The group of developers I work with (all of whom are on different projects, but we all work together) have been talking about doing brownbag talks/presentations for a long time. So in today's standup, I said that we should just do it, just to get the first one out of the way.
It actually went fairly well (if I say so myself), but there were a few things I would have done differently. Some of these are suggestions from the other folks, so I'm not trying to take credit for all of them:
- Make them informal talks, not presentations with PowerPoints. Unless you have a compelling reason to do so, no PowerPoint decks. No, not you.
- Prepare, but not too much. Have a rough outline and maybe, if you're doing code, have a VS.NET solution with your projects already set up so you can go right to the code and not mess with files and folders
- Keep it short, 45-60 minutes MAX. Give enough to get their interest piqued, but don't go into too much detail on any one thing. If the group decides they want to delve further, do it next time or have an after work/weekend going-deeper session for those interested enough to attend.
- If you don't actually have brown bags with PB&J's with the crusts cut off, and someone has to run out to pick something up, make sure it's not the presenter picking up the food (seems obvious, but it's not for me-- because I did :) )
- Don't cram too much content into the talk, allow for conversation
- Stay on topic. If some really interesting, but unrelated conversation comes up (like 'how IoC works' during a TDD discussion), you might want to let it happen anyhow.
- Encourage the participants to find out more information. Mention or show them where you got your information (blogs, books, articles, etc) so they can have an opportunity to grow and start learning these things on their own.