How to Give a Good Tech Talk

Published on April 12, 2012 by Jesse Storimer

So I'm giving a talk next week. My first.

It's an internal talk at Shopify, and I want it to be good. But I have no idea what I'm doing, I've never done this before.

So what did I do? I turned to the internet and found a bunch of great resources. While preparing the talk this week I've been looking over them and getting some great advice about how to go about giving and preparing talks. Without further ado here's the list:

p.s. I've personally consumed all of these resources and definitely recommend them.

Free

The secret structure of great talks - Really enlightening TED video. See the structure underlying both 'I Have a Dream' and the 2007 iPhone launch announcement.
HOWTO Give a Good Presentation - Good tips to keep in mind.
Slide Design for Developers - Make your slides have an impact but support what you're saying, rather than sayint it for you.
Improve Your Technical Slides - Nine easy tips that will help you communicate better at your next conference.

Paid

Speaking for Hackers - An in-progress ebook of tips. Covers end-to-end from proposing to planning to speaking.
The Art of Speaking - Watch a respected speaker prepare a talk from scratch in 90 mins. Lots of great advice.

Exemplary Talks

How Github uses Github to Build Github - Great talk, great slides. Follows the pattern revealed in the TED talk.
Confident Code - The example code used in this one is particularly compelling. Also conforms to the pattern from the TED talk.

Let me know if I'm missing any other great resources. I'll continue to update this post as I come across more.