Over the years, I've given and watched a lot of technical presentations: project demos, hackathon presentations, or even talks at meetups like Emacs NYC, a meetup I organize.

I've realized that a lot of talks dive into deep technical details too quickly, leaving behind people that have a different background from the presenter. In my talks, I use a three-part framework to make sure that doesn't happen, called Why/What/How.

1. Why

Begin by motivating the whole presentation: why did you do the thing we're talking about? What is the problem we're trying to solve?

Talk about how previous solutions didn't work, or if the situation changed, so the solutions no longer applied. The goal of this section is to motivate the project you're talking about. This helps justify any decisions made later; you can point to something in the Why.

2. What

This is a high-level view of the solution. You don't want to get into the technical weeds.

Especially strong when given from a user-focused perspective, this explains what the vision is for the project. If you have a demo, this is the place for it.

3. How

This part, containing technical details, is the least important part of the talk, and should be cut down if the talk is going long.

Is that surprising? Didactic presentations -- where the goal is to teach people to use a technology -- are rarer than you might think. A presentation is often strongest when it gives people the ability to discuss the technology with others. If someone really wants to understand every detail, they can follow up.

This framework begins with a high-level overview of the problem, zooms in to see the solution, and ends with a micro level of how the solution works. This is intentional; a listener can more easily follow if they don't have to jump back and forth between disparate complexity levels.

This framework even has a built-in ending. Go back to the problem you started with in the Why and reiterate how the solution fixes that. Then, the audience is able to follow you, because you've prevented them from getting lost.