the assumptions in your thinking and your training. That may mean you have to cut down what you teach. You might say, you know what, I can't get through everything, but I can start start at the beginning and get you this far and eliminate the assumptions along the way. That can be okay. Now, number seven, practice. So this is something that you need to do a lot of is practice. We're gonna get more into this next week. There's a whole episode of dev questions on how to practice your ability to present a topic. So we'll get there next week. We'll talk more about that, but practice, practice, practice. And then number eight, and you probably have seen this from me. Don't be perfect. I used to stress out about presentations. I used to stress out about YouTube videos. I would go through and spend three times as long as the video. And remember, my average video length is over an hour usually. Well, I would spend three times that much editing the video. Every um, every uh, every stutter, every pause. I would try and edit that out to be perfect and to create this perfect polished presentation to get rid of all of my flaws. And you know what the reality is? The reality is we're used to interacting with other humans. And in real life, when you talk to somebody, you don't get the opportunity to scrub your history, start over again, or to eliminate a little bit of your conversation, or to rethink how you say that and do it again. You're live. You're in front of people. You just have to do it. Well, when you're getting a presentation, it's the same way. You're gonna not be able to edit what you say later. You're not gonna be able to eliminate the ums and uhs and all those other things that happen, but instead you have to embrace the fact that you're not going to be perfect. I said I used to take three times as long. So three hours for an hour video just in post-process edits. That is down to about a minute. So, right now, it does not matter the length of the video I create. Almost every video I do takes me one minute to edit. Now, these are special videos, the dev question video. So if you see this or listen to it on a podcast, it's a little different. Dan does this and he puts processing on all the rest, but just kind of the beginning end, that kind of stuff. But for my Monday videos, where I'm recording my screen and showing off some kind of piece of C sharp development, one minute, that's how long I edit my videos. I do not take out any flaws in the video because I'm a real human being and I have flaws. And by trying to take them out, I actually make it worse sometimes. And I have embraced the idea that I'm not perfect. And if you're looking for someone perfect, it's not me. Find somebody else. But I'm a real human being and I do work on improving, I do work on reducing my ums and my uhs and my pauses and my stumbling over words or blending words together. There's a list of things that I'm trying to learn to improve on, but at the same time, I realize it's okay to be human, and you should learn that too. Coming back to the first point, relax. You're not gonna be perfect. I'm not perfect. I've been doing this for years. I have taught in classrooms, I have lectured on large stages and small around the world. I don't get it right, and it's okay. It's okay. My videos, I have a hard time watching them sometimes because I'm like, oh, I could have said that better. Oh, I could have changed that wording there. Oh, I paused too much. But you know what? It's okay. Because the value that I give in my training outweighs the fact that I'm human. And the value you give in your presentation will outweigh the fact that you're human and the fact that you're struggling, the fact that you are just learning how to do this. When a person starts to ride a bike, so they're let's say five years old, six years old, eight years old, whatever it is, whatever that age is, I think it was earlier than that. But when a kid starts to learn to ride a bike, do you expect them to ride the bike flawlessly the first time they get on? Of course not. First of all, you usually give them guides or aids, whether that's mom or dad holds the handlebars, or you have training wheels, or it's got two tires in the back instead of one, whatever it is, you teach them how to ride a bike over time. It's the same way with software development, it's the same way with teaching or presenting. The first time you do something, you're gonna fail probably. You're gonna struggle. It's okay. No one should expect you to be perfect your first time. But over time, you will get better. You will understand, you'll get it. But using these topics, you'll get better a whole lot faster, and you will miss some of the flaws and the mistakes that others have gone through, including myself, because you have prepared yourself ahead of time to be better than just a person starting out raw. Okay, so don't give up on presentations, please. It's a great opportunity for you as the presenter to learn a lot. And it will help you an enormous amount. So I highly encourage you, everybody, present, even just to one person. Remember, a presentation does not have to be in front of 200 people. It can be in front of one. It can be your boss, it can be somebody else. But learn to present and improve your presentation skills. And again, next week we'll talk more about practice to make it even better. All right, thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

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Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at Iamtimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCore.com and enroll in a course.