Protips for Conference Talks
craigkerstiens.com
craigkerstiens.com
1. If you're just getting started, look out for opportunities to give a lightning talk. These are ideal for beginners - they are only 5 minutes long, which forces you to get straight to the point. It also doesn't matter if you suck, because it will be over quickly - and the audience is likely to be very supportive.
2. Always, always make sure you've been through your talk SPEAKING OUT LOUD at least once (and preferably way more than once) - I prefer to do this in the privacy of a hotel room or similar. Until you've gone through the talk speaking to an empty room it's very hard to know if it's going to work or not.
3. Have backups of your slides. I tend to have a Keynote file on my laptop, and a copy of it (and a PDF export of it) on both a USB key and my Dropbox account just in case.
4. If you're going to attempt live demos, have a backup plan - static screenshots, or maybe a screencast-style video.
5. Remember: the audience are on your side. They want you to give a great talk, and they'll ignore any ums and aahs. If you forget what you were going to say next, just pause, breathe and figure it out - what feels like 30 seconds of silence on stage will probably only be 5 seconds of real time, and your audience are unlikely to even notice.
There are some good tips about controlling stress during speaking (including an answer by me) on this Quora thread: http://www.quora.com/Public-Speaking/Any-advice-on-how-I-can...
I was talking about regular lightning talks where you have five minutes but the format is otherwise completely free form - you don't even need slides, you can just talk. Sure, you still have to edit your talk down to fit the available time but that's a great thing for beginners to have to do, and preparing for five minutes is still easier than preparing for an hour (where it's easy to prepare too much or too little material).
Editing a talk down to five minutes is hard because it requires editing at all. In contrast, going off on fun-but-useless tangents to fill up a bunch of time is easy, as is using a bunch of examples or other exposition.
To compare, in the world of essays, it is well known among undergraduates that there are simple tricks to make an essay as long as required. However, it requires actually knowing what you are doing to make an essay that is short but still dense.
So, to now be more explicit: if the slides are not auto-advancing, it does not help the timing problem. If anything, it just lulls people into a false sense of complacency. I have thereby heard Ignite talks described as "convention over configuration" for talks.
The problem is that if you screw up even once, and have to restart a thought or argument, realize your audience needs an extra example to make something clear, or simply forget a point an have to fill it in later, you are screwed.
In an hour long format, there is probably something later on in your talk that you can cut or shorten to make up the time. You often don't even need to do that, as Q&A is often expected to be included in the time, so you have a massive buffer to heal mistakes (in either direction).
Too many new speakers are afraid they will forget something, and cram in all kinds of stuff. If you do that, you'll wind up reading off the slides, and the audience will focus more on the screen than on you.
My general rule of thumb is to never have more than three items on a slide to go through. Also, lots of pictures. That way, if people in the audience aren't super technical, they might not understand the jargon, but they will see a visual version of it.
I also tend to advise against stupid cat photos and things. I know a lot of speakers who put things like that in as a "break" from the material, but it actually ultimately plays to undermine you, as a sort of admission that you're a bore.
Another good trick to know your audience: ask basic questions to gauge the audience. "How many of you are programmers?" "How many of you have worked with Django?" and so on. That can help set the tone for whether you cover intro material or jump into more deep things. It also pulls the audience into the talk and breaks down the third wall issue.
For example a friend of mine works on conventional M&A projects - with very crammed Powerpoint slides full of facts and figures. I have seen similarly crammed slides from the big consulting corporations. Now I was arguing for a Tufte approach, i.e. making handouts instead, but he rejected the suggestion as he is only one of the younger team members and the therefore associated problems with breaking the "we have always done it this way" paradigm.
I am still somewhat pondering about this issue and I am not quite sure if having really packed slides can not actually become beneficiary in some occasions - meaning a hitting-them-over-the-head-with-data approach where it is core to produce some "evidence" and "analytical" approaches. I have found a similar mindset among some academics for constructing the viability of their research questions, methods, results in order to succeed in the peer-reviewed process.
I would love to hear some opinions by those working in conventional blue chip companies how they view this slide/presentation issue.
First time you give a talk, record it and watch it back afterwards. You won't believe how many subconscious mannerisms you display either in your speech or body language that you didn't even know existed.
Also, never ever drink before giving a talk.
Some more thoughts I've written on preparing a technical talk, I think complementary to the advice of OP: http://branchandbound.net/blog/conferences/2012/06/preparing...
If you're worried about your speaking then recording yourself and watching the playback can also really help. You might realise that what you thought was a normal talking speed was actually really, really fast. When I was a TA my university made it mandatory for us all to peer review tapes of us all giving a short talk.
1. Less is more.
2. Be able to do the talk without slides. Index cards win.
3. ALWAYS RECORD YOUR DEMOS.
4. Don't try to be funny. Just be original.
5. Don't mention sex or race or religion, unless it's your own, and even then... don't.
6. If it's a security conference, getting drunk on stage usually helps.
7. If it's a professional security conference, don't tell the press about the zero-day you're going to announce.
8. Keep an eye on the time.
9. Break up the talk with one or two small tangents.
10. Enjoy yourself. It's your talk!Re: 8, one trick, depending on the size of the audience, is to ask someone to tell you when 20 minutes (or however long) have passed. People are happy to help, and timing like that can help you speed up or slow down your talk if needed.