Ask HN: What's a good topic for a technical presentation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a good topic for a technical presentation?

My company holds a monthly lunch/technical presentation, with the lecture given by an employee. Four of my clients have yet to approve hours, so next week is my turn. What topic can I talk about that won't put a group of custom software and web programmers to sleep?

View on HN

Javascript is always a nice topic to discuss. Depending on the technical level, you could take it in different directions:

* "good" paradigms in Javascript (using concepts of functional programming). I always recommend Crockford's Javascript: The Good Parts - http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517748

* Demonstrate some interesting JS libraries such as mootools or Raphaël - http://raphaeljs.com/

* For less technical folks, you could demonstrate new JS graphical capabilities, such as the porting of Quake and the chrome experiments gallery - http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Javascript is particularly good because we have a lot of it kicking around, but nobody seems to like to read or write it (copying and pasting javascript is much more popular).

Avoid languages. I have yet to see a language presentation that didn't devolve into a discussion of some esoteric "feature" that was cool but almost completely useless.

Instead choose concepts, e.g., functional programming and use a well known language to illustrate its benefits.

Or choose a new, interesting and relevant technology to discuss.

What would I like to see? A presentation on what it takes, from start to finish, to develop and release a simple iPad application, along with a short sample app you've written for illustration. Fit that in an hour and you'll have a packed room.

Lunchtime? As in, people are eating? The sleep risk is real with those. War stories, whether they had a happy ending ("I fixed it") or not ("I learned from it"). If you don't have your own, you can walk though someone else's provided enough technical information is available - for example the lost NASA Mars Rover is a good way to explain race conditions, depending on your audience.

Your thoughts on some language or technology that you are interested in but that is not used at your office.

That's a good idea. My concern is losing or boring people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com