There's no shortage of people giving advice on how to improve your presentation skills and impact. I offer a short list of links at the bottom of this post. I though I'd take a few moments to share some tips I follow to help me make the most of my time in front of audiences. Why listen to me? I've been doing talks on the PL/SQL language since 1992 and I am pretty sure that only 3 members of all those audiences ever fell asleep during my talk. What are the (at most) three key takeaways? Most attendees will forget most of what you said soon after leaving the session. Certainly almost every single technical detail will be lost. So you need to decide before you start your talk what are the at most three things you want an attendee to remember. Then put those in a slide and tell them right at a start. Remind them during your talk when you are getting to one of those top 3 things. Use the slide again at the end of your talk to drive the point...
For the last twenty years, I have managed to transform an obsession with PL/SQL into a paying job. How cool is that?