I presented my first speaking engagement back in 2004-2005 at the computer science club of my university. It was attended by a single student. My next presentation was in front of 120 people at Microsoft.NET User Group meeting. After that I spoke at dozens of user groups & conferences. In this post, I will all the lessons I learned during my decade+ experience in speaking.
I strongly believe that it is easier to present in front of a larger audience as compared to a smaller one. For smaller audience you have to fight to to hide your disappointment.
How to select a topic for speaking?
One of the things I really find upsetting at conferences is when I see the speaker is not engaging with the audience. I remember attending a conference few years back, where the speaker sat quietly in the corner and worked on his computer. After the presentation was over, the speaker stood up and left. It was like he has seen a bat signal and wanted to flee the current situation.
If you are speaker at a conference then don’t talk about that you prepared the presentation at the last second and you were up all night preparing slides. Keep in mind that attendees pay a lot of money for the conference ticket and they don’t want to hear that the speaker is not prepared. It also shows that you have bad time management skills and waited for the last minute to prepare for the session.
Once I know that I am speaking at a conference, I spend months preparing the session. My preparing includes slides, live coding rehearsals, recording demo videos for backup and more.
I usually see this kind of behavior from experienced speakers, who wants to convey the message that even with little preparation they will give a good presentation. I am sure they will give excellent presentation but they don’t need to convey this message to the audience.
This is like, if I attend high profile UFC fight and the fighter tells everyone that he started preparing for the fight yesterday.