Talking Tech is a two-day on-site workshop led by Sherry Sontag, Phil Nash, and Peter Muldoon, with John Pavan joining in. It is offered at the Gaylord Rockies from 09:00 to 18:00 Aurora time (MDT) on Saturday and Sunday, September 12th and 13th, 2026 (immediately prior to the conference). Lunch is included.
Note: All participants will be given class time to present, though priority will go to people preparing to present at this year’s CppCon.
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Course Description
A good technical talk needs a compelling narrative as much as it needs absorbing information. At best, it is a shared experience between speaker and audience sparking questions, and conversations that go on throughout the hallway track. When done well, a good talk becomes a great one and leaves everyone, including the speakers, with more: more understanding, more curiosity, more interest.
We can help you discover what makes a great technical story. We can show you how even small small tweaks to existing presentations can make a huge difference. Learn clarity, the best use of detail, slides that illustrate rather than distract and how to be truly comfortable on stage.
We will also go over where AI can play a role in helping develop a talk. Like good code, a good talk is never written with an LLM taking the lead. However, LLMs can be trained to ask questions, make suggestions and help wade through piles of material, freeing you to craft, think, and share experiences. Be aware that we come with the strong opinion that AI art is vastly overused and is often awful.
Prerequisites
The most important prerequisite is a desire to improve your technical presentation skills. You’ll have a chance to present twice: first, the beginning of your upcoming CppCon talk, and later, any 15-minute segment of your choice.
Instructors
Sherry Sontag became part of the CppCon program committee last year and is the Track Chair for our Business & Career Track.
Sherry joined Bloomberg’s Technology Infrastructure team after co-authoring The New York Times’ bestseller Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. She has been featured on 60 Minutes, National Public Radio (NPR), and The HISTORY Channel, and has given scores of talks in and out of C++ conferences.
Sherry has been leading writing and presentation workshops for a decade and coaches at Bloomberg. She believes that we tell our best stories to our best friends. On stage, she is always just talking to her dad.
Phil Nash is the original author of the C++ test framework Catch2 (and its in-development successor, Catch23) and other open-source libraries. A Senior Software Engineer at Bloomberg, he has had a career spanning finance, mobile, and software security, with a diversion into developer advocacy at JetBrains and Sonar. He is a member of the ISO C++ standards committee, organises C++ London, C++ on Sea, and C++ Online, and is co-host and producer of CppCast.
Peter Muldoon has been using C++ since 1991. He has worked in Ireland, England, and the USA and is currently a Senior Engineering Lead at Bloomberg. A consultant for over 20 years before joining Bloomberg, he has worked across a broad range of projects and codebases in both tech and finance, and is a proponent of applied engineering principles, elegant solutions, and expressive code. He is a regular speaker at CppCon and other C++ conferences.
John Pavan is a software engineer at Bloomberg who has spoken at CppCon and C++Now on topics including testability and C++ API design.