TLC #6: A Framework to Acing Your Next Tech Presentation
Let's be honest. All of us dread key presentations, especially when the stakes are high. Here's a framework to craft your story that works time and again. (Issue #6, 31 Mar 2024)
Hey, Ashwin here! Welcome to edition #6 of the Tech Lead Compass newsletter!
Presentations are daunting, especially when the stakes are high, such as presenting to senior leadership or prospective clients.
But a presentation is also an excellent opportunity to deliver your message. A group of attentive people, listening to every word you speak. It doesn’t get better than this.
So how can you ace it? Here’s a framework you can use for your next big presentation.
#1 Start with "what's in it for them"
In a presentation, everyone invests their most valuable asset—their time.
Start by addressing what's in it for them and what they'll gain in return for their time.
Here’s an example intro slide.
In the above intro slide we:
Give them a reason to care (preventing financial loss)
Establish relatability (reference to a past outage)
Instill a sense of responsibility (towards their employees)
#2 Explain why you are presenting, what you are presenting
Now transition to your "whys" after establishing what your audience can take away.
Why are you presenting it now? (because a major e-commerce event is coming up soon…)
What changed from last time? (you have better tools, technology, people now…)
Why should they care? (employee happiness score was low due to such recurring outages…)
Highlight your competitors' strategies at this point.
Having established the reasons why your audience should listen to you now, let's proceed to actions.
#3 What's your CTA (call to action)
Once your audience understands the message, clearly articulate what actions you need them to take.
Are you asking for budget approval?
Are you asking for their time commitment?
Are you asking for a new team?
Be very clear about your ask.
This is where most of us fall short. Don’t make that mistake.
Here’s an example call to action slide.
#4 What does the listener (or the team/organization) miss if your CTA is not done
Remind the audience of what the organization stands to lose if the necessary actions are not taken.
By now they should have the message.
But it is essential to reiterate so that the point is delivered.
Here are some examples:
There will be a missed opportunity to save costs and improve margins.
Customer experience will take a hit.
Our brand will suffer a bad PR.
Be very specific and make it impactful.
#5 How does the roadmap for CTA look like...
End your presentation with a plan of action.
Everyone wants to see a plan.
The plan gives confidence that you can walk the talk.
Make it very simple and call out only key milestones.
Here’s an example roadmap.
That’s it! You now have a compelling framework to apply in your next big presentation.
All the best! You’ll rock it…
Now on to the must-read news from the past week…
5 “Must-Read” Tech News for the Week
Last week, Databricks launched DBRX, an open-source LLM. It claims that the performance surpasses GPT-3.5, and it is competitive with Gemini 1.0 Pro. It is released under Open Model license but restricts the usage of DBRX outputs to train any other large language models, potentially your private models as well.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been found guilty on seven counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
On March 28th, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his fraudulent actions.
Elon Musk’s Twitter - An year later (Techcrunch)
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter in October 2022 for a staggering $44 billion. This article summarizes the various milestones so far and its potential impact.
Can AI search engines kill Google? (The Verge)
In this thought-provoking article, the author discusses Google’s future in the era of AI search engines. According to the author, though AI search tools are getting better — they don’t yet understand what a search engine is and how we use them.
Facebook snooped on Snapchat traffic (Techcrunch)
In 2016, Facebook initiated a secret project called “Project Ghostbusters” with the aim of intercepting and decrypting network traffic between users of Snapchat and its servers. It was later extended to Youtube and Amazon users.
That’s it for now and I will be back next week. Goodbye, until then!
In case you missed the past articles, feel free to read them from here:
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