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[Brian Braatz] I am biased because I am going to be attending both of those :)

My thoughts are also biased because, currently, boost.lambda has been the focus of my attention recently. (it is also currently my "favorite boost library of the month")

Suggestion: Take Lambda and tear it apart and show how it works. This might be a good subject matter to keep a consistent topic as a foundation for covering techniques. [David Abrahams] The biggest problem with that is that Boost.Lambda's implementation is in large part obsoleted by the new stuff Joel de Guzman and friends are doing with Phoenix-2. It is supposed to form the basis of a Boost.Lambda rewrite. I don't know the details of what's there, but I imagine a good bit of Boost.Lambda is old technology for which better solutions exist today.

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The other thing you could do, is borrow the structure of your book, and use the same structure for the lecture. This way the attendees could then get your book, and have a consistency from the lecture to the book. [David Abrahams] That's fine for the other talk (the one on metaprogramming), but the book isn't about "inside the Boost libraries."

[Brian Braatz] DOH! I am behind the times here. I have been working with Boost for a year now. And I am finally to the point where I can use boost.lamda in my sleep. So all this stuff I find exciting and enthralling is "last decades technology". Man I need to get with it :) Ok- let me alter the suggestion: For inside boost: Think of the 5 most important techniques used in most of the libraries For each technique, show the technique, then show how at least 2 libraries use that technique in similar (or dissimilar) ways. This would be a good way to ground the technique and by seeing the different implementations, would help people "think correctly" to further understand inside boost. I make this suggestion because, I had to read "Brochschmidts" book on OLE, like 5 times before I "got it". I first had to learn "how to think about it". Once I learned "how to think about it", the whole thing made sense. If you can show the same technique in multiple areas, it will aid people in "how do I think about this". Once you have accomplished that with the audience, you can then springboard into the really complicated stuff. (and yes, I am willfully and shamelessly trying to offer suggestions for things I want you to talk about since I will be attending both talks :) )