Having talked at many conferences there are a bunch things I do: # Practice, seems simple but when I don't then it will not be as good as when I do. # Go earl

Having talked at many conferences there are a bunch things I do: # Practice, seems simple but when I don't then it will not be as good as when I do. # Go early and talk to a couple of the people that will be watching the talk. This calms me down as I now have a couple people on myside. It backfired once when I started talking to someone and they turned out to be a jackass, but I moved onto someone else. # Use the people I talked to as my eye contact, there now friends I should be able to look at them # Take everything out of my pockets and anything I might start fiddling with off. # Slide Remote is key as you can interact with audience better. # Simple slides - one phrase or simple list is usually best, for tech talks I write a snippet on the slide # Pause and Breathe, it may seem like a long time since the previous word but its not. This tends to be why people start adding filler words (aww, like...)