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
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.