Whiteboarding 101

The whiteboard talk represents one of the key ways that engineers can communicate ideas in a concise and educational way to colleagues. More than a classroom lec …

The “whiteboard talk” represents one of the key ways that engineers can communicate ideas in a concise and educational way to colleagues. More than a classroom lecture or a slide presentation, a whiteboard talk is a combination of several disciplines including teaching, storytelling, the visual display of information, and improvisational acting. In this tutorial, the attendees will learn how to organize a whiteboard discussion, how to avoid popular pitfalls, and how to make sure that their audience walks away with the knowledge that the attendee wants them to have. These topics include how to narrow down the scope of a topic (both in terms of the topic itself and the level of abstraction), how to build the knowledge model for the talk, how to define terms for different audiences, and how to handle difficult audience members.