As someone who spends a reasonable amount of time writing, rehearsing, and giving tech talks, I often find folks new to speaking about tech asking me:

What makes a great tech talk?

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2022-09-21 21:30:13

As someone who spends a reasonable amount of time writing, rehearsing, and giving tech talks, I often find folks new to speaking about tech asking me: how do you do it? How do you know that you will be able to write and give an excellent tech talk?

The simple answer is: I don't know. An excellent tech talk isn't definable and solvable like an engineering problem. It's part tech, part passion, part storytelling, and part luck. But in thinking about speakers and talks that I've looked up to throughout the years, I believe that I've found a few key ingredients in any tech talk that I've seen and would consider "great." In reviewing these, I actually came to appreciate what I somewhat already knew: the "tech" part of the talk is probably the least important part of a great tech talk. Yet, as professionals, that is what we get wrapped around. And it is what worries us when writing a speech. The best demo ever - that's what will save my talk! But in the end, it's not just the tech content that counts, so let's look at the five critical ingredients for a great tech talk:

For each ingredient, I've included a talk that best illustrates that principle and a link to the talk. As an aside, every moderately good talk I've ever written was inspired while listening to or after hearing a great talk from one of these amazing technologists. Remember: good artist copy, great artists steal .