I wrote a simple presentation aiming at convincing clients and decision makers to consider Node.js for their projects.

This articles is meant as an addition to the slides. It provides an explanation for each of them and should help you prepare a talk using this presentation.

Do not hesitate to fork the presentation but please, do not remove my presentation slide.

The presentation:

First column

Slide 1.1

This is the title slide

Take time to welcome the audience and introduce your talk

I would recommend using sentences like “Today we will discover an innovative and exciting technology” or “The world of web applications has changed a lot lately. One of the most exciting new yet mature technology is Node.js.”

Your goal here is to gain your audience interest. Please be as dynamical as possible on this in order to keep people awake.

Slide 1.2

This slide is not very long, you will just let the audience know about the presentation plan.

It is common courtesy to announce what you will be talking about. It is time to tease each part of the presentation. Try to raise people’s curiosity.

Slide 1.3

Please do not delete this slide, but feel free not to show it to your audience.

I would recommend you add your own presentation slide between 1.2 and 1.3.

Take time to introduce yourself even if everyone in the audience knows you. It is part of your personal branding and will ensure the link between Node.js and you in the audience mind. You get an expert position in their mind at once.

Second column

Slide 2.1

This is only a title slide, feel free to take a short 2 seconds break here to clear your mind and to let the audience prepare itself for the core of the presentation.

Slide 2.2

This is a slide summarizing Node.js history.

Feel free to talk about the io.js/node.js drama of 2015 and to use this story to show that current Node.js governance is community driven and reliable.

Slide 2.3

This slide is essential when convincing. You show that the Node.js Foundation has a down to earth and realistic release plan. Node.js is a trustworthy solution.

Insist on the concept of LTS versions and that the support periods are long enough to ensure trust from adopters.

Let the audience know that usually there is only few breaking changes between versions and that their code base is extremely unlikely to be lost.

Slide 2.4

Talk about NPM, this is one of the biggest perk of Node.js.

Let people know that even if it is pretty young, npmjs is the most popular module repository in the world.

NPM has already won two major package manager battle. Including against bower, making it the de facto standard for package management in the JavaScript world (front and back).

Slide 2.5

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

Explain the event loop in Node.js

Do not forget to mention the words “asynchronous” and “mono-threading”

Slide 2.6

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

This is a Node.js web hello world.

Explain that when a request is made, the callback function given to the server will be executed with provided arguments “request, response” where request is an object and response, a set of function used to create and send the response to the client.

The call of “response.end” should be the last action in the callback function.

Slide 2.7

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

This is a simple example to show in practice Node.js asynchronous nature.

The actions are not executed in the usual procedural way.

Third column

Slide 3.1

This is only a title slide, feel free to take a short 2 seconds break here to clear your mind and to let the audience take a break too !

Slide 3.2

Paypal is an early Node.js adopter.

Read the following article. The slide is based on it.

You can tell that “less code implies less errors then less bugs”

Slide 3.3

Take a look at the articles regardin Wallmart and LinkedIn

This slide aims at showing that Node.js allows impressive performance at small cost.

Slide 3.4

This is a name-dropping slide

The goal is to make the audience think “If big players like those go for Node.js, it is probably safe for me to make this choice”.

Fourth column

Slide 4.1

This is only a title slide, feel free to take a short 2 seconds break here to clear your mind and to let the audience take a break too !

Slide 4.2

It is time to let know that Node.js is not for everyone and everything.

If you have CPU demanding operations, Node.js is not a good fit

If you have a reluctant to change and old fashioned staff, do not go for Node.js.

The development team must be ready to force itself to making clean code since JavaScript will not prevent anyone from writing garbage.

Slide 4.3

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

Introduce the framework question.

It is likely that after the presentation, people will Google Node.js and find Express.

If you are in a real world enterprise situation, spare everyone’s time and present the real state of the Node.js framework scene.

Read this article regarding express.

Slide 4.4

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

This slide just set the basic needs for a Node.js project.

Do not recommend the use of any other language than basic EcmaScript as supported by latest Node.js LTS version.

Slide 4.4

This slide is to be shown only if your are talking to a technical audience.

Reassure the audience regarding production.

Node.js is production ready and there is different ways to set-up hosting.

The three points show that Operations will have enough freedom to chose their favorite hosting/production strategy

Fifth column

Slide 5

This is a conclusion slide.

It is time to give your last punchlines and to summarize the perks of Node.js.

After going through the slide, take time to share something personal and positive regarding Node.js. You need to re-establish contact with the audience and your position as expert before the question session.

Sixth column

Slide 6

“This presentation is finished, I hope you enjoyed it and that you will consider Node.js as a technical alternative for your project”.

“I will now answer the questions you may have”. Now answer questions.

“Thank you very much for your attention, have a nice day/afternoon/evening”.

Hint

Press the escape key to have a panorama of the presentation.

If you register to slides.com you will be able to fork this presentation and to customize it.

Share the link to your presentation to the audience, they will want to go through the slide on their own if they are really considering going for Node.js.

Please

If you have any question or remarks, feel free to contact me.

I would be also happy if you have enhancements to offer to this presentation.

I would appreciate if you gave me credit for this presentation if you used it (at least leave my presentation slide even if you do not show it).

That’s all folks

Hop you like this article. If so, you can follow me on medium in order not to miss any of my future story. You can also follow me on twitter if you are not scared of seeing a few French tweets sometimes (but I mostly tweet in English).

Thanks to Adrien TRAUTH for his precious help on this article.