How to rock a technical keynote
How do you give a technical keynote that is exciting, informative, and runs smoothly?
Technical keynotes should be captivating, right? But too many are dull and pitchy. Avery Rosen shares practical tips for pulling off a keynote people will talk about.
Summary
A rocking technical keynote?
Big annual developer conference
Bunch of announcements
Lots of software demos
Applying the 5-step agile process to make sure you rock 🤘🏼🎸 your keynote.
Following a 5-step agile process
Ideation
Setting up work that has to happen before sorting the tasks.
Making sure you have parts that are interconnected with each other throughout.
Composition
Build working demos
Sketch slide wireframes
Side-craft
The process of making sure that things go from those wireframes to really nice looking stuff.
Rehearsal
Production
Place where you need to start finalizing and dropping the things that aren't adding up.
Scribbles
Engineering communications is applied thought, leadership, in presentations, in media and in application design, an adjacent of DevRel.
A Rocking 🤘🏼Technical Keynote
Big annual developer conference
Bunch of announcements
Lots of software demos
What does it do?
Sets the tone and gives purpose to the whole event
Collects the exposure, product roll-outs and features along with competitive analysis.
Helps in understanding the technical aspect.
How to rock the keynote?
Breaking down the keynote into a five-part agile process
Applying those ⬆️ to keynotiest presentation
If you aren't preparing for a presentation, you might wanna change that.
Get a "village" of people ready. (A lot)
100 - 150 hours worth of time
People resources to invest in...
Comms engineer
Speaking coach
Engineers building software demos, more the merrier.
Product managers
Ideation
Setting up work that has to happen before sorting the tasks.
Making sure you have parts that are interconnected with each other throughout.
Hashing out all the possibilities.
Something that eventually leads to good storytelling.
Identify the audience you are presenting to.
Set a specific outline for the team.
Software Demos
Goals:
** Testify to the truth of the claims you make in the talk track
** Show a use case an audience member can connect with their own experience
** Show how the software solves the use-case
Anti-goals:
* You are NOT demonstrating how to use* your software or product
** Audience members do not need to learn enough detail to perform tasks
Software demo specifications (example below)
Composition
Say real words
Build working demos
Sketch slide wireframes
Practice strong transitions
Insert session callouts
Build working demos
Weekly demos
This helps us make sure that everything is set up early -- the one in charge should be checking with the assigned engineers weekly
Midpoint demo
Sets up review panel where everyone working on the demo, make sure they are progressing from software development pov.
Make sure everyone's hitting the messages/ comments that were outlined in the goals.
Sketch slide wireframes
The presenter can track and evolve even before the graphics are done.
Defer work on slides that might change
Session Callouts
These are links to previous talks or sessions that you mentioned in the current keynote. Induces interaction and makes sure everything is interconnected.
Slide-craft
The process of making sure that things go from those wireframes to really nice looking stuff.
Beauty the slides
Create interactive elements.
Graphics are always better than bulleted words.
Rehearsal
The main difference between amateurs and professionals.
What more to say...? You are going on stage after so much hard work...what's stopping you from a little rehearsal.
🤘🏼rock bands rehearse whenever they get time.
Production
Place where you need to start finalising and dropping the things that aren't adding up.
Making sure engineers aren't using their real id's as it will be a live demo.
Making sure the person in charge has all access to the keys
Spare laptops, using bookmark where everyone behind the scene in sync.
But I will tell you how I wrap it up, which is that if you do all this right, then you’ve got yourself an amazing keynote and you can talk to the people in your audience later and find that they’re ready to tell your story for you.
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