
Thoughts on Public Speaking (2014) - madmax108
http://speaking.io/
======
binarymax
Great site with some good advice. I particularly like this part: _" Talks are
Entertainment - Public speaking's dirty little secret."_

The best thing I learned for giving a good talk, and what I tell myself every
time, is that it's story time for adults.

Think back to a young age, and how you learned all those morals with fables
and stories. Want to give a good talk? Make it a good story with wit and
anecdotes. Be Garrison Keillor up there, and you'll see sparkling eyes and
open mouthed smiles.

~~~
mapster
that's a tall order. And the topic requires a different approach. scientific
topics require 'just the facts ma'am' with extra points for a dash of shop
humor.

~~~
marcosdumay
What facts?

For example, this sequence:

This is an open problem -> We've got those results -> This is how we did it ->
We used this methodology

Is very different from this sequence:

We used this methodology -> This is how we did it -> We've got those results
-> This is the problem we solved

~~~
mapster
the former - just the facts on hypothesis, methods, yada yada. audience may be
taking notes. so a concise well rehearsed presentation is optimal.

------
amygdala_panic
Anyone been able to overcome panic attacks while public speaking? Medication
seems like a hassle. And most advice is just obvious tips ("know your
material!") that doesn't address the physiological problem.

My first talk was in front of a many-thousands-attendees conference and I
didn't have a problem. It was fun. I've for years enjoyed speaking in front of
groups. Never enjoyed doing the exec presentation per se, but I'd done it
before and was comfortable with it. Then at two back-to-back jobs, two
managers told me I wasn't actually good at it, neither speaking in front of
crowds nor communicating to execs. Basically, they said I sucked at it. Thanks
a lot :-(

Now I have the pleasure of enjoying a nearly crippling fear of talking in
groups. My brain blanks. I stammer and repeat the same thing over and over. I
simply can't find the words, and the longer the pause extends, the more I
probably look like I'm having a stroke.

~~~
arkitaip
That sounds horrible, so sorry to hear. Gotta say that your managers are jerk
for doing you in like that without providing a solution.

------
TACIXAT
I've noticed that professional speakers and actors speak very different from
how I do. There is a much more dynamic use of tone and they generally speak
more slowly.

I occasionally speak at conferences and have thought about recording lessons
and wanted to know how to do this. I searched pretty hard for tips and there
isn't much. I ended up watching a bunch of YouTube videos and making a
playlist [1] of what I thought was valuable. If you're interested, check it
out.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLanzwyndb8YV4euD0Lei...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLanzwyndb8YV4euD0LeidpttxYi8IhUw)

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>There is a much more dynamic use of tone and they generally speak more
slowly.

From what I've read on social engineering[1] and communications theory a
slower speaker is generally perceived as more calm, confident, and deliberate
whereas fast talkers are often perceived as being more anxious.

Also, alteration of tones is a tactic often used to add subtle influence to
the delivery of key words and concepts.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Social-Engineering-Art-Human-
Hacking/...](https://www.amazon.com/Social-Engineering-Art-Human-
Hacking/dp/1480590320)

~~~
jriot
I was air traffic controller for 11 years - we were trained to speak slow,
calm and concise for these exact reasons.

------
jedimastert
One thing I heard many years ago but everyone I tell seems surprised by:

Export your slides to PDF.

You have no idea what you'll be presenting from, and PDF readers are
everywhere and will so up basically the same on every screen. Most PDF readers
have a full screen mode where pressing the space bar will advance you one
"page", and 99 times out of 100 you don't need transitions. Just do it.

~~~
_e
Yes, PDF is universal but PowerPoint and Keynote have "Presenter view" which
adds extra functionality besides just showing you the same slide that your
audience sees such as private notes for each slide as well as thumbnails of
upcoming slides so you can skip slides without the audience knowing or use a
timer to pace yourself [0].

I did a quick search and I could not find out whether Adobe Acrobat has this
functionality.

[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/View-your-
speaker-n...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/View-your-speaker-
notes-privately-while-delivering-a-presentation-on-multiple-monitors-
CCFA1894-E3EF-4955-9C3A-444D58248093)

~~~
ghaff
I'll always have a PDF on a thumb drive in case something goes sideways with
Powerpoint of whatever. But, as you say, there are advantages to presenting
from presentation software. In general, I try to be as ready as possible for a
Plan B that mitigates whatever projection and network problems arise.

------
Cerium
I'm not great now, but used to be an absolutely dreadful public speaker. While
I was in college I got a most of a year warning that I would have to give a
technical presentation to an audience of a few hundred. At that point I could
not do that. I told myself, "If you are going to stand in front of that many
people and talk, you need practice". So for the next 8 months EVERY time a
professor asked for a volunteer I said yes. No matter how ill prepared I was.
Once I got myself into a real pickle. I volunteered to do a homework problem
on the board for a homework I had not done yet on a subject I was weak in. It
went ok. I had to ask the class for help, and announced what steps I thought I
should do. After that I began to trust the advice that the audience wants you
to succeed.

When it came time to giving the presentation I practiced a huge amount.
Recorded it and watched it again and again. I also spent time thinking of
every question that could be asked and prepared backup slides (with quick
links) to visuals to support the top 10 questions I guessed might be asked. I
got to use two of those visuals to answer questions.

Overall it was a great experience and I was able to place 4th at the national
level of the competition.

------
bbernard
Public speaking isn't a skill. It's a habit.

The more you practice it, the more comfortable, the more structured and the
more natural you become.

I've been in Toastmasters for almost 7 years now. And it seriously changed me
for the better.

~~~
6stringmerc
Agreed, former Speech and Debate participant for several years. Did not place
well. Consistently last actually. Was extremely useful in learning to care
less and less about being in front of people and the center of attention.
Still get massive guitar playing stage fright though.

~~~
mapster
Did speaking often not make it easier for you? You agree with the comment, but
your experience says otherwise. Curious.

------
yoloswagins
This is the "Schaum's Outlines" of public speaking in a technical context.

When ever I give a talk, I read the entirety of speaking.io.

This style does lead to slides that make little sense outside the context of
the talk. When I reviewed the slides for a talk I gave 18 months ago, I had no
idea what the slides were about.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _This style does lead to slides that make little sense outside the context
> of the talk. When I reviewed the slides for a talk I gave 18 months ago, I
> had no idea what the slides were about._

That happens, but still - I think it's for the best.

The way I learned to see it, slides too often are used as crutches by people
too afraid of focusing attention on themselves. But that's not how good talks
are made. It takes practice to overcome this fear, but you have to. Your
public talk is all about your ideas. Which you mostly deliver by speaking
them[0]. Slides should have one primary purpose: to help you express your
ideas in a clearer way. So e.g. do show a graph or a piece of code you intend
to discuss. Do show e.g. a hierarchy of your ideas in a spatial way, if that's
a good way for people to imagine the concept. _Don 't_ show the points you're
going to speak word-for-word.

Also, my observation: if you intend to put a joke slide, train transitioning
to it well in advance. There aren't many better ways to destroy a joke than to
show it on a slide, and then awkwardly proceed to read / explain it.

\--

[0] - If those ideas are better expressed as an article, just write an
article. Also, there's no hurt in doing _both_ \- text and public
presentations are orthogonal distribution channels.

~~~
schoen
> Your public talk is all about your ideas. Which you mostly deliver by
> speaking them[0]. Slides should have one primary purpose: to help you
> express your ideas in a clearer way.

One question I have about this is whether some audience members would still
benefit from seeing in written form much of what is spoken. I know that the
"learning styles" idea has been drawn into significant question, but it seems
possible that there are various benefits. An obvious example is when audience
members include non-native speakers of the language of the presentation, where
it seems clear that same-language subtitling helps comprehension.

(I'm a non-native Portuguese speaker and I recently made English subtitles for
a friend's Portuguese-language lecture, which I hope to be able to share with
the public soon. I was working with Google's autogenerated Portuguese
subtitles, which were often very inaccurate. In about ten places, my friend
said something that I totally missed, and could still not understand even
after watching the video over and over again. But I'm pretty sure a native
speaker would have understood all ten, and that I could understand all of them
given accurate same-language subtitles.)

But maybe this means that people who offer live subtitling of lectures (which
is a thing that's been offered at a few conferences, though maybe it's kind of
expensive?) are helpful, not that more of the spoken presentation belongs in
the slides. So you could have slides that contain very little of the spoken
presentation, plus an optional separate subtitle medium that contains the
entirety of it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd vote for either publishing a video with subtitles after the conference,
and/or a transcript of your talk. If you prepared your talk in advance, you
could offer a transcript even before the presentation.

If you can get a live translation, that'll be best for non-native speakers,
though that's a rare thing (I've only seen it on big TEDx conferences and on
religious conventions, where people care very much for non-natives and deaf
people to be able to receive the message). Of live subtitling I've never heard
before.

Related, a good trick for some public talks - if you can, make handouts for
everyone, that contain all the charts and pieces of code you'll be showing on
your slides and discussing. It's very hard to make something complex fit on a
slide in such a way it'll be visible for people in back rows (or people with
bad sight). Paper handouts on the other hand have huge resolution and will be
right in front of the person reading it; for a typical presentation, you
should be able to easily fit all your charts and code examples on a single A4
page. It's a very cheap way to ensure even the finer points don't escape
people just because they sit too far.

~~~
schoen
Thanks for these ideas.

I've given talks in English both in places where it wasn't the main language
and places where it was. In the former case, most of the audience consisted of
non-native speakers and there was generally an obvious specific language that
the talk could have been interpreted to by a simultaneous interpreter (and
sometimes was!). In the latter case, there were sometimes non-native English
speakers in the audience, but they didn't necessarily all have the same native
language.

------
snug
I'm doing my first meetup talk today. I really wish this was on HN last week.

Also I should be practicing and finishing my slides, not on HN right now.

------
ravenstine
Haven't read the entire thing, though there's good stuff in there. One
disagreement I have is with the use of slides. Slides should only be used for
things that cannot be described merely through words. Mostly graphs and code.
Photos, inspirational quotes, and cat gifs should be insulting to the audience
because they are distracting, convey no information, and are just an appeal to
your senses. Even the second and third best public speakers don't use slides
as a crutch, and really nobody should. Public speaking should be entertaining,
but it's the speaking itself that should be entertaining. I would rather try
be like one of the best public speakers than impress people with my mad web
surfing skillz.

~~~
arkitaip
I can here for this comment. To me, slides are like tables or diagrams in a
research paper: you only use them because expressing the idea in a paragraph
(i.e. speaking) would be too difficult or nonsensical.

I understand that some speakers are so slide centric because it's their
presentation style or they do it for shits and giggles, but most speakers
seems to do it because of ignorance and inexperience.

~~~
ravenstine
Either way, it's still a crutch. If they do it because it's their style,
that's fine except it's utterly pointless and audiences should be insulted by
it; at best, the slides just repeat the same information that the speaker is
telling you in person, and at worst it's inane kinda funny garbage that I
could have easily come across on my own time. The information and insight
itself should be compelling enough to carry a talk, and if the speaker can't
muster the enthusiasm to actually entertain people while being informative,
said speaker really isn't providing much value at all. Admittedly, this is
from my perspective and I know that slide-heavy talks amuse people. I'm going
to be a pompous jackass and say that people should have a little integrity and
actually care more about the information they are receiving than by merely
being entertained. In a sense, I am criticizing audiences more than I am
speakers because speakers wouldn't get away with these things if they weren't
getting even just a couple laughs. Slides have their place, but the ideal
should be that they are only used as figures would be in a research paper.
Imagine how annoying it would be if most research papers had meme images
between every paragraph! Funny at first, but would get super tiresome when
you're trying to understand algorithm-heavy concepts.

~~~
watwut
I like slides that "just repeat the information that was said". It makes it
easier to think about previous point (because it is in front of me) and easier
to catch up if I lost attention momentary. It makes it also easier to remember
what was said afterwards (I can either remember speech or slide visually and
having it in two forms help).

------
6stringmerc
One facet that I think the site could add would be "expected time investment"
for many of the steps. They sound simple as one liners, because in concept
they are.

However, "Record yourself" can be quite a bit of time and review and re-doing
- three times for a 30 minute speech is 90 minutes. That's a lot of talking!

The layout and structure of the advice provided is quite good, and I think
it's a great reference point. As somebody who has been half-naked and tied up
in front of about 10 people for the sake of making a student film, it helps
reset the concept of performance a little.

------
thinbeige
There are two major problems with public speaking:

1\. Many do public speaking for the sake of public speaking. To prove
themselves something. That they can publicly speak. This is wrong. You need to
have a clear goal. Your speech is an enabler. E.g. you want to attract new
clients, employees, funding, whatever. Even just to strengthen your personal
brand doesn't work either. Behind this semi-goal must be again a clear and
meaningful goal. E.g. increase personal brand because you want to sell x or
position yourself as expert in field y. If you have this clear gloal your
speech will fly by itself. If not you will utterly fail and you feel it every
second of that speech.

2) The bigger problem is that people heavily learn their speech before. Just
learn the first five minutes. Then try to speak to the public like you would
speak to a good friend. Don't learn sentences. Just have a rough outline of
the speech in your head. The best speeches usually come when you didn't
prepare at all (but this never happens).

~~~
Vinnl
> Then try to speak to the public like you would speak to a good friend.

I think this works better for some people than for others. When I speak to a
good friend, often I'm rambling and not articulating clearly, and I often lose
track of the point of my story. It happens far more often than I like that I
fail to capture someone's interest, and I definitely don't want that to happen
on stage.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's something to work on. Structuring your thoughts and thus speech a
_little bit_. Next time you feel like explaining something to someone, try to
be mindful of the points you're explaining, and proceed in a recursive way:
first an outline, then the details, one at a time. Because good public
speaking does indeed work very much like talking to a friend (with some small
differences in style and tempo).

Maybe a writing exercise would help? Try and write an article on a topic, and
get someone to comment on its structure (I'll be happy to help).

~~~
Vinnl
I actually consider myself to be pretty good at writing. I think it's mostly
that it costs a lot of time and energy for me to articulate properly, to
maintain social cues, etc., which leaves little for properly structuring a
story. I hope/expect this to get better over time, but it definitely doesn't
come naturally unfortunately.

------
tincholio
Minor nit... Conferences have CFPs, you don't write a CFP! (unless you're
organizing a conference). It's a call for papers, speakers submit papers (at
least in academia, I guess in tech conferences maybe an abstract sufices)

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7059303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7059303).

------
Numberwang
Props to whoever designed the page for staying away from parallax effects and
unnecessary effects.

