I keep on attending otherwise interesting talks and conference sessions being flushed down the toilet by appalling deliveries. This is my plea to you: please, please, PLEASE: if you have to speak in public, follow these rules to ensure a standing ovation at the end of your talk.
Preparation
Script your talk
Do not come on stage “winging it”, mumbling the text on your screen, apologizing because some particular slide does not apply to this particular audience, filling your talk with “uhms” and “hmms”. The key to avoid such embarrassment is to actually prepare your talk, and that means, and I’m sorry about the bad news, writing it down in its entirety before even thinking of delivering it. I’ve been doing this for years, and you can read many of those speeches on this blog.
By the way, that’s another nice side effect of scripting your talk: you get a great blog post for free to share with your audience.
Rehearse
Do not come unprepared to your presentation. Spend some time on it. Repeat it loudly. A few times, and then again a few more times. In front of the mirror or in front of a good friend. Use a timer and make sure you’re delivering your talk in a time shorter than the time allocated for your session.
Too long a talk? Cut it down. Good news: removing text from the script is actually easier than adding more to it.
Tell a story with an emotional twist
Don’t just enumerate concepts one after the other. The best way to get an ovation at the end of your talk is to make the audience feel alive, and stories are a great way to do that. This is because we humans love stories. Use anecdotes from your real life (but remember to anonymize them, ok?) and couple that with the technical concepts you need to talk about. People are going to feel the story, and thus, will absorb your concepts in uncanny ways.
Structure your story
Organize your talk (your story) following the proverbial 3-step framework:
- Introduction: tell us what you’re about to say.
- Body: tell the audience what you want to say, and repeat yourself many times along the way. “Don’t Repeat Yourself” or “DRY” is good for your code but terrible for your conference talks. Redundancy in storytelling is actually a good thing.
- Conclusion: repeat the core idea to the audience at the end.
Record that demo beforehand
If you must give a demo (something quite common in tech circles), record your screen as a video and play it back during your session. The “demo gods” are more often than not in bad mood, and the chances that your demo will go wrong are outstandingly high. By having a recorded session you will feel more confident and calm during the delivery. You will be even able to pause and rewind the movie during the Q&A session after the talk, and you will even be able to post it on social media if needed; how about that?
There are no “bro points” to be won by doing a live demo. Just drop the idea; record it beforehand and play it back during the event. You can use Demo Magic, too, which I’ve talked about in a previous post on this blog.
Stand on the shoulders of giants
Learn how to structure your story and your delivery from Patrick Winston. I have published an article summarizing his most important ideas. You should watch his talk and read my notes about it, and you will increase your chances of getting an ovation at the end.
Slides
Prepare your slides using the script as a basis
Once you have the script, you can start preparing the slides. Do not inverse these steps. Remember: first the script, then the slides.
Do not fill your slides with walls of text
Do not (I repeat, do not) create “slideuments” with insane combinations of text and paragraphs and graphics and tables and more text and callouts and whatnot. Do not do that under any circumstance.
Instead, use the Takahashi style (also known as the Lessig style) for your slides, which consists of using a single image or word on the slide. The slide behind you should have a single concept that drives your speech. Imagine the great pictures people will share of you on Instagram with one big word behind you while you deliver your talk: now that’s an idea worth spreading.
Pay attention to the color palette
Red over black or red over blue are impossible to read. Now re-read the previous sentence three times and go back to your deck and change those hideous color combinations. Remember to always use high contrast in your color palettes! Maybe your room will have too much (or too little) light, and this can affect the visibility of your slides. I strongly suggest using black text over a white background, which in my opinion is always the simplest and best combination.
It’s worth mentioning also that a large percentage of the human population has some type of color blindness issue. Be inclusive. Make your ideas accessible.
Make your font sizes big enough
This means, so that your slides can be read from the back of the room. Arrive early to your conference room, load the slides on the big screen, and go to the last row of seats. Can you read the text? I bet you cannot. Now rush to your laptop and increase the font sizes, but do it fast, the session will start soon.
Delivery
Do not read the slides
If you want people to remember your talk, this is the number one rule. You should not read your slides if you want them to repeat your words at the end of the session; if you want them to come back at you for questions during the reception afterward. And the first and best way to achieve all of that is (répétez avec moi) by not reading the slides.
Let the audience read, if needed
If for some reason you need to put lots of text on a slide (for example, when quoting a famous author, or some research paper), remember that most people are able to read by themselves, but here’s the kick: they do it best in silence.
So, if you have lots of text on a particular slide, let the audience read that long text in silence: which means, stop talking for a few seconds. Take that opportunity to drink a sip of water, and to take a deep breath. Do. Not. Read. The. Slide. Capisce?
Don’t show your back to the audience
Always face it. Not because they may stab you or throw tomatoes at you, but because they are the ones who want to learn from you: that’s not the case of the big screen behind you, or the curtains, or the laptop in front of you, or the floor below your feet, but only of the audience facing you.
So, face the audience. Have no fear. Look at them in the eyes. Smile. Pan your gaze across the audience while you speak, from left to right and back to front. They came to hear you talk. They want you to talk to them. You have to convince them of your arguments.
Shut up right after uttering the most important concepts
That moment of silence helps your core ideas to sink into the minds of the audience. They give gravitas to your ideas. They make them memorable. Then repeat the same concept again. Scan the room and the audience with open eyes while you repeat those ideas.
Stay calm and deliver your talk
Pay attention to your body language and stop moving around the stage. Choose a spot and stay there. Stand straight. Raise your forefront. Breathe deeply. Raise your eyebrows. Smile. Seeing a person moving around all the time is sickening. Your moving betrays nervousness and insecurity, and that detracts from the message delivery. Ground yourself; feel the ground. Feel connected to the stage. Be confident, stay at a spot, and only move a little if needed.
Use a wireless clicker to transition from slide to slide.
Do not move back and forth to your laptop to move to the next slide. Always face the audience. Keep eye contact. Tell your story. Jump from concept to concept seamlessly, with a small gesture from your hand.
I can recommend the cheap and simple Logitech R500s Graphite, which is a triumph of a device: it works with all presentation software out there, it has a big “forward” button and a small one to go backward, has a USB-A dongle compatible with virtually every laptop shipped since 1998 running Linux, Mac, or Windows, and its battery lasts ages.
(Also, don’t use a mobile app for that; Bluetooth is not as reliable as a good clicker, and a big rounded button is easier to use than a big clunky touchscreen.)
Do not use a laser pointer
Class 1 laser pointers (that is, those that are legally allowed to be sold and carried in Switzerland and other countries) are too faint to be seen from the back of your room, or to be properly caught on camera. To be effective, laser pointers should be much stronger, and thus, they would be illegal.
Also, if your talk is recorded, chances are your slides are being streamed separately and not through a camera pointing at your screen, which means that whatever you’re highlighting with the laser won’t be visible by anyone other than the people on the first row of the conference room. So just forget about that laser pointer completely.
Some presentation software packages like PowerPoint or Google Slides have a “virtual” laser pointer feature, accessible through your mouse or trackpad, which is much bigger and visible than any legal laser pointer could be, and it can properly be recorded on camera; so, if you need a pointer, use that instead. In LibreOffice Impress you can also use the “mouse as marker” feature to do the same.
Learn how to properly use a dynamic microphone
This is because most conference venues do not have wearable microphones available. I have published an article about that some time ago to give you some ideas about how to do that; read it and get a good laugh.
Stick to the time frame provided by the conference organizer
If your slot is 45 minutes long, do not speak longer than that. Actually, make your talk delivery just 35 minutes long, and allow some time for questions. If you are interrupted by the conference organizer because you are taking too long, do not call them disrespectful. Your slot has a time limit, and if anything, by not respecting it, you are the one being disrespectful to the organizers, to the audience, and to the other speakers.
Remember: the audience actually wants to give you a standing ovation. Good luck!