Comment by jnazario | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jnazario | Hacker News Reader

(speaking as someone who literally gave buttloads of presentations all over the world for over a decade)

if you use slides i suggest reading cliff atkinson's blog "beyond powerpoint bullets". in it he lays out ideas, principles and templates for PPTs (and any other preso tools) that tell stories. these are based on cognitive studies, like the number of bullet points you should use based on how much your audience can hold and remember.

secondly, advice from one of my ph.d. advisors: "tell 'em what you're going to be telling them, tell them, and then tell 'em what you told 'em". the take home message is not a punchline, so don't be afraid to "spoil" it up front and repeat it.

don't read your slides, use images (see the first paragraph) and tell a story. talk with passion, enthusiasm, and joy. RAVE: rate, articulation, volume, emotion (from mrs hedaman, my old theater teacher back in high school), remember that.

love what you do, and share that joy with your audience. that's the goal.

"tell 'em what you're going to be telling them, tell them, and then tell 'em what you told 'em"

This is common advice. http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/ disagrees emphatically with it. Consider well that mjd both gave a lot of presentations, AND managed to consistently get the top speaker rating at a major conference.

His contrarian advice may be worth giving a try.

My personal interpretation of the "tell 'em what you're going to be telling them, tell them, and then tell 'em what you told 'em" advice is to never tell people something the same way twice in the same session.

Poor presentations often do something like this: * You should Foo because of X and Y * We did Foo because of X and Y * We've told about Foo. It solves X and Y

More entertaining presentations do something like this: * Our life was full of problems X & Y - and then we found Foo * We started doing Foo, which solved X & Y - with bonus Q * These folk also did Foo - and found bonus Z

Repetition of the topic isn't necessarily bad. Doing it in the same way, or ritually, is.

Your "how to follow the advice right" looks exactly like mjd's point "Don't repeat; embellish".

I was trying to distill some good advice for OP, but you said something that struck a chord, and so I'm just going to reiterate it:

>"tell 'em what you're going to be telling them, tell them, and then tell 'em what you told 'em".

Telling them exactly what you're going to tell them provides an incredibly effective anchor for their attention. It gives them a quick mental road map, and the opportunity for them to think about and place each point you make on that map as you move through the presentation.

I'm curious, how did you et into the 'speaking business'? It seems a lot of these conferences only invite people to speak who have already spoken at large conferences. I did a talk at a local usergroup (5 people attended) and I loved it. I want to give talks at bigger conferences, but my proposals always get rejected. It seems once the ball is rolling, it just keeps rolling. Got any advice?

well, for me it helped to have a company, a team, and projects with great data behind me in an area that few people could address at our level. that and a great PR group, although i preferred to drive my own opportunities (less marketing crap, more technical).

i am, however, off the stage and off the road by choice. couldn't be happier.

Keep blogging on the topics you want to speak about. So if you want to speak about X, blog at least once a month about things related to X.

Find out who is doing the speaker selections (even if they are just shortlisting) for the conference. Try and find a way to 'meet' them (this may be online). Find if they have a blog, and comment thoughtfully on their blog. If it's a yearly conference, go to the conference and seek them out and introduce yourself. Go to a session on the topic you want to talk about, and get up, introduce yourself (it feels tacky and awkward, but comes across as very professional) and then ask an intelligent question that will help the presenter cover an aspect they maybe didn't get time to cover. Ideally not a 'gotcha' question.

The aim is that when your submission is on that persons desk, they immediately have a picture in their head of who you are, what you know, and that you can write coherently on the topic at hand.

I followed this prescription and went from nobody wanting me to doing several invited user groups per year and speaking at at least one big conference per year, and also being invited to deliver webinars with quite large audiences.

Finally, don't mess up your big chance when you get it, and beg the attendees to put in evaluation forms if they are there. Hand out candy if you have to.

A call for papers that I read yesterday seemed to sum this up well:

"Your submission will be judged by your ability to communicate succinctly in writing, how good we think the talk sounds, what other people say about you behind your back and whether, frankly, we feel like people are going to be happy they paid money to see you yap for an hour."

It sounds a little harsh, but I think it's true. Getting to know people involved in the community or conference organization will pay off.

It's a big leap to go from a short user group presentation to hundreds of people listening to you for an hour. So you should expect to spend time getting to know people and money on attending other events in order to get there.

Of course, if you have a truly awesome new idea that nobody else has thought of, you can skip that step, but very few people do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com