The road to being a kick-ass public speaker

I found the embedded slides didn't work for me, so here's a non-embedded link to the same slides: http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/the-road-to-being-a-kick...

I'm a big fan of:

(1) encouraging techies to take and make opportunities to present publicly; and,

(2) improving the quality of the presentation in terms of supporting material and presentation styles.

In the past I've found sites like Presentation Zen (http://www.presentationzen.com/) to be really helpful for improving the quality of my presentations.

I'm no Lawrence Lessig but here's part of a presentation I did last year at DEFCON: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XotF9FyiAZc (Self-critique: still need to work on reducing the "ahhs". :) )

Also, like most things, improvement takes time: for many of my earlier presentations I just used a vertically scrolled single HTML page for my "slides"--it did the job and allowed me to concentrate more on the content. Nowadays when I actually manage to finish the content earlier than the night before I can put more time into increasing the production values.

(Incidentally, I think the DEFCON videos from last year are possibly the best layout for post-event videos I've seen with legible slides and decent sized speaker view.)

This is pretty awesome stuff.

I've got a presentation I'm supposed to give in a few months on Ruby on Rails on Oracle that I've been stressing about.

Not sure how it's going to go, but I'm gonna be going over these tips prior to trying put something together =)

Step 0: Practice public speaking

The single best way to become a "kick-ass" public speaker is to speak in public more often. Deliberate practice.

All the tips in the world won't help if you don't get up in front of an audience and practice just that: being in front of an audience and speaking to them.

How can you do this? Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org/) is a fantastic group to join and is available all over the world. I swear by it and so do my friends who have also joined (I went from a nervous public speaker who dreaded the thought of public speaking to a nervous public speaker who _loves_ getting in front of an audience).

Good advice.

If you really want to be kick-ass, however, you need to practice, practice, practice. Toastmasters is a great place to get some free speaking practice in front of strangers. Yes it's a little cheesy but it does the job.

After doing a few bigger talks and being pretty nervous before, I really wish I read these tips - great down-to-earth advice.

The Ignite talk on how to give an Ignite talk was also worth the while.