For awhile I did the public speaking circuit - my focus was on infrastructure engineering, governance and supportability.

So - I would pepper my talks with real-life scenarios and anecdotes - and alot of humour - because my audiences where in the "same trenches" as me.

Then, I gave a talk to an audience of ALL corporate developers (Windows world, so .NET) - it was such a weird vibe, I have never had such a stony-faced, unresponsive crowd of attendees. (But their written feedback/reviews were great, so...)

(It also didn't start well, because the venue hosts attempted to eject an attendee because of the way he was dressed (motorcycle leathers, jeans - honestly nothing offensive) - and "didn't look like he was supposed to be there" - I intervened - it turned out that he was a tech user-group leader in the local community, and was just "different/quirky".)