I was thinking about a beginner level talk - things that can be done without leaving insert mode that people may not know about (sacrilege?):
- simple stuff like ^w ^u that also work on bash (in 'emacs' mode) and might help people out
- ^o for a single command
- completion (tag, word, omni)
- register dump with ^r and the expression register
- and of course a bit of a mention about how not leaving insert mode is bad (possibly start with this as a big caveat :-))
Not sure how much could be got out of the subject matter though by vim's very nature, so it might have to be a fairly short talk. Other suggestions for big things that would fit into the topic and might extend it a bit be much appreciated though. Also not sure how it would fit into a theme for a set of talks for a particular night?