14 ms·

I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentati

I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. Just make it more interesting, or shorter. I also agree with the bit about not feeling it necessary to make eye contact with audience members: as an audience member, I feel like the speaker is about to call on me when that happens, like at one of those hateful interactive theater performances everyone dreads. Just talk to "the room" if you can. It's always amazing to me when I see a talk by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much. I think it's usually better when you've run through it so many times so that you can deliver it without any notes, but it's still concise and complete. I practice double-digit amounts of times for every talk. My tip is to record yourself practicing. Don't watch the recordings, no need for that. The thing is that blinking red circle seems to psychologically qualify as an audience (to me anyway) and it focuses me in on the performance part of giving a talk. One effect is that if I mess something up, and I'm recording it, I start improvising my way back on course rather than just starting over. There seems to be more consequences if you record it. I dunno, helps me.

Aurornis 3y ago
> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. One or two well-placed jokes can be great if they’re a very minor part of the presentation. When someone has their slides stacked with memes or spends large amounts of time on vacuous entertainment content, it always feels disappointing. There was a period of time where our biggest local JavaScript conference felt like one big entertainment competition. Presenters were singing songs, playing guitar, showing several minutes of clips from TV shows, and telling jokes more than they were presenting anything useful. The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Guilty as charged. Are you from Brazil, by any chance?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I talk in public a lot (in fact, I just did it this morning). That said, I'm not really a "keynote" speaker. I've been doing it for most of my adult life, in front of small and large (but never huge) crowds. I've definitely had some bombs, but most folks seem to think I do an adequate job (the fact I'm not a rubber chicken speaker means that it isn't much more than "adequate." I'm fine with that). Most times, I wing it, but when I'm giving an important talk, like a tech class, or topic discussion, I practice. The tip someone gave about recording themselves is good. It's also how I know how long it will take. I'll often use a prompter app, while practicing, but don't use it, while giving the talk. I've found a bit of humor (especially self-deprecating humor) can "humanize" things, but it should be short vignettes, and know your audience. If I don't really know who will be out there, I generally don't use humor. Most times, I know my audience quite well, and humor is appreciated. I have found that speaking in the vernacular is generally appreciated by folks. There are definitely some folks that don't like making difficult stuff easy to understand, but I'm just an ol' high school dropout with a G. E. D., so I don't really pull off the "talk purdy" kind of thing, so good. I've found that Keynote/PowerPoint shows can be useful, but I seldom use "wall o' text" slides. I use a lot of images and animations, and pack my notes (not the slides) with what I'm saying. I will usually insert -- CLICK -- in the notes to denote when I advance the animation/slide. I'll put details and technology rabbitholes into the supergraphics.
- teddyh 3y ago
  > The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else. People have widely varying views about what a “conference” is, or should be: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376024>
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  A fun thing to do is to include very subtle jokes that only a few people in the audience will grok and most people won't even notice. It's very nice to have a few people come up after a talk with "I saw what you did there...". It's a great way to connect with people who are on your wavelength.
j7ake 3y ago
How many talks do you give a year? Seems like a waste of time to practice the talk that many times. what works for me and is more time efficient is to get the introduction polished, then have a clear take away at the end. The middle stuff is better to go impromptu.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  When I have a talk to give I can't think of any better use of my time than getting it right. If you don't need to practice, good on you—a lot of people who don't probably should, though.
- Loughla 3y ago
  The number of people who believe they are good at impromptu speech is WAAAAYYYY larger than those who are actually good impromptu speech. In general, the best speakers are those who a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads.
  - j7ake 3y ago
    Maybe because I am in research, but the middle parts of research talks are talking about their own research. If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. Intros and ends though I agree require careful thought to appeal to the right audience and give the right message.
    - elijaht 3y ago
      > If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. I don't think this follows. There are many things I am an expert in that I'm not an expert in communicating about impromptu- I've been to many talks where the speaker is clearly an expert but was not prepared to speak. I certainly think there are people for who expertise == ability to speak about it, but that's certainly not always or usually the case.
  - 3y ago
selfie 3y ago
I like a joke that is about the subject matter. A subtle pun that makes a smile but doesn't interrupt the flow at all. Another way to make it entertaining is make it a story. Forget jokes, make it about how you had to mop up the leaks in the server room as an intern before getting to the rack that had the crashed hard disk. Or something. I remember the first meme like presentations back in 2002 at work and I hated it. It's like stop learning, now you have to find this picture funny (maybe it was some star wars reference, and I haven't watched them), and we will get back to it. It was cringe!
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  My favourite little joke from a conference talk I did recently on image processing was when talking about greyscale images I put up the cover of "50 Shades of Grey" and replaced a crossed out "50" with "256". Made me chuckle anyway...
  - selfie 3y ago
    Yes this sort of thing! There was one posted on HN back where the speaker says, in the middle of other context fairly deep in, recognise this number? 3.14159265358779323846264338327950288419, and then shows that it isn't actually Pi, (one of the digits is swapped, he may have swapped a different digit to me). Nice joke because is reminds us to challenge assumptions too!
troupe 3y ago
> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes It probably matters if it is related to the talk or not. A slightly related joke or funny picture at the beginning that introduces where you are going and then comes back with a deeper meaning at the end is very powerful.
__mharrison__ 3y ago
Personally not a fan of memes but a huge fan of jokes... used correctly, they can drive home the point. But, they are also (for me) difficult to use correctly.
jldugger 3y ago
> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy I think it can work in limited contexts. I've given an internal talk about SRE using the "this is fine" meme, representing a current emotional state, then contrasted that with the reverse meme[1] as a visual metaphor. Perhaps this_is_fine.png works because it does not rely on outside cultural context. I've also used HTTP status cat memes on a carousel slide, to emphasize that SREs commonly understand them, before contrasting that with a custom non-HTTP protocol I support. If people laugh or pay attention, so much the better. > I think it's usually better when you've run through it so many times so that you can deliver it without any notes, but it's still concise and complete. I practice double-digit amounts of times for every talk. Agreed that rehearsal really helps and more people should do that. I wish I could put that 10+ rounds of practice into presenting but I'm typically doing internal stuff not anything with an honorarium or ticket price attached. Yet it seems like some kind of badge of honor in the tech speaker circuit to start building your slide deck the night before. Trust me: we can tell, especially when your first five minutes are panicked searches for projector compatible adaptors you forgot to pack or test. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseMemes/comments/dnlizu/the_this_is_fine_meme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseMemes/comments/dnlizu/the_th...
jmugan 3y ago
It's funny, I can't make myself practice the talk out loud, but I can make myself go through it mentally a bunch of times. On the last mental pass, I guess what the next slide will be. Being able to do that enables smooth transitions during the talk.
WalterBright 3y ago
> by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much The best talk I ever gave was when the scheduled speaker didn't show, and the organizer asked if anyone would volunteer. I volunteered, and gave an impromptu talk with no prep and no slides, just a whiteboard. I simply threw out questions to the audience, and let their responses guide things. It was the best presentation I ever gave. Too bad the video didn't work, either, and there's no record of it. P.S. When traveling to a conference, I carry along the slides from my previous presentations. This enables me to fill in for missing presenters. I also had a talk that didn't go over well, so I just picked out a previous one and did that.
jszymborski 3y ago
> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes I certainly think there is a balance. If you're not confident about your talk or your ability to present it, folks should be disabused of the idea that adding some gifs or a "One does not simply" meme will fix that. That said, I think of my talks as sharing interesting stories. When I tell stories, I often crack a few jokes along the way, and my presentations are no different. I feel like adding humour is often a way of giving people insight into your thought process. Of course, everyone is different, and perhaps you are dead serious about your way of thinking about compilers or neural networks or whatever your work on. The author does an excellent job, however, of underscoring the fact that jokes can rely on an in-crowd or shared experience that some in the audience don't share. It's important in all aspects of your talk to keep that sort of thing in mind, and make sure your humour isn't just some twitter in-joke.
bruce511 3y ago
I suspect there are a bunch of different approaches, and different people will find different approaches work for them. Personally I'm not much of a reherser. I like to make a point with each slide, and as long as I know the point, I can "freestyle" the actual text. The exception are high-speed sessions, where I have a slide, or two, per sentence. They have to be highly scripted and so I practise them a few times. But, while they're a lot of fun, I don't do them often. For me, prep is much more about what to leave out. It's easier to do a 2 hour session than a 1 hour, and harder still to do 30 mins. Slides mostly help to keep me on track and not get distracted.
serial_dev 3y ago
In my opinion listening to yourself can actually help. You might realize that you are either speaking too fast or too slowly. You might notice that you are using your squeaky voice, there are ways to improve it. You might realize that you assume some piece of tech is known to everyone even though it's pretty obscure. You might realize you need one more slide for transitioning to a new topic better. I agree though with your other point, the recording can help enforce that there are no redos before a live audience. Also, if you mess up a sentence or slide all the time, maybe your phrasing is too backwards, so you should probably simplify it to something that feels natural to you.

Aurornis 3y ago

> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy: here's me packing some entertainment into my presentation because I'm probably boring you. One or two well-placed jokes can be great if they’re a very minor part of the presentation. When someone has their slides stacked with memes or spends large amounts of time on vacuous entertainment content, it always feels disappointing. There was a period of time where our biggest local JavaScript conference felt like one big entertainment competition. Presenters were singing songs, playing guitar, showing several minutes of clips from TV shows, and telling jokes more than they were presenting anything useful. The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else.

ricardobeat 3y ago
Guilty as charged. Are you from Brazil, by any chance?
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I talk in public a lot (in fact, I just did it this morning). That said, I'm not really a "keynote" speaker. I've been doing it for most of my adult life, in front of small and large (but never huge) crowds. I've definitely had some bombs, but most folks seem to think I do an adequate job (the fact I'm not a rubber chicken speaker means that it isn't much more than "adequate." I'm fine with that). Most times, I wing it, but when I'm giving an important talk, like a tech class, or topic discussion, I practice. The tip someone gave about recording themselves is good. It's also how I know how long it will take. I'll often use a prompter app, while practicing, but don't use it, while giving the talk. I've found a bit of humor (especially self-deprecating humor) can "humanize" things, but it should be short vignettes, and know your audience. If I don't really know who will be out there, I generally don't use humor. Most times, I know my audience quite well, and humor is appreciated. I have found that speaking in the vernacular is generally appreciated by folks. There are definitely some folks that don't like making difficult stuff easy to understand, but I'm just an ol' high school dropout with a G. E. D., so I don't really pull off the "talk purdy" kind of thing, so good. I've found that Keynote/PowerPoint shows can be useful, but I seldom use "wall o' text" slides. I use a lot of images and animations, and pack my notes (not the slides) with what I'm saying. I will usually insert -- CLICK -- in the notes to denote when I advance the animation/slide. I'll put details and technology rabbitholes into the supergraphics.
teddyh 3y ago
> The conference was a hit for young people and juniors, but it became known as a big waste of time for everyone else. People have widely varying views about what a “conference” is, or should be: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376024>
iamflimflam1 3y ago
A fun thing to do is to include very subtle jokes that only a few people in the audience will grok and most people won't even notice. It's very nice to have a few people come up after a talk with "I saw what you did there...". It's a great way to connect with people who are on your wavelength.

j7ake 3y ago

How many talks do you give a year? Seems like a waste of time to practice the talk that many times. what works for me and is more time efficient is to get the introduction polished, then have a clear take away at the end. The middle stuff is better to go impromptu.

karaterobot 3y ago
When I have a talk to give I can't think of any better use of my time than getting it right. If you don't need to practice, good on you—a lot of people who don't probably should, though.
Loughla 3y ago
The number of people who believe they are good at impromptu speech is WAAAAYYYY larger than those who are actually good impromptu speech. In general, the best speakers are those who a) know the material inside and out, and b) have practiced shit loads.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Maybe because I am in research, but the middle parts of research talks are talking about their own research. If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. Intros and ends though I agree require careful thought to appeal to the right audience and give the right message.
  - elijaht 3y ago
    > If you don’t know that material enough to talk about it in detail impromptu then you have no business giving talks about that topic. I don't think this follows. There are many things I am an expert in that I'm not an expert in communicating about impromptu- I've been to many talks where the speaker is clearly an expert but was not prepared to speak. I certainly think there are people for who expertise == ability to speak about it, but that's certainly not always or usually the case.
- 3y ago

selfie 3y ago

I like a joke that is about the subject matter. A subtle pun that makes a smile but doesn't interrupt the flow at all. Another way to make it entertaining is make it a story. Forget jokes, make it about how you had to mop up the leaks in the server room as an intern before getting to the rack that had the crashed hard disk. Or something. I remember the first meme like presentations back in 2002 at work and I hated it. It's like stop learning, now you have to find this picture funny (maybe it was some star wars reference, and I haven't watched them), and we will get back to it. It was cringe!

iamflimflam1 3y ago
My favourite little joke from a conference talk I did recently on image processing was when talking about greyscale images I put up the cover of "50 Shades of Grey" and replaced a crossed out "50" with "256". Made me chuckle anyway...
- selfie 3y ago
  Yes this sort of thing! There was one posted on HN back where the speaker says, in the middle of other context fairly deep in, recognise this number? 3.14159265358779323846264338327950288419, and then shows that it isn't actually Pi, (one of the digits is swapped, he may have swapped a different digit to me). Nice joke because is reminds us to challenge assumptions too!

troupe 3y ago

> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes It probably matters if it is related to the talk or not. A slightly related joke or funny picture at the beginning that introduces where you are going and then comes back with a deeper meaning at the end is very powerful.

__mharrison__ 3y ago

Personally not a fan of memes but a huge fan of jokes... used correctly, they can drive home the point. But, they are also (for me) difficult to use correctly.

jldugger 3y ago

> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes, to me this reads like nervous energy I think it can work in limited contexts. I've given an internal talk about SRE using the "this is fine" meme, representing a current emotional state, then contrasted that with the reverse meme[1] as a visual metaphor. Perhaps this_is_fine.png works because it does not rely on outside cultural context. I've also used HTTP status cat memes on a carousel slide, to emphasize that SREs commonly understand them, before contrasting that with a custom non-HTTP protocol I support. If people laugh or pay attention, so much the better. > I think it's usually better when you've run through it so many times so that you can deliver it without any notes, but it's still concise and complete. I practice double-digit amounts of times for every talk. Agreed that rehearsal really helps and more people should do that. I wish I could put that 10+ rounds of practice into presenting but I'm typically doing internal stuff not anything with an honorarium or ticket price attached. Yet it seems like some kind of badge of honor in the tech speaker circuit to start building your slide deck the night before. Trust me: we can tell, especially when your first five minutes are panicked searches for projector compatible adaptors you forgot to pack or test. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseMemes/comments/dnlizu/the_this_is_fine_meme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseMemes/comments/dnlizu/the_th...

jmugan 3y ago

It's funny, I can't make myself practice the talk out loud, but I can make myself go through it mentally a bunch of times. On the last mental pass, I guess what the next slide will be. Being able to do that enables smooth transitions during the talk.

WalterBright 3y ago

> by someone who has clearly not practiced it very much The best talk I ever gave was when the scheduled speaker didn't show, and the organizer asked if anyone would volunteer. I volunteered, and gave an impromptu talk with no prep and no slides, just a whiteboard. I simply threw out questions to the audience, and let their responses guide things. It was the best presentation I ever gave. Too bad the video didn't work, either, and there's no record of it. P.S. When traveling to a conference, I carry along the slides from my previous presentations. This enables me to fill in for missing presenters. I also had a talk that didn't go over well, so I just picked out a previous one and did that.

jszymborski 3y ago

> I agree strongly with the bit about not including memes and jokes I certainly think there is a balance. If you're not confident about your talk or your ability to present it, folks should be disabused of the idea that adding some gifs or a "One does not simply" meme will fix that. That said, I think of my talks as sharing interesting stories. When I tell stories, I often crack a few jokes along the way, and my presentations are no different. I feel like adding humour is often a way of giving people insight into your thought process. Of course, everyone is different, and perhaps you are dead serious about your way of thinking about compilers or neural networks or whatever your work on. The author does an excellent job, however, of underscoring the fact that jokes can rely on an in-crowd or shared experience that some in the audience don't share. It's important in all aspects of your talk to keep that sort of thing in mind, and make sure your humour isn't just some twitter in-joke.

bruce511 3y ago

I suspect there are a bunch of different approaches, and different people will find different approaches work for them. Personally I'm not much of a reherser. I like to make a point with each slide, and as long as I know the point, I can "freestyle" the actual text. The exception are high-speed sessions, where I have a slide, or two, per sentence. They have to be highly scripted and so I practise them a few times. But, while they're a lot of fun, I don't do them often. For me, prep is much more about what to leave out. It's easier to do a 2 hour session than a 1 hour, and harder still to do 30 mins. Slides mostly help to keep me on track and not get distracted.

serial_dev 3y ago

In my opinion listening to yourself can actually help. You might realize that you are either speaking too fast or too slowly. You might notice that you are using your squeaky voice, there are ways to improve it. You might realize that you assume some piece of tech is known to everyone even though it's pretty obscure. You might realize you need one more slide for transitioning to a new topic better. I agree though with your other point, the recording can help enforce that there are no redos before a live audience. Also, if you mess up a sentence or slide all the time, maybe your phrasing is too backwards, so you should probably simplify it to something that feels natural to you.