I do (and don't) prepare a talk for a tech conference. (2022)

Re:I do (and don't) prepare a talk for a tech conference. (2... by selfie on Saturday April 13, 2024 @09:04PM (#40027768)

I like a joke that is about the subject matter. A subtle pun that makes a smile but doesn't interrupt the flow at all. Another way to make it entertaining is make it a story. Forget jokes, make it about how you had to mop up the leaks in the server room as an intern before getting to the rack that had the crashed hard disk. Or something.

I remember the first meme like presentations back in 2002 at work and I hated it. It's like stop learning, now you have to find this picture funny (maybe it was some star wars reference, and I haven't watched them), and we will get back to it. It was cringe!

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Re:I do (and don't) prepare a talk for a tech conference. (2... by iamflimflam1 on Sunday April 14, 2024 @01:41PM (#40032820)

My favourite little joke from a conference talk I did recently on image processing was when talking about greyscale images I put up the cover of "50 Shades of Grey" and replaced a crossed out "50" with "256".

Made me chuckle anyway...

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Re:I do (and don't) prepare a talk for a tech conference. (2... by selfie on Sunday April 14, 2024 @06:40PM (#40035137)

Yes this sort of thing! There was one posted on HN back where the speaker says, in the middle of other context fairly deep in, recognise this number? 3.14159265358779323846264338327950288419, and then shows that it isn't actually Pi, (one of the digits is swapped, he may have swapped a different digit to me). Nice joke because is reminds us to challenge assumptions too!

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