How to make a smash hit presentation
Hackers seem to be a tough crowd to please. I’m still at the 23C3 in Berlin, Germany and attended Pornography and Technology — a love affair. Here’s a little something I picked up at the presentation.
This post (based on simple observation) will tell you how to make a smash hit presentation with lots of applause from hundreds of people packing themselves in a room not big enough to hold the entire audience. Here’s how to please geeks.
1. Make sure the title of your presentation includes concepts dear to the attendees.
In this case ‘technology’ and ‘pornography’.
2. Be a girl
Not to be sexist, but in this crowd, it doesn’t hurt being a girl. When you talk, people listen. And you get to do teasy little jokes. Extra points for wearing a skull t-shirt.
3. Be wells-spoken
Well-spoken and well-prepared go well together. Throw in some witty comments here and there to demonstrate you’re on top of your stuff.
A combination of 2. and 3. could go something like:
If I like it, it’s erotic, if you like it, it’s pornography
(applause and laughter)
4. Present in the evening
People are beginning to relax and have beers. They definately won’t mind a slightly different spin on things and simply want to have a good time.
5. Make use of imagery
Everyone likes a good picture. So throw’em in there. Especially if your subject allows for a bit of nudity in one way or another.
6. Find hybrid examples
Demonstrate you’re into your material by including recent technology from funky sources. When members of the audience shout for a demo of the Wiibrator , you can safely ignore them, confident that you from thereon connect even better with the rest of the people present.
Interestingly, the presentation included a reference to ‘free ride’. Minutes earlier, I had learned from Lawrence Lessig that the fear of freeriding is the reason for the NC-restriction in Creative Commons-licenses. In this context, however, it turned out that ‘free ride’ is the title of an old film featuring two lady hitch-hikers pissing themselves with joy observing a man urinating in a forest. They then decide to do what every man/women-encounter dictates in the world of pornography.
That wiser, I’m just gonna end by stating that I really enjoyed the presentation. Well thought out, well executed to a responsive audience in that special CCC-congress evening atmosphere.
Update: Régine Debatty (whose presentation I had the pleasure of watching) has more elaborate notes on the presentation and a good point: While one of the best presentations execution-wise, it might have been a little too blog post like for my taste. A few surprising punchlines / conclusions linking it all with our reason for being at the hacker conference would have made it a killer.
