Best Practices for Mentees: How to Effectively Create and Deliver Presentations

### Overview In this speaker training session organized for Linux Foundation mentees, consultant and author Jono Bacon presents a practical guide on crafting and delivering concise 5-to-10-minute presentations summarizing mentorship project work. Bacon draws upon over two decades of open-source community leadership and public speaking experience to outline an actionable four-part presentation framework, slide design best practices, and effective public speaking techniques tailored for early-career developers.

### Key Topics The core of the session focuses on structuring a 10-minute talk into four distinct sections designed to sustain audience attention: - **Introductions (~1 minute):** Formulate a curiosity-evoking title (e.g., "From Zero to React in 30 Days"), briefly introduce personal background and motivation for joining the mentorship program, summarize the open-source project, and outline initial goals. - **Skills (~3 minutes):** Present three key skills acquired during the project, allocating about one minute per skill across separate slides. Bacon emphasizes highlighting concrete, measurable outcomes (e.g., number of pull requests submitted and accepted, specific error codes created) rather than generic tasks. - **The Experience (~3 minutes):** Highlight collaboration with the mentor and acknowledge their support. Introduce three unexpected lessons or "surprises" (e.g., depth of technical support, navigating open-source community dynamics, career direction). Bacon underscores the importance of vulnerability, discussing imposter syndrome and explaining that sharing challenges builds trust and connection with the audience. - **Aspirations (~2 minutes):** Conclude by outlining future career and project ambitions, such as target roles, technologies to master, community involvement, or conference speaking goals, which can open doors when recordings are shared publicly on platforms like LinkedIn.

### Technical Details & Best Practices Bacon shares several technical recommendations regarding presentation visual aids and technical setups: - **Slide Design:** Prioritize simplicity and legibility over clutter. Limit text to essential points, use clean fonts (e.g., Bebas Neue for headers, Gill Sans for body), avoid excessive animations, and omit presentation audio to avoid software and streaming issues. Reveal information sequentially to avoid overwhelming viewers. - **Delivery Tips:** Speak clearly at a measured pace for international audiences, avoid reading full scripts from speaker notes, practice extensively, and invite critical feedback. - **Demos & Media:** If demonstrating software or features, pre-record a video without sound and narrate over it live rather than performing a live demonstration that risks technical failure. - **Tooling Setup:** Bacon demonstrates his streaming setup using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), a Logitech Brio webcam, an overhead camera capturing a physical whiteboard, an Elgato Stream Deck for scene switching, and OBS Virtual Camera feeding into Zoom.

### Takeaways A concise, well-structured presentation is a valuable professional asset that showcases not only technical contributions but also communication skills. By balancing measurable results with personal vulnerability, acknowledging mentors, and explicitly stating career aspirations, mentees can maximize the professional impact of their project presentations.