5 ms·

I would say the single most important part of public speaking, which should encapsulate everything else is rehearse. It can feel weird and contrived to have thr

I would say the single most important part of public speaking, which should encapsulate everything else is rehearse. It can feel weird and contrived to have three of your colleagues sitting in front of you pretending to be an audience, but it's enough to make it feel real, and let you run into most of your issues ahead of the real thing. Then you go back, fix what you can, and rehearse again. You want to have some "muscle memory" to fall back on during the real event.

santaclaus 11y ago
So true. I've made it a habit of asking speakers of really great talks how many times they rehearse, and I was super surprised to here that speakers often go through 15+ iterations of a talk (half a month, once a day) before giving it.
noir_lord 11y ago
Rehearsing in front of a webcam is also very useful. Make sure you are standing up in roughly the position you will be giving your talk in, set it to record and then have at it (I find it helps if you can't see yourself while recording). Then play over the recording, if you use VLC it has a useful trick in that you can speed up playback without affecting pitch (saves time and makes it really obvious at 1.5x if you are talking too fast, you should be legible at 150 percent). Make notes where you stumbled and/or were not clear then go over it again. Oh and if you have slides you can run through them on the machine in front of you (instead of behind your or off to the side) which really helps as well.
- dpflan 11y ago
  Rehearsing in front a webcam seems like one step from submitting your rehearsal to a service that can critique your presentation. The service could go through a checklist of fundamental variables that are deemed highly correlated with successful presentations, and you could receive timely and useful feedback. Is there such a service? @noir_lord
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Not that I'm aware of but it would be useful, an impartial third party watching your talk would be less intimidating than getting someone you know, hell you could have someone go over the slide deck as well for common errors. ...and now I'm thinking of how you'd build that and how the UX would work, damnit I have enough side projects I want to build ;).
    - dpflan 11y ago
      Load the decks and live stream and record the video: Basic screen: [ | ] [-video- | -deck-] [ event_timeline ] Allow the presenter to move through the deck on the service so there is a timeline of events of video and deck traversal. Then reviewer can highlight key moments on the timeline with notes that are part of an overall critique. User presentation is the base. Deck critique comes at a premium. --Edit-- HN didn't like my formatted 'mock' screen.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        Indeed, thinking client side, split screen for uploading video and deck with a notes/goal box underneath (things like Target audience, group demographics, expected venue). On the backside have a review interface with video front and sent and controls underneath, like "Add Note" which pauses the video and enters the time stamp and note into a formatted list, once review is marked completed it transfers that list into the feedback part which also has a notes section for things like body language and such. Once complete email the user with a link to the review page that has the video and the timeline underneath, make the timeline clickable so the user can jump straight to each note and either accept or decline the review (that way you have a metric of what criticism people respond to positively and negatively). Handling the deck is more of an issue, powerpoint isn't a problem but you will get all sorts of whacky formats (people using Beamer, javascript based stuff), You can generally get those out in PDF format in one form or another though so maybe accept PDF and Powerpoint (or in the case of the javascript based ones perhaps a zip file for techie audience). I wonder what you could charge that out at, reviewing a 45 minute talk and slides properly would probably take an hour/hour and half and also what kind of turn around people would want (possibly with increased pricing for a faster turn around). EDIT: Thinking about it, you could actually have multiple reviewers in key demographics as well for more targeted talks with variable rates. EDIT: You could also have multiple reviewers (extra charge) so that you can get a different perspective

santaclaus 11y ago

So true. I've made it a habit of asking speakers of really great talks how many times they rehearse, and I was super surprised to here that speakers often go through 15+ iterations of a talk (half a month, once a day) before giving it.

noir_lord 11y ago

Rehearsing in front of a webcam is also very useful. Make sure you are standing up in roughly the position you will be giving your talk in, set it to record and then have at it (I find it helps if you can't see yourself while recording). Then play over the recording, if you use VLC it has a useful trick in that you can speed up playback without affecting pitch (saves time and makes it really obvious at 1.5x if you are talking too fast, you should be legible at 150 percent). Make notes where you stumbled and/or were not clear then go over it again. Oh and if you have slides you can run through them on the machine in front of you (instead of behind your or off to the side) which really helps as well.

dpflan 11y ago
Rehearsing in front a webcam seems like one step from submitting your rehearsal to a service that can critique your presentation. The service could go through a checklist of fundamental variables that are deemed highly correlated with successful presentations, and you could receive timely and useful feedback. Is there such a service? @noir_lord
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Not that I'm aware of but it would be useful, an impartial third party watching your talk would be less intimidating than getting someone you know, hell you could have someone go over the slide deck as well for common errors. ...and now I'm thinking of how you'd build that and how the UX would work, damnit I have enough side projects I want to build ;).
  - dpflan 11y ago
    Load the decks and live stream and record the video: Basic screen: [ | ] [-video- | -deck-] [ event_timeline ] Allow the presenter to move through the deck on the service so there is a timeline of events of video and deck traversal. Then reviewer can highlight key moments on the timeline with notes that are part of an overall critique. User presentation is the base. Deck critique comes at a premium. --Edit-- HN didn't like my formatted 'mock' screen.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      Indeed, thinking client side, split screen for uploading video and deck with a notes/goal box underneath (things like Target audience, group demographics, expected venue). On the backside have a review interface with video front and sent and controls underneath, like "Add Note" which pauses the video and enters the time stamp and note into a formatted list, once review is marked completed it transfers that list into the feedback part which also has a notes section for things like body language and such. Once complete email the user with a link to the review page that has the video and the timeline underneath, make the timeline clickable so the user can jump straight to each note and either accept or decline the review (that way you have a metric of what criticism people respond to positively and negatively). Handling the deck is more of an issue, powerpoint isn't a problem but you will get all sorts of whacky formats (people using Beamer, javascript based stuff), You can generally get those out in PDF format in one form or another though so maybe accept PDF and Powerpoint (or in the case of the javascript based ones perhaps a zip file for techie audience). I wonder what you could charge that out at, reviewing a 45 minute talk and slides properly would probably take an hour/hour and half and also what kind of turn around people would want (possibly with increased pricing for a faster turn around). EDIT: Thinking about it, you could actually have multiple reviewers in key demographics as well for more targeted talks with variable rates. EDIT: You could also have multiple reviewers (extra charge) so that you can get a different perspective