Randal Schwartz tells us the value of a solid "elevator pitch" - especially when you get forced into it from a longer time :)

Well, it turns out that lunch ran an hour late, and since my talk was in the afternoon, they asked me to shorten it up a bit.  In 5 minutes, I quickly ran through all of my Smalltalk Print-Its.  In another few minutes, I showed off the table definitions and object descriptions of my GLORP system, and then I ran through all of the Do-Its and Print-Its of my GLORP demo.  Total time: about 12 minutes.

When I sat down (without time for questions), I was sure that it had been a waste of everyone's time.  But much to my surprise, the coordinators came over and said "great job", and one-by-one as the afternoon progressed, many of the attendees came up to me asking specific questions that definitely related to my presentation.

So, don't be dismayed if you get only five or ten minutes on a longer agenda somewhere.  Squeeze in some Smalltalk.  There's always room.

That kind of squeezing is something that most tech people (not just Smalltalkers) have trouble with. There's always so many things to say, and it seems hard to boil it down. Boiling it down gives you more opportunities though - think of all the 5-10 minute "hallway gaps" that happen at any event.