MUST-READ: Presentation Patterns book by Neal Ford – it brutally changed the way I do slides.
Touch frequently on pain points, ideally in a funny way, because technical topics can be extremely dull.
Watch Stand-up Comedy to learn how to entertain an audience (in your language).
Acting classes can help you control your emotions, use dramatic pauses in speech, or modulate your voice to better engage your audience.
Humble yourself: you are in front of them only to share your vision based on your lessons learned.
You are there to help the audience any way you can.
Tame your Imposter Syndrome: There will always be someone in the room with more experience than you on your topic, especially in a conference talk. Accept it! You are not there for that guy.
Locate friendly faces listening attentively and “talk to them” to turn your monologue into a collective brainstorming – the audience will feel engaged, feel they matter, and understand that you are there for them.
Train your voice: eg. speak from the chest. Voice coaching can help.
Rehearse
Rehearse at least 2-3 times, but expect up to 5-7 time – so start rehearsing earlier, ~2 days before
Rehearse standing up & walking like in the ‘production environment’
Use a countdown timer for the last 2 rehearsals. It helps you focus. You don’t want to run out of time during your talk – you will panic, rush, or simply have to drop some key points.
Don’t memorise your speech line by line – if you forget a line under the emotional pressure of the moment, you might block and lose your credibility.
Explore alternative ways to express your ideas in your rehearsal. You will also probably find a simpler, more powerful way to articulate it. For example, I always massively change ~80% of my slides after the first 1-2 rehearsals.
It’s normal to keep finding improvements to words/slides because you are working out an underused area of your brain: most software engineers are partially communication-impaired – I totally subscribe to this one. So accept if it takes 7 rehearsals until you ‘can’t find anything to improve’.
Make notes on the slides without breaking your flow when rehearsing: I use a pencil on my printed handouts with 4 slides/page. Don’t start over from slide #1. Keep pushing until the end, even if you’re not happy of what you leave behind for now. Accept you will have to keep iterating for a number of times.
If you don’t fit the time duringthe rehearsals (I rarely do), shrink the text or simplify diagrams on the slides, or cut away the least important parts. Ask yourself: what matters most? The audience will remember max 4-5 points of your talk, anyway. Stress fewer ideas but iron them out very well.
The goal of a talk is to inspire and energise the audience, not to dive into the deepest of details. People will acquire deep mastery only next week, in the peace of their mind, IF they need it.
Start presentations on the second slide: open abruptly with a problem that most of the audience can relate to, to capture their attention (you need to know your audience a bit). Then introduce background context, who you are, etc..
The “About me” slide should justify why you are entitled to speak about this subject and what you are there to promote: a tool, yourself as a consultant/trainer, looking to hire bright colleagues, sell a product,..
