DEV Community

Cover image for Handling Q&A after a technical talk: the questions that actually matter more than the talk
PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Handling Q&A after a technical talk: the questions that actually matter more than the talk

#guestspeaker #publicspeaking #qa

A talk is rehearsed and timed. Q&A is not, and for a technical audience it's often where the real value of the session shows up — or where a speaker loses the room they'd just won.

Three kinds of questions, three approaches

  • The genuine follow-up ('how did you handle X'): answer directly and briefly — this is the easy case.
  • The 'well actually' from someone showing expertise: acknowledge the point honestly, correct only if they're factually wrong, and move on without ego.
  • The question you don't know the answer to: say so plainly, offer to follow up, and move on. Guessing confidently and being wrong costs more credibility than admitting the gap.

Protecting the room's time

Repeat the question aloud before answering — half the room usually didn't hear it — and set an expectation upfront ('let's do five more questions') so one long thread doesn't crowd out everyone else waiting to ask something.

See how I prepare a campus talk for the part of the session before Q&A even starts.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting with a microphone in front of a slide reading 'Now what's the conclusion?'
Presenting to a room

Pranjul Rathour on stage presenting a requirements-gathering and user-flow slide
Requirements gathering, on stage

Pranjul Rathour seated in a black jacket and white turtleneck with an event lanyard
Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting KrishGyan — farming advice in your voice and language — in front of a projector screen
Presenting KrishGyan

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer from Kanpur, in a white turtleneck and black jacket, looking to the side
Pranjul Rathour — GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-07.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

Top comments (0)