Some people are naturally gifted speakers, who could command the attention of their audience even if they were reading the ingredients off a box of corn flakes. For the rest of us, preparing a good conference talk is hard work, but it’s not rocket science: the key is to understand how to structure your talk so that your contributions – and why they are important – come through loud and clear. In this talk, I’ll explain the common structural pitfalls that can prevent your audience from following your talk, and I’ll present a simple set of concrete principles for avoiding such pitfalls.

Derek Dreyer is a professor of computer science at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), and recipient of the 2017 ACM SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award. His research runs the gamut from the type theory of high-level functional languages, down to the verification of compilers and low-level concurrent programs under relaxed memory models. He is currently leading the RustBelt project, which focuses on building the first formal foundations for the Rust programming language. He also knows a thing or two about Scotch whisky.