How to Speak
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as the canonical, near-universally recommended lecture on giving talks and presentations.
What it is
Patrick Winston's long-running MIT lecture on public speaking teaches heuristic rules for talks. It covers how to start, use time and place, boards, props and slides, and how to inform, persuade and finish.
Recommended by 17 HN commenters across 16 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec BossingAround · 2020-02 · on “How to give a great presentation: advice from a legendary adman (2012)”
An interesting lecture on the topic is also How To Speak by late MIT professor Patrick Winston [1]. Very much recommended! [1] [this video]
Strong rec omginternets · 2020-11 · on “Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?”
I was lucky enough to get paid for this but I'll say it anyway: learning to speak is the only thing of lasting value I have gotten out of startup accelerators. I would have gladly drop a few grand to acquire that skill. In fact, I'm considering hiring a speaking coach to improve. I've historically been a strong written communicator, but it turns out that speaking is very different from writing. In fact, I had thought of myself as a pretty strong speaker due to my experience giving scholarly presentations ... how wrong I was. Academic talks are a different beast altogether. If you haven't seen Patrick Winston's How to Speak lecture [0], drop what you're doing and watch it now. I'll leave you
Strong rec janvdberg · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?”
Not sure if this fits the bill, but: How To Speak by Patrick Winston [1] I watched this 'talk' on 'how to give talks' last week. It was uploaded at the end of 2019 and recorded 2018 (Patrick Winston passed away in 2019) and it is really good. Anyone who gives talks can learn a few things from this. [1] [this video]
Strong rec cmehdy · 2021-02 · on “A tool to create slides using Markdown easily for you”
I've got to reference Patrick Wilson's "How To Speak" course from MIT OpenCourseWare here[0]. An hour of life well spent! [0] [this video]
Strong rec hazelnut-tree · 2022-07 · on “Ask HN: Any good resources you have used becoming a better confidence speaker?”
The following presentation called How to speak on YouTube is excellent and very popular. The talk is given by Patrick Winston (1943 – 2019) who was a professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Description: "The talk is intended to improve your speaking ability in critical situations by teaching you a few heuristic rules." [this video]
Strong rec 1970-01-01 · 2023-07 · on “A gambler's guide to giving talks”
>The most memorable talk I’ve ever seen was a lunchtime keynote by Harry Kroto, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, at an undergraduate research conference in Tallahassee in 2004. I have no idea why I was there, what the conference was about, or what he said— OK, so if your goal is to not have a forgotten message, watch How to Speak by Patrick Winston and then read his book Make It Clear . The advice is as good as gold. [this video] [LINK] [LINK]
Strong rec robviren · 2023-12 · on “”
Encourage anyone interested in communicating to watch this. [this video] He has a pretty funny response to someone asking him to review slides. He immediately says there are too many words and too many slides without even looking. Which I have found to be true 90% of the time. Excellent presentation.
Strong rec croo · 2024-01 · on “Ask HN: What talks do you consider real gems?”
MIT lecture by Patric Winston: How to speak is the lecture you need to watch about public speaking and presentation. The most awesome thing about the lecture that it is self describing it's tools and framework in an awesome way and built up exactly as it's content describe is should. It's on youtube: [this video]