Simon Willison’s Weblog

Presentations, when’s the best time to give your personal background?

30th July 2013

My answer to Presentations, when’s the best time to give your personal background? on Quora

It’s rarely a good idea to include this—usually it adds nothing to the audience’s understanding of presentation, unless you are speaking on a topic that really needs that additional authority (security presentations sometimes benefit from this)—in which case keep it to a couple of sentences, don’t share your entire professional history.

Weaving examples and interesting anecdotes from your own experience in to your presentation is always a good idea though.