What part of your work do you present?

Question

We work in our codebases daily, so we have a very connected and detailed view of how our systems work. I would like to present some of my work, but I have a hard time thinking about what would make a good presentation. Some topics seem too small or obvious to be worth half an hour, and others seem impossible to explain in only half an hour. Rarely anything inbetween.When you choose to give a presentation, how do you decide which part of the system to present? Do you find it hard to decouple the presentation from the context of why you had to build the system?

codingdave · Accepted Answer

Who are you presenting to? This question is all about the audience and what they need to know, so without that context, this question cannot be answered.

JohnFen · Answer

> Some topics seem too small or obvious to be worth half an hour
You might be surprised. The most common mistake I see in presentations is that their topic isn't nearly narrow enough, so my advice is usually to present one small aspect of the larger subject. I bet you'll find that even something that seems trivial or obvious can easily fill a half hour with worthwhile discussion.
Maybe pick something small, and if you don't fill the time with the presentation, have a Q&A session afterwords. That'll soak up all the time you have left.

gus_massa · Answer

Try to get a tiny part that can stand alone, without too much context. Some context is nice, but the isolated part must be interesting.
It it's a 30 minutes talk, aim for 20 minutes. Times always overflow.
As the other comments say, to give advice it would be nice to know where is the talk, age of the public, and more details...