10 ms·

On Conference Speaking

400 points by danielh 9y ago

sanswork 9y ago
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.
- dkersten 9y ago
  I'm similar. I give a lot of talks in the local clojure meetup (I'm one of the organisers, so I'm often the fallback speaker when nobody else is available). I find it difficult to come up with good talks for that, but I guess I manage (passably). For conference talks though... I always draw a blank. I've wanted to give talks a bunch of times but could never come up with something that I would be interested in talking about, that I am knowledgeable enough to be confident talking about, and that is interesting for others too.
  - taway_1212 9y ago
    I think this should be approached backwards - FIRST one should have a good idea that he wants shared with the world and only then he should consider giving a talk about it (vs other mediums of communicating the idea). A talk is just a tool, not and end in itself. A btw, wanting to give talks because successful people give talks is a cargo cult.
    - dkersten 9y ago
      Of course, which is why I've never given a conference talk. I haven't got anything I feel like I should share. The desire to give a talk is because public speaking is something I want to be better at, because sometimes I've had opportunities where I could have talked about something but didn't feel confident enough due to lack of experience. Also, my employer would like me to give talks, but again, I don't feel confident enough to do so. At some point you just have to take the plunge and I'd rather do it at a generally friendly tech conference talking about something I'm interested in, before I do this in a more hostile environment. Maybe that's too selfish a way to look at conference talks...
- masklinn 9y ago
  You could always start with poster sessions or tutorials if a conference you like/are interested in has that.
  - d33 9y ago
    Or lightning talks. I guess that the worst case scenario if something goes wrong is not that bad there.
- tomekowal 9y ago
  To me ideas just come unexpectedly and often because I see someone mistaken https://www.xkcd.com/386/ https://www.xkcd.com/386/ I had a talk where I showed how Elixir and Elm programming languages complement each other and someone in the audience asked what are we using Elixir for in our company. When I said that for payment systems he looked surprised, because he heard about "let it crash" in Elixir and he thought it is unusable for anything critical. That inspired me to talk about how we use Elixir for handling money. I also answered questions on Stak Overflow for some time. Of course there are many typos or library quirks that are simply missed, but often you see a person that just entirely misunderstood the concept. This is also a target for talks. There might more people struggling with the same thing (especially if your question gets more views). Pay attention to what surprises people when you are talking with them. If someone didn't know what you find obvious, there is a good chance more people don't know it. We have some kind of bias where we think that what WE know is common knowledge and automatically EVERYONE ELSE is smarter than us (because they know everything we know and some more that we don't). That is obviously not true :) If you find a topic that surprised couple of people it means you have and idea worth sharing. It doesn't have to be novel! I often put quotes and references from blog posts that I read about given topic to show that this idea is not new at all! Old ideas are often not widely known or forgotten. They are perfect for conferences, because they might be crystalized over years, so it is easy to research them.
mxstbr 9y ago
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.
- biafra 9y ago
  Some speakers are more willing to give a talk when you record them. On the other hand it depends on the type of conference. There are conferences which are sold out for years and do not need extra money. They want people to be able to see the talk athough they did not win a ticket in the lottery. And this is true for conferences which are very different. Google I/O, Apples WWDC and on the other hand the Chaos Communication Congress. All of them offer recordings for free.
  - Slartie 9y ago
    Damn, took me too long to type ;-) But it's funny that you thought of the exact same conferences when it comes to good recordings with large viewer counts.
- Slartie 9y ago
  > Also only very few people watch conference videos. This is quite often true, but it hugely depends on the conference in question. The annual Chaos Communication Congress for example (well-known international IT security conference in Germany) records all of the talks, which usually have between 500-3k viewers at the venue, and the better ones usually get >10k views, with some top talks even topping 30k-50k over time, on the official recording page of the conference alone (there are quite often copies uploaded to YouTube and other outlets, and those amass similar numbers of views in addition). In addition there is usually a number of streaming viewers who watch the talks as they happen, in the figure of 500-3k. In this case however the recording quality is generally very good, so that might also explain why other conferences with only mediocre recordings don't reach similar numbers of viewers. And the videos are released under a CC license, so sharing/reuploading/using them in education or similar stuff is all legal. The WWDC talks most likely also reach high view counts, since many people would like to go to the conference but can't and the talks themselves as well as the recordings are usually of good quality.
tezza 9y ago
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 ?
- pulse7 9y ago
  Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) and this is then partially marketing partially education.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) If you're lucky. When I speak at conferences, there are always some speakers who are there entirely on their own time and money (aside from whatever portion of travel expenses the conference picks up).
- amouat 9y ago
  It's unusual to be paid to give a talk, unless it's a keynote or the organisers know that your name (or your organisation's name) will sell more tickets. Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. It's fairly common for airfare and accommodation to be paid. If you're talking about something work related, your company will likely be happy for you to do it on work time because of the exposure (and may well be willing to cover airfare/accommodation if the conference doesn't)
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. They might only be speaking for an hour, but I can assure you that giving a talk worthy of that slot and money takes a lot more than a single hour to prepare, even for the most experienced public speakers. You may be able to get away with that once or twice, but it's unlikely you'd be invited back to speak for any paying slot after that. By itself, conference speaking is not going to be a good source of income for anyone at any level of experience. When you factor in the preparation time, it's always going to come out to far less than you'd be able to charge for hourly contracting (or even salaried work). The value in speaking at conferences comes from the ability to use the platform to deliver a message and to build your reputation (yours and your company's).
ethomson 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    [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 9y ago
      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.”
jwildeboer 9y ago
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 9y ago
  >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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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?
juskrey 9y ago
If a speaker should specifically train him/herself for a talk, the talk is not worth listening.
- watwut 9y ago
  Why so? I would guess the opposite - if the speaker is not prepared the talk might be fun, but you are less likely to learn something meaningful from it.
- ilanco 9y ago
  I don't agree. Not everyone is born a good public speaker.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  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
- juskrey 9y ago
  People here don't get that if your work depends on how you present it on some talk, it worth nothing.
- anjc 9y ago
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Samathy 9y ago
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.
baby 9y ago
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.
nickjj 9y ago
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 9y ago
  William Bialek has given week long seminars (4 hours a day over 4 days) in biophysics with just chalk and blackboard. amazingly well
  - hynek 9y ago
    Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in 2:00:25. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - nickjj 9y ago
    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.
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zaiste 9y ago
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
- hynek 9y ago
  [author of the linked article here] In peak irony, I’m actually considering to make it my next year’s talk. It’s too long for lots of people to read, but I think I could make an entertaining talk out of it.
- blakesterz 9y ago
  Your Site looks like something I tried for my area. What are you using to build it? I like it.
  - zaiste 9y ago
    It's a Rails 5.1 application. We are also in the process of migrating some parts of UI to Vue.js
Touche 9y ago
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.
- BrentOzar 9y ago
  > 3. Most reject it. Some times (often, actually) all of them reject it. Go back to step 1 This is one of the biggest reasons I started https://GroupBy.org https://GroupBy.org. I speak at a lot of conferences, and I was frustrated with the mystery of the abstract review process. I wanted anybody to be able to submit on any topic, at any time, and then get peer review from other speakers and attendees. The abstract submission process is totally open - it's just a WordPress blog where folks can submit comments and talk directly to the presenters out in the open. It really helps speakers understand why their abstracts aren't resonating, and how they can tweak their abstracts to improve.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    I sometimes get a feeling that some speakers due to their history get invited to give talks over and over. There are only a few respected conferences where you get to see new faces. The rest usually cycle through their top speakers. The worst is when you have the same white 5 males talking about diversity.
jasonlotito 9y ago
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 9y ago
  [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.
shidoshi 9y ago
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.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
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.
simonswords82 9y ago
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.
htormey 9y ago
Does anyone maintain a directory of conferences that accept proposals grouped by technology?
- htormey 9y ago
  Nice list of frontend conferences https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-confs https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-confs
porterde 9y ago
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.
brightball 9y ago
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.
itaysk 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
yomrholmes 9y ago
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.
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munns 9y ago
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.

400 points by danielh 9y ago

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.

dkersten 9y ago
I'm similar. I give a lot of talks in the local clojure meetup (I'm one of the organisers, so I'm often the fallback speaker when nobody else is available). I find it difficult to come up with good talks for that, but I guess I manage (passably). For conference talks though... I always draw a blank. I've wanted to give talks a bunch of times but could never come up with something that I would be interested in talking about, that I am knowledgeable enough to be confident talking about, and that is interesting for others too.
- taway_1212 9y ago
  I think this should be approached backwards - FIRST one should have a good idea that he wants shared with the world and only then he should consider giving a talk about it (vs other mediums of communicating the idea). A talk is just a tool, not and end in itself. A btw, wanting to give talks because successful people give talks is a cargo cult.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    Of course, which is why I've never given a conference talk. I haven't got anything I feel like I should share. The desire to give a talk is because public speaking is something I want to be better at, because sometimes I've had opportunities where I could have talked about something but didn't feel confident enough due to lack of experience. Also, my employer would like me to give talks, but again, I don't feel confident enough to do so. At some point you just have to take the plunge and I'd rather do it at a generally friendly tech conference talking about something I'm interested in, before I do this in a more hostile environment. Maybe that's too selfish a way to look at conference talks...
masklinn 9y ago
You could always start with poster sessions or tutorials if a conference you like/are interested in has that.
- d33 9y ago
  Or lightning talks. I guess that the worst case scenario if something goes wrong is not that bad there.
tomekowal 9y ago
To me ideas just come unexpectedly and often because I see someone mistaken https://www.xkcd.com/386/ https://www.xkcd.com/386/ I had a talk where I showed how Elixir and Elm programming languages complement each other and someone in the audience asked what are we using Elixir for in our company. When I said that for payment systems he looked surprised, because he heard about "let it crash" in Elixir and he thought it is unusable for anything critical. That inspired me to talk about how we use Elixir for handling money. I also answered questions on Stak Overflow for some time. Of course there are many typos or library quirks that are simply missed, but often you see a person that just entirely misunderstood the concept. This is also a target for talks. There might more people struggling with the same thing (especially if your question gets more views). Pay attention to what surprises people when you are talking with them. If someone didn't know what you find obvious, there is a good chance more people don't know it. We have some kind of bias where we think that what WE know is common knowledge and automatically EVERYONE ELSE is smarter than us (because they know everything we know and some more that we don't). That is obviously not true :) If you find a topic that surprised couple of people it means you have and idea worth sharing. It doesn't have to be novel! I often put quotes and references from blog posts that I read about given topic to show that this idea is not new at all! Old ideas are often not widely known or forgotten. They are perfect for conferences, because they might be crystalized over years, so it is easy to research them.

mxstbr 9y ago

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.

biafra 9y ago
Some speakers are more willing to give a talk when you record them. On the other hand it depends on the type of conference. There are conferences which are sold out for years and do not need extra money. They want people to be able to see the talk athough they did not win a ticket in the lottery. And this is true for conferences which are very different. Google I/O, Apples WWDC and on the other hand the Chaos Communication Congress. All of them offer recordings for free.
- Slartie 9y ago
  Damn, took me too long to type ;-) But it's funny that you thought of the exact same conferences when it comes to good recordings with large viewer counts.
Slartie 9y ago
> Also only very few people watch conference videos. This is quite often true, but it hugely depends on the conference in question. The annual Chaos Communication Congress for example (well-known international IT security conference in Germany) records all of the talks, which usually have between 500-3k viewers at the venue, and the better ones usually get >10k views, with some top talks even topping 30k-50k over time, on the official recording page of the conference alone (there are quite often copies uploaded to YouTube and other outlets, and those amass similar numbers of views in addition). In addition there is usually a number of streaming viewers who watch the talks as they happen, in the figure of 500-3k. In this case however the recording quality is generally very good, so that might also explain why other conferences with only mediocre recordings don't reach similar numbers of viewers. And the videos are released under a CC license, so sharing/reuploading/using them in education or similar stuff is all legal. The WWDC talks most likely also reach high view counts, since many people would like to go to the conference but can't and the talks themselves as well as the recordings are usually of good quality.

tezza 9y ago

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 ?

pulse7 9y ago
Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) and this is then partially marketing partially education.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Usually the employer sponsors everything (time, flight and hotel) If you're lucky. When I speak at conferences, there are always some speakers who are there entirely on their own time and money (aside from whatever portion of travel expenses the conference picks up).
amouat 9y ago
It's unusual to be paid to give a talk, unless it's a keynote or the organisers know that your name (or your organisation's name) will sell more tickets. Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. It's fairly common for airfare and accommodation to be paid. If you're talking about something work related, your company will likely be happy for you to do it on work time because of the exposure (and may well be willing to cover airfare/accommodation if the conference doesn't)
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > Keynote speakers with a big reputation can get paid a lot of money for ~ 1 hours work. They might only be speaking for an hour, but I can assure you that giving a talk worthy of that slot and money takes a lot more than a single hour to prepare, even for the most experienced public speakers. You may be able to get away with that once or twice, but it's unlikely you'd be invited back to speak for any paying slot after that. By itself, conference speaking is not going to be a good source of income for anyone at any level of experience. When you factor in the preparation time, it's always going to come out to far less than you'd be able to charge for hourly contracting (or even salaried work). The value in speaking at conferences comes from the ability to use the platform to deliver a message and to build your reputation (yours and your company's).

ethomson 9y ago

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 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  [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 9y ago
    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.”

jwildeboer 9y ago

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 9y ago
>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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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?

juskrey 9y ago

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

watwut 9y ago
Why so? I would guess the opposite - if the speaker is not prepared the talk might be fun, but you are less likely to learn something meaningful from it.
ilanco 9y ago
I don't agree. Not everyone is born a good public speaker.
caseysoftware 9y ago
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
juskrey 9y ago
People here don't get that if your work depends on how you present it on some talk, it worth nothing.
anjc 9y ago

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Samathy 9y ago

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.

baby 9y ago

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.

nickjj 9y ago

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 9y ago
William Bialek has given week long seminars (4 hours a day over 4 days) in biophysics with just chalk and blackboard. amazingly well
- hynek 9y ago
  Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in 2:00:25. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- nickjj 9y ago
  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.

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zaiste 9y ago

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

hynek 9y ago
[author of the linked article here] In peak irony, I’m actually considering to make it my next year’s talk. It’s too long for lots of people to read, but I think I could make an entertaining talk out of it.
blakesterz 9y ago
Your Site looks like something I tried for my area. What are you using to build it? I like it.
- zaiste 9y ago
  It's a Rails 5.1 application. We are also in the process of migrating some parts of UI to Vue.js

Touche 9y ago

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.

BrentOzar 9y ago
> 3. Most reject it. Some times (often, actually) all of them reject it. Go back to step 1 This is one of the biggest reasons I started https://GroupBy.org https://GroupBy.org. I speak at a lot of conferences, and I was frustrated with the mystery of the abstract review process. I wanted anybody to be able to submit on any topic, at any time, and then get peer review from other speakers and attendees. The abstract submission process is totally open - it's just a WordPress blog where folks can submit comments and talk directly to the presenters out in the open. It really helps speakers understand why their abstracts aren't resonating, and how they can tweak their abstracts to improve.
- nojvek 9y ago
  I sometimes get a feeling that some speakers due to their history get invited to give talks over and over. There are only a few respected conferences where you get to see new faces. The rest usually cycle through their top speakers. The worst is when you have the same white 5 males talking about diversity.

jasonlotito 9y ago

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 9y ago
[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.

shidoshi 9y ago

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.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

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.

simonswords82 9y ago

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.

htormey 9y ago

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

htormey 9y ago
Nice list of frontend conferences https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-confs https://github.com/benmvp/frontend-confs

porterde 9y ago

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.

brightball 9y ago

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.

itaysk 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

yomrholmes 9y ago

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.

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munns 9y ago

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.