
On Conference Speaking - danielh
https://hynek.me/articles/speaking/
======
ethomson
On the whole, this is excellent advice. The introduction is completely true
for me: I give many talks every year and it is, without question, a _lot_ of
work. I suspect that everybody is a bit different as to how they prepare, but
like the author, I do the cold rehearsal in my hotel room a half-dozen times
(at least) before I actually go to give the talk.

I also break my talk into logical chunks - say five or six sections. I
practice each of those individually, timing them. This gives me an average for
how long each section takes, so I have a schedule written down. This lets me
know how far over or under my time allotment I am so that I can adjust on the
fly, either adding some additional explanation to some areas or subtly
truncating something.

I always know my "bail out" slide - if I end up running out of time, what's
the "thank you!" slide number? If you simply type in that slide number in
PowerPoint or Keynote, it will jump to that slide without fanfare. Don't ever
tell your audience that you ran out of time to get to all your material, or
flip through the slides to the end that they won't get to see. They'll feel
like they were ripped off. (Also, make sure to structure your talk so that the
special bonus material is at the end, so they're _not_ actually ripped off.)

~~~
amelius
> I do the cold rehearsal in my hotel room a half-dozen times

How do you prevent getting bored? And how do you prevent your audience to
notice that you're bored giving the same talk for the Nth time?

These are actually my biggest problems giving presentations.

~~~
hynek
[author of the linked article here]

I get bored while practicing (and it’s getting worse as I get better) but the
audience changes everything for me. In the absence of special talents, plowing
through boredom and practice anyway is what separates good talks from mediocre
ones.

~~~
vanderZwan
To quote Dr. J: _“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on
the days you don’t feel like doing them.”_

------
Touche
I've not done nearly as many conference talks as many people here (I do about
one a year) but just for entertainment here is how it usually goes for me:

1\. Come up with a proposal, send it out to as many conferences as I can find.

2\. Wait.

3\. Most reject it. Some times (often, actually) all of them reject it. Go
back to step 1 (You lose 3 or 4 months when you are waiting, not knowing if
any will accept your proposal).

4\. If one of them accepted, be overjoyed!

5\. Tell myself I'll start working on the talk super early so I'm extra
prepared.

6\. Actually not start until 1 to 1 and a half months before the conference.

7\. Be super stressed. Not get anything else meaningful done.

8\. Day of the talk I am angry at myself for agreeing to do it when I get
little out of it.

9\. Do the talk, it goes way better than I expected! I didn't totally
embarrass myself and people seemed engaged.

10\. It's over! Oh my god, it's over! Thinking of all of the things I can get
done now, I'm never giving another talk and putting myself through that again.

11\. 3 or 4 months pass and I see people I know are giving talks and I get the
itch to do it myself again... back to step 1.

~~~
sillysaurus3
So what are some reasons to do any of this? Sounds unpleasant.

Does it really increase your salary or your network that much?

~~~
Touche
Being seen as an "expert" in your field does positively affect your salary and
giving talks is one way to help there. To what extent it helps I'm not sure.
But that's not really the reason why I do it. I do it mostly because of ego. I
see people tweeting about giving a talk at X convention and I feel like I
should have that status.

As jrauser said, though, the more I do them the less inclination I have, as it
really does negatively effect my ability to achieve other goals. And the older
I get the other projects become more important to me.

~~~
jrauser
Even more than affecting my ability to achieve other goals, I think it might
actually affect my health. After my last talk I tweeted[1]:

"In the days before my recent talk, my resting heart rate was ~50bpm. The
morning after, it's ~45bpm. Be kind to your speakers, folks."

Long term low-level stress is pretty bad for you.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/jrauser/status/867055469700849664](https://twitter.com/jrauser/status/867055469700849664)

------
mxstbr
Having spoken at ~20 international conferences I'm pretty certain people
underestimate the work that goes into giving a great talk you'll remember.

This also bugs me when people say "Oh, that person's given this talk at that
conference before". Preparing a good talk is a lot of work, and after that's
put in why should you not be allowed to give that talk more than one time?

Also only very few people watch conference videos. Giving the same talk a
dozen times, by the 10th time maybe a handful of people in an audience of
hundreds will have seen the talk before. I'm honestly surprised conferences
still record the talks because I'm fairly certain it's not worth the money for
them. (there are outliers to this when somebody gives the most amazing talk
ever that gets watch millions of times, but how often does that happen?)

I'd much rather conferences invest money into a better experience for the
attendees and speakers.

~~~
hynek
[author of the linked article here]

I’ll have to disagree here. Using PyCon US as an example since it ended
recently:

1\. My talk video has already been watched more than 650 times. I don’t think
I had that many people in the room.

2\. I rarely go to actual talks because as a European, being able to meet my
American friends and being able to discuss things IRL is sadly a once-per-year
issue. Open Spaces/BoFs are also more valuable IMHO by being present. IOW: now
I’m back I’ve started to catch up by watching conf videos. :) _As a speaker_ ,
I’d prefer people going to talks too of course. Last year I spoke to a 1/3
filled room and it sucked so hard I wasn’t sure I’ll submit another talk.

3\. PyCon sells out. Always. It would be a pity to limit all the work to a
small minority. Some great talk videos end up iconic too.

4\. Plenty people can’t afford conferences at all. Be it money, job, or family
responsibilities. Talk videos are a great way to democratize knowledge.

~~~
awjr
I think point 3 cannot be overstated. Iconic talks can be hugely informative
or simple and brilliant in their execution. Two that come to mind and I
regularly recommend to people are:

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)
"Wat" [https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--
2/1](https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1) "F*ck You, Pay Me"

~~~
pc86
That Mike Monteiro video literally changed my life, helping me go from
charging $15/hr for PHP "development" (sigh) to charging real money and
getting real checks.

Wat is a great talk two, they're probably my top 2 talk videos.

------
jwildeboer
I admit I am one of those conference speakers that doesn't prepare a lot. I
tend to discuss the topic beforehand with the organisers, go inside the venue
to get a feel for the audience, go on stage and just deliver. IMHO it is all
about creating a bond with your audience and interact with them as spontaneous
as possible. Works for me, but I know it's not for everyone.

I also rarely use slides nowadays. That helps a lot. Sometimes I use a
whiteboard. The way I deliver keynotes and presentations is maybe best summed
up (and definitely inspired by) this article from the late Pieter Hintjens:

[http://hintjens.com/blog:107](http://hintjens.com/blog:107) Ten Steps to
Better Public Speaking

~~~
Peroni
>I admit I am one of those conference speakers that doesn't prepare a lot.

I've been running meet-ups and speaking at and attending conferences of all
shapes and sizes all over the world for years and I assure you, unless you're
exceptionally talented and experienced at public speaking (which you may be),
then a lack of preparation is painfully obvious to the audience.

I completely agree that building a bond with the audience is the key
difference between a good talk and a great talk but to anyone relatively new
to public speaking, I promise you that there's no such thing as too much
preparation.

~~~
jwildeboer
I'm in the speaking circus now for 12 years, so I will happily admit that I
have a solid pool of experience and knowledge to build upon. Preparation as in
learning and practising the stuff I talk about is my daily job anyway, so in
that sense I prepare a lot.

Some people call my style "storytelling" because that's the new buzzword, I
guess. To me it comes very natural to be on stage and entertain the audience
while delivering my content.

My main point is that speaking in public is not a one-size-fits-all thing. So
what works for most doesn't have to work for all and vice-versa.

As long as the audience feels they learned something and were entertained, I'm
happy.

~~~
ohdrat
You can do a lot of preparation and perfection, over years, and finally get up
there and suddenly realize that you are not an entertainer, or even a teacher,
and don't want to be either of those, even though the assumption was that this
was a good idea, or the main idea. Then what, you're the guy from the Advanced
Bashing The Shell talk, or a like guitar player who does not want to play for
an audience, what do you do?

~~~
jwildeboer
Not everybody can become a good speaker, granted. Training and experience
helps a lot, though. But if you don't feel comfortable on stage then by all
means, don't force yourself to.

There are loads of other ways to share your knowledge. Maybe you want to try
podcasting, blogging, vlogging, writing articles for relevant magazines/web
sites?

Heck, you could even make funny songs to get your message out :-) As a speaker
though, I feel at home on stage and the feedback has been positive over all
the years, so I feel comfortable with being a speaker.

As always, do what you makes you feel good, don't force yourself into
something you don't like. The audience will notice immediately and some
audiences can be very hostile. Most of the time though they are very forgiving
in my experience.

~~~
hynek
Kind of depends on how you define a “good speaker”, right? Your style and mine
style are obviously very different (lots of it is also due to English being my
third language of course) but people still have expressed that they consider
me a good speaker.

It’s like with everything: talent or grind. Or both if you want to be an
_amazing_ speaker. :)

~~~
jwildeboer
The different approaches and results of speakers is what makes a conference
interesting, when the mix is right IMHO :-)

------
yomrholmes
I spoke at my first conference about two years ago, and it was a huge learning
experience. Here's how I'd do it again, if I did it again:

1\. Expect this gig to take a huge amount of time. As such, make sure that you
allocate 1-2 weeks of full time work to prepare. Will it take this much time?
Probably not, but its good to prepare anyways and know what you're diving
into.

2\. Speak at a conference as part of a much larger communications strategy.
What does that mean? Its waaay easier to speak about something that you're
already talking about on your blog, with customers or with your colleagues.
Then, you can just develop that existing conversation into something that
works well in front of a live audience. Developing an idea is a lot easier
than creating an idea from scratch.

3\. Test ideas first on your blog, HN or Twitter. Generally, what people want
to hear and engage with at a conference is similar to what people want to read
and engage with online. So, write a bunch of articles and share a bunch of
articles, and see what people like from that.

4\. Practice, practice, practice. Talking at a conference is like giving a
performance. Would some violin player just wing it on stage? Definitely not,
unless they have 10,000 hours of experience. So, practice giving your talk at
home in front of the mirror. Hire someone to watch you while you practice. Per
point one, this stuff takes time, and like any piece of work, you need to
develop your skills.

------
shidoshi
Lots of "I give a lot of talk" folks on here. I'm a listener, and I just want
to thank all of you. Being brave and sharing your knowledge to help empower
others is no small thing. So, again, _thank you_.

------
nickjj
Glad to see I'm not the only one who relies on scripts.

After having recorded 36 hours worth of video training courses, I've written
over 150,000 words of scripts because explaining technical information in a
concise way usually depends on thinking about how to word your sentences
beforehand.

I'm really envious of people who can wing in depth tech talks amazingly well,
but at the same time I'd also be surprised if those people even exist. Winging
it "decently" and "amazingly well" are so much different.

~~~
j7ake
William Bialek has given week long seminars (4 hours a day over 4 days) in
biophysics with just chalk and blackboard.

amazingly well

~~~
nickjj
I just spot checked about 10 minutes of his stuff on Youtube. Yeah this is top
notch.

Has he been lecturing since 1986? That's when he joined up with Berkeley on
his Wiki page.

------
brightball
I speak at a lot of local meetups and from one of those got invited to speak
at a pretty big conference (M3AAWG). It was really intimidating since the
speakers consisted almost entirely of Facebook, Google, Comcast, Microsoft,
Rackspace...and somehow me.

I enjoyed it but was really nervous and had some serious imposter syndrome
going on. I generally like giving talks but for me, it was a very different
experience knowing that you were speaking for people who were paying to be
there. The speaking invite allowed me to attend the conference for free though
and I learned a lot.

My talk was basically a practitioner's experience of using/implementing a lot
of different anti-phishing/anti-fraud techniques that people were deeply
specialized in throughout other parts of the conference. I had what I hope,
for others sake, was a very unique experience of combating a lot of fraud and
seeing things come from all angles where a lot of larger targets will tend to
deal with different parts of attacks in entirely different departments. I
couldn't go deep on anything, but mainly got to share my experience.

------
AndrewKemendo
This guy basically prepares his "Hour" the same way a stand-up does, though
without that all crucial audience feedback you need for comedy.

That's a great way to do it if you are focusing on one specific thing at a
year turnaround rate.

If however you are asked to present a wide range of topics then it doesn't
work quite the same and you need to be better at improvising and speaking off
the cuff.

I probably speak 15 times a year on 3 different topics:

Augmented Reality

Applied Machine Learning

Leadership

Each time I am asked to speak, I pull slides or structure from previous talks,
and then update them with the latest from the field or my own constant
research/learning.

Generally speaking though I don't start prep more than a week in advance -
which is different than most people I think because I have so much experience
here.

The day before, I will spend a few hours going through a routine where I just
present several times to my hotel room. If it's an hour long presentation I
won't typically walk through the whole thing each time, just the transitions
usually. Once done I'll distill the points I'm making into bullets and write
them onto a notecard. If there is a podium I'll use the notecard, if not then
I just gotta memorize the bullets and go from there.

The reality here is also that a lot of conference speaking is about building
momentum from previous talks and building relationships with the conference
organizers. You need to have a great relationship with the organizer because
things will go wrong and being able to show you can go with the flow is
important.

Almost as important as what you present is being able to present it. Being
prepared for contingencies (slide backups on dropbox, thumb drive, laptop with
HDMI and VGA), knowing how to wear a pin mic, talk into a handheld mic,
knowing how to use a clicker, doing pre-show prep for wonky videos or sound
issues where necessary, know how to answer questions, give space for panel
members to talk etc... are all parts of the equation that make you a good
speaker or not and thus get invited to speak or not.

Most people miss all of these things or ignore them assuming that the staff
has everything covered. Generally speaking conference staff are run ragged so
anything you can do to help make their lives easier is appreciated and will be
remembered.

------
porterde
Great article. Reminds me of Damian Conway's great conference talk on giving
tech presentations - that one changed my approach on preparing for talks
forever. [https://youtu.be/W_i_DrWic88](https://youtu.be/W_i_DrWic88) and
[http://damian.conway.org/IBP.pdf](http://damian.conway.org/IBP.pdf) are the
notes. Well worth watching.

------
munns
I speak as part of my job and have spoken at probably 20+ events that are 3rd
party to my employer in the past 2 years. Currently I am averaging about a
conference a month in 2017.

I thought this was a really great list. Some big ones I like to call out:

#9: Travel - This gets me more than most things. I have on occasions bumped
into other speakers completely unprepared for their travel for or for things
that might go "boom" such as: laptop failure, presentation corruption, display
adapters not existing (or breaking which is harder to prepare for) and my
personal favorite Immunity Boosters. Hell yes. A coworker turned me on to
these two years ago after coming down with the plague after speaking at a few
too many events in a short period. Now its a must for me and whether its
placebo effect or not I haven't gotten sick while traveling/speaking since.

#10: Showtime - No one is born a great speaker. Flat out no one. I know people
who speak weekly at public events and they used to suck at it too. Don't be
afraid/stress too much before a talk. That said, I have seen people bite off
more than they can chew and give a first talk at a major tech event such as
AWS's Re:Invent where rooms average 1k people. If you're going to choke at
your first event, don't have it be that big/visible of a one. Start with local
meetups!

#5/6: A big one that I always recommend is peer review your content before you
even start dry runs. Presentations often live longer on sites such as
Slideshare than they do in the minds of those who have seen them live. It is
in sites like Slideshare that your spelling, grammar, and even design issues
will stand out the most. Get someone who is detached from your presentation to
read through it, maybe even two people, take that feedback and then move
forward. For me, my wife who was a journalism major reviews almost all of my
content despite not knowing much about the technical nature.

------
baby
I haven't given as many talks so I can't really contribute, but I see a very
different pattern already: I tend to apply when I already have researched a
topic and have some slides. Maybe I should re-think my approach :)

Also I would never drink coffee (or any caffeinated drink) before a talk, and
rather wake up late to get a goooood night of sleep. Also eat really light.

> If you watch the talk, you may notice that I don’t do Q&As. That has two
> reasons

Never really understood Q&As after the talk. We can always have a private
discussions or use different ways to ask questions.

------
Samathy
Great blog post and certainly a lot to take away.

I've spoken quite a few times and several different conferences/events and
love it. However, the thing I struggle with most is coming up with a topic. I
find it incredibly hard to think of something I believe people will find
interesting. However, I expect this is simply down to lacking industry
experience and not having spent extensive time working with any particular
language/tool.

------
tezza
Are conference speakers paid ?

How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ?

Do they pay the airfare and accommodation ?

Does their work sponsor them or do they take personal holiday ?

~~~
chimeracoder
It depends on the conference. I've spoken at a lot of conferences. This is my
experience, both from my own presentations and from chatting with other
speakers:

Very few conferences pay speakers - even keynote speakers. The exceptions seem
to be conferences explicitly organized around a particular proprietary
technology, and sponsored fully by the company that makes that technology.
Most community-organized conferences or conferences around a particular
language or piece of software do not. I only know of one exception to that
rule.

Some will, however, cover your hotel and airfare. You may have to ask for
this, and they may only cover it if your company does not already. (Airfare
may be capped, or may be limited to people traveling from the same
country/continent).

As for whether work sponsors your or not, it depends entirely on your company
and their relationship with speaking. I've been pretty lucky - even though I'm
not in a role that explicitly requires speaking as part of my
responsibilities[0], I don't have to use my vacation time when speaking at
conferences. Not all companies take this same approach, though.

> How do you keep earning money when giving talks all the time ?

This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay speakers,
even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a _lot_ of time, and
providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is a way of
offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good talk.

If more conferences paid speakers, the quality of talks would go up
dramatically. However, I only know of one community-organized conference that
pays speakers a share of the proceeds.

[0] ie, "Developer Advocate"

~~~
ValentineC
> _This is the main reason why I feel that all conferences should pay
> speakers, even a small amount. Preparing properly for a talk takes a lot of
> time, and providing speakers some share of the proceeds from a conference is
> a way of offsetting the amount of time it takes to prepare and give a good
> talk._

I've organised a few conferences covering different languages and platforms,
and there's two things which prevent organisers from giving more than a token
sum to speakers.

1) Most of the "proceeds" from a conference come from an abundance of
sponsorship for that year. For the community-organised, non-profit conferences
I've been involved in, the per-attendee cost is often much more than what we
charge for tickets. (This also depends on the overall sentiment within the
organising team. Personally, I'm for charging as high as reasonably possible
and offering scholarships and discounts where needed.)

2) The sponsorship climate changes every year, depending on the marketing
budget of the various local companies, and the conferences that are taking
place in that year. It's very important for conference organisers to maintain
a healthy balance for the next year, if only to cover the large deposits that
we have to put down for the various vendors.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Most of the "proceeds" from a conference come from an abundance of
> sponsorship for that year. For the community-organised, non-profit
> conferences I've been involved in, the per-attendee cost is often much more
> than what we charge for tickets. (This also depends on the overall sentiment
> within the organising team. Personally, I'm for charging as high as
> reasonably possible and offering scholarships and discounts where needed.)

While I'm sympathetic to that, I'll note that the one conference I'm aware of
that _does_ do this, on a matter of principle, is also the most generous with
scholarships and assistance, and also the most diverse in both speaker lineup
and conference attendees.

It's not easy, but definitely possible to run a conference this way; the main
problem is that very few actually try.

------
simonswords82
I've been running a software company, working on and managing various software
projects, and launching/running software products for 10+ years.

The timing of this article is excellent as I was just about to start the
search for conferences I could share some of my knowledge with. I've spoken at
universities, colleges, and small business conferences a bunch of times and my
talks are usually well received.

However, I'm still not sure about is where to _find_ conferences with
audiences who might be interested in what I have to say.

------
jasonlotito
A lot of good advice, but I personally disagree with the slides not standing
on their own. For me, slides + speaker notes should be able to stand on their
own. It requires extra work and effort, but I believe the results are
generally better because people can then consume the material the way they
want.

However, like your guidelines, this is my personal one.

~~~
hynek
[author of the linked article here]

It’s obviously a matter of style, however I’d like to point out, that it’s not
about extra work for me _at all_.

I probably spend as much time on my slides as you do (if not more), I just
have a very different goal in mind and optimize for it relentlessly.

------
zaiste
Fantastic article and wonderful tips. You could package it as an e-book, and
maybe even sell it ;)

A shameless plug: I'm working on a side project which aims to help tech
speakers get the most out of speaking engagements:
[https://eventil.com/for/speakers](https://eventil.com/for/speakers)

~~~
blakesterz
Your Site looks like something I tried for my area. What are you using to
build it? I like it.

~~~
zaiste
It's a Rails 5.1 application. We are also in the process of migrating some
parts of UI to Vue.js

------
itaysk
I'm curios about travel arrangements: i have spoken in many many events
locally where I live, but never abroad. Thinking to propose a talk for a
conference abroad, is it acceptable to expect them to cover travel expenses?
(Not talking about pay for the talk itself, just flights and hotel)

~~~
hynek
Only if they explicitly offer that. I've never got compensation for anything
unless I got invited. And you only get invited if you've built a name for
yourself.

Bigger conferences also usually offer financial aid that is always worth
trying.

------
sanswork
I'm quite envious of conference speakers. I would love the experience but I
never have any solid ideas that I think I could turn into a good talk.

~~~
masklinn
You could always start with poster sessions or tutorials if a conference you
like/are interested in has that.

~~~
d33
Or lightning talks. I guess that the worst case scenario if something goes
wrong is not that bad there.

------
htormey
Does anyone maintain a directory of conferences that accept proposals grouped
by technology?

~~~
htormey
Nice list of frontend conferences [https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-
confs](https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-confs)

------
juskrey
If a speaker should specifically train him/herself for a talk, the talk is not
worth listening.

~~~
caseysoftware
_So athletes shouldn 't practice before the game?_

I've given close to 300 sessions at about 100 events over the last 10
years.[1][2] The top three things you can do are practice, practice, practice.
There are nuances to the material that you don't even think about at this
point. Saying it out loud makes you think about them.

There are jerks in the audience who will say "do you know about X?" which is
semi-related but not completely.. you need to respond and either a) connect
back to the topic or b) shut it down and redirect back to the topic.

When someone asks "that's great but I need to worry about B instead of A, what
do I do?" you need to either punt to something like "catch me after" or "Oh,
there's a setting/plugin/tool for that!"

Finally, there are transitions and a flow to the talk that you don't know
about until you try it. And sometimes you'll need to look up things - about
tools or even your projects - to refresh your memory.

Admittedly, I go lighter on practice because I was a theatre geek (only 3-4x
out loud before the first time) but it is _still_ the most important step.

1 -
[http://lanyrd.com/profile/caseysoftware/past/](http://lanyrd.com/profile/caseysoftware/past/)

2 - [https://joind.in/user/caseysoftware](https://joind.in/user/caseysoftware)

