## The Problem with Traditional Tech Talks for Your Audience Your traditional approach assumes a homogeneous technical audience, but you're serving developers, BI support, data analysts, infrastructure teams, and reporting staff with radically different job functions. Technical depth conflicts with audience breadth - when half your audience can't apply what they're hearing, the whole format loses value. ## New Topic Categories That Actually Work Topics should emphasize **transferable thinking patterns** and **universal workplace challenges** rather than platform-specific technical knowledge. - **Cross-Team Collaboration Stories:** Joint projects between teams with different expertise, highlighting both technical solutions and communication approaches that made partnerships successful. - **Tools That Changed How We Work:** Automation discoveries, process improvements, or better approaches to common problems that saved significant time across different roles. - **Problem-Solving Stories:** How teams tackled unexpected challenges, projects that went sideways, or complicated vendor situations - focusing on the thinking process and lessons learned rather than technical implementation. - **Technology overviews:** Focus on "what it does and why we chose it" rather than "how it works internally" - practical application over technical deep dives. ## Meeting Format **Structure:** - **~15 min presentation** - Presenter covers their story - **~25 min guided group discussion** - Facilitated conversation with the group **Presenter covers during presentation:** - What happened and why - What obstacles did you hit that others might face **Guided group discussion flow:** - Open questions - general clarifications about the presentation - "What would you do differently?" - "What similar situations have you encountered?" - Open comments/questions