[madarcho]

Our attention spans have been ruined by the modern age of the internet! If an audience needs to hold a train of thought for more than three minutes, they're gone. Surprise, anecdotes, humor, problem statements, etc... are great tools that stoke the fire of focus.

Another issue is the amount of attention you get to work with. Each surprise moment spurs an increased attention which decays. So, one introduction to the problem is not enough, you have to break things down! Introduce a complication on the original problem, then immediately fix that.

To each their own, but thinking with this pattern for my talks has worked really well for me. Even for mixed audiences (engineers + PMs + management), everyone gets something out of it, and finds their own questions to ask as well. Makes it easier for them to connect it all to their own problems as well.