The Software Developer's Career Handbook

Chapter 32. Out Loud

If you’re looking for advice on giving a presentation, the internet is chock-full of advice. If you’re looking for tips on writing a presentation, the internet goes dark for a reasonably simple reason. To think about how to write a presentation, you need to think about how you speak. I’ll demonstrate. Say the following:

I am reading this out loud to no one in particular.

Were you surprised to hear your voice? I was. Did you read it out loud? No? Why not? Sitting in a coffee shop? Worried that the guy next to you will think you’re a freak? This basic discomfort is the reason it’s tricky to explain how to present in a piece of writing. The skills involved in writing a clever paragraph are entirely different.

You still haven’t read it out loud, have you?

Presentation or Speech?

Developing a compelling presentation involves a series of decisions and exercises to align your head with the fact that you’re delivering your content directly to people. No internet. No weblog. Just you.

Your first decision: Speech or presentation? Wondering about the difference? Take a quick look at two entirely different appearances by Steve Jobs. The first is his “Three Stories” speech at Stanford, and the second is part of his MacWorld 2007 keynote.

You need to watch only a few minutes of both to get a feel for the difference between a presentation and a speech. My guess is you only viewed the Stanford video, because everyone has seen Steve Jobs at MacWorld and the Stanford video ...