When I was young I took drumming lessons. There were two instructors. Bob and Dave.
Dave was the fun one. You’d bring songs to him, he’d teach you how to play them. Everybody loved Dave.
Bob? Bob was fundamentals. Read the sheet music. Start on snare drum. Do it right by the book. Nobody wanted Bob.
I got stuck with Bob.
14 years later — I’m actually grateful I had Bob. He forced me to understand the foundations. The Dave students had more fun. The Bob students got better.
Now why am I telling you this?
I took two weeks at work to go deep on Swift fundamentals. Not shipping features. Just studying the language. The boring stuff. When it came time to demo what I learned, I could’ve just walked through code snippets and bullet points.
Instead I told them the Bob and Dave story.
And people leaned in and afterwords our SVP of Product said he’d never seen that level of vulnerability in a demo before.
Here’s the thing — the presentation wasn’t all that great. What made it land was the story wrapped around it.
This is the unlock most engineers miss. You prepare for hours. You know your stuff. But half the room is multitasking because you delivered information when you should’ve delivered an EXPERIENCE.
And this matters beyond just “being a good presenter.” Past senior level, your job is influence. You create impact through others. When your name comes up for staff promotion, you should be the obvious pick. That “makes sense” factor gets built in these moments — the 10 minutes where 40 engineers are watching you and forming an opinion.
Next demo you have, before you outline a single technical point, ask yourself — what’s a story from my life that connects to this?
It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It just has to be real.
I promise you the feedback will be different.
