The ‘geek’ talk I gave a couple of weeks ago went very well (you can see the presentation with notes if you want) but I managed to squeeze out some extra return on the investment, or ROI, by reprising it today for my colleagues in the admin team at work. The two twists were that, whereas my original audience had all come because the subject appealed to them, I had to pitch this one without assuming an innate desire to be identified as a geek and also that, instead of having sixty minutes I had six.
Still, that certainly prevented me from rambling on and I hope I succeeded in not gabbling instead. I certainly got several very encouraging comments afterwards so I think I managed to communicate something useful via all those stories about socks and bread and washing up. It is certainly feels like less pressure giving a longer talk then whittling it down than having given a short talk and having to work it up into a much fuller presentation.
My learning heuristic of throwing in the standard and then rushing in after it seems to have paid off!