Duncan Yellowlees 🎓💬Opening your talk?
Skip the waffle. No one cares where you work or how many awards you've worked on.
Grab attention with a hook like, a question, or a bold statement, then get straight to the good stuff.
Remeber - useful AND Interesting
Soatok Dreamseeker@d_yellowlees I shove all that nonsense on the last slide with my contact info :3
Mark Dominus@d_yellowlees @pozorvlak I agree 100%. Back in 2002 I gave a conference talk about how to give a three-hour conference tutorial and I said that the biggest mistake people made that was related to the content of the talk was to include a long introduction before getting to the point.
https://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/samples/notes.html#sl-12
cholling@d_yellowlees Nothing beats a good Webster's definition.
David JONES@d_yellowlees i believe a brief intro is polite. One sentence along the lines of "Hi, my name is David Jones and i make fonts. i'm excited to be here today to ask..."
Talks by "famous" people where they don't bother to introduce themselves because they seem to assume that i'll know who they are. And often i just don't. pfft.
Marcos Dione@d_yellowlees some people are sent by their employers, so they probably have an (implicit?) obligation to do that.
Glen T, heated, not stirred@d_yellowlees @mdione If that is true, be blatant. Make the final slide a full height logo and strapline, ask "Any questions?" and leave that slide up during the Q&A.
I saw one which did this but had a sliding chyron of available positions and their locations, on the top, so people at the back could see. I am stealing that.
The first slide needs the title, your name, and -- if it's a conference -- the nominal start time and room number.
But basically, pretend you are the org's most pushy salesperson. Grab people's interest, and then tell them a story. Often this means the reverse of the usual narrative. Start with the problem, then the demo, and then walk people through the drama of the development, the technologies, the crying when it didn't work, the success when you saw a way forward.
0daystolive
First, Make Me Care
Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention.
Roger LipscombeI was once talking to a female presenter about this, and she said that -- as a woman -- she had to put some bonafides up first, otherwise a large proportion of men in the audience wouldn't take her talk seriously.
So, yeah, sexism sucks.
Nicolas Delsaux@d_yellowlees I try to start as much talks as possible with the agile manifesto, because it covers most of the subjects in IT
GyroplastCorollary:
Those who do care about your credentials first to determine whether they should listen to you are not the audience you're targeting.
Ilya Zverev@d_yellowlees Saw a 25-minute talk at FOSDEM where the first 10 minutes were an introduction of the speaker (and the rest was worse).
calcifer 
@d_yellowlees @0xabad1dea I agree that your opening should be a hook.
But I also think it’s important for transparency to disclose early who you work for. Especially if they’re paying you to be there. It’s important context for the audience, as it can hint at where biases may lie.
Eric McCorkleI call it the "epic fantasy cold open". Show them something they really don't want to see, or else something they really do. Make them care immediately.
@emc2 nice way to put it!
Lars Erik Braatveit@d_yellowlees @wendynather But but but! Where am I to put pictures of my cats and also talk about them?
@wendynather @leb every other slide can and should be a cat picture
@d_yellowlees @wendynather Perhaps small cat pictures in the corner of every slide. I have enough cat photos on my phone to last me many many many presentations
Jason Petersen (he)@d_yellowlees I kind of like when people do this because it signals to me I should go find another talk
Claudio Zizza 🦜@d_yellowlees Talks are infotainment.