A colleague has a talk at a meetup on Thursday evening. On Tuesday they ask if you would watch a run through and tell them what you think. Twenty five minutes, a room booked for lunchtime, and a nervous smile.
This is a different kind of feedback from almost anything else at work, because the deadline is fixed and close. Two days is not enough time to rebuild a talk. It is enough time to make one good talk much better, or to make a nervous speaker much more nervous.
Ask one question before they start. What would be most useful to hear? Some people want notes on structure. Some only want to know whether it makes sense to someone outside their team. Some just need to hear that it is ready.
Then watch the way the audience will. Do not read along with their slides on your laptop. Sit where a stranger would sit and notice where your attention drifts, where you get lost and where you lean in. Time it, because most first run throughs are far longer than people think.
Write notes as you go, then throw most of them away. With two days left, give no more than three, ordered by how much difference they will make. Usually the biggest one is about time or clarity. You ran eight minutes over, and the section on caching could be one slide. I lost the thread between the second and third parts. Tell me in one sentence what this talk is about. Fonts and colours rarely make the list.
Start with what is working, and be as specific as you are with the problems. The story about the outage was the best part. Lead with it. Speakers under pressure tend to cut their strongest material by accident, because they are tired of hearing it.
Do not rewrite their talk into yours. Your version might be good, but they have to stand up and deliver theirs in two days, with their own words and their own rhythm.
Offer a second run through on Wednesday if they want one. Then on Thursday, go and sit in the audience if you can. A friendly face in the third row is the last and most useful piece of feedback you can give.
– Asael Shinder
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