as for #6: I also like to keep my intro light-hearted, but wouldn't straight up start with a joke. Let the audience settle in a bit, actually start listening to you and make them laugh "on slide 2" so to speak.
Getting into public speaking
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Getting into public speaking
#32I'm always surprised by the amount of advises in rehearsal. I like to give public speaches, but I organize myself completely differently. I spend much time making Slides that are easy to follow and logically ordered, and in each I know that I can say a little more or a little less without disrupting the message. I know that I can count on 1 slide = 1 min. Unless lots of images. I don't rehearse as I know that I prepa…
This approach can work for experienced speakers, in particular if you have spoken about the given topic before, but I'd strongly advise against not rehearsing for folks a bit newer into their speaking career. So often I have seen talks where folks either were time after half of their time slot, or they ran out of time towards the end. Or they lost track of the plot, went off on a tangent for way too long, etc. All th…
After I finished my "industrial year" at university, we were all asked to give a short presentation on what we had done "in industry".
Returning to university after my industrial year, I took a very dim view of the academic environment and resented being asked to do this task that was worth no credit towards my degree.
So I didn't rehearse or even make any slides, I just stood up and talked about what I had been up to.
And although I was by any measure an extremely inexperienced speaker, it was the best talk I had ever given. It was the first time I stood in front of a room of people and felt present in the environment while giving my talk, rather than monotonously reciting the rehearsed material.
So obviously different people have different experiences, but I learnt that day that rehearsing your talk isn't always helpful.
It helped that I really enjoyed my industrial year and had loads of interesting stuff to talk about. So maybe the more important thing is to be interested in the topic.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#33Good advice. One of the things I suffer from is speaking too fast, and yet to find a good solution for it. I put a sticky note on my screen reminding me to slow down these days, but it only helps so much. Another comprehensive guide for tech-speakers is https://speaking.io/ by Zach Holman.
One of the things I do to slow things down, is to plan with brutal honesty around how much a human can say, clearly, in a minute. And then assume that I’ll need 150% of that time. Have 20 minutes for a slideshow? Keep it at 4 slides - five minutes each - at 100 wpm, that’s 500 words each - but I’ll need to add more pauses in, so that’s 400 words each.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#34I'm always surprised by the amount of advises in rehearsal. I like to give public speaches, but I organize myself completely differently. I spend much time making Slides that are easy to follow and logically ordered, and in each I know that I can say a little more or a little less without disrupting the message. I know that I can count on 1 slide = 1 min. Unless lots of images. I don't rehearse as I know that I prepa…
This approach can work for experienced speakers, in particular if you have spoken about the given topic before, but I'd strongly advise against not rehearsing for folks a bit newer into their speaking career. So often I have seen talks where folks either were time after half of their time slot, or they ran out of time towards the end. Or they lost track of the plot, went off on a tangent for way too long, etc. All th…
I have to agree, if it's clear the talk is just someone mindlessly rambling about a topic, it leaves me feeling like my time isn't being valued and I don't know why I'm spending it listening to this person.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#35Good advice. One of the things I suffer from is speaking too fast, and yet to find a good solution for it. I put a sticky note on my screen reminding me to slow down these days, but it only helps so much. Another comprehensive guide for tech-speakers is https://speaking.io/ by Zach Holman.
One of the things I do to slow things down, is to plan with brutal honesty around how much a human can say, clearly, in a minute. And then assume that I’ll need 150% of that time. Have 20 minutes for a slideshow? Keep it at 4 slides - five minutes each - at 100 wpm, that’s 500 words each - but I’ll need to add more pauses in, so that’s 400 words each.
I try to do this already, and I just finish my slides in half the time sometimes. It isn't that I'm stuffing too much content - I just speak fast so it rushes through.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#36I'm always surprised by the amount of advises in rehearsal. I like to give public speaches, but I organize myself completely differently. I spend much time making Slides that are easy to follow and logically ordered, and in each I know that I can say a little more or a little less without disrupting the message. I know that I can count on 1 slide = 1 min. Unless lots of images. I don't rehearse as I know that I prepa…
This approach can work for experienced speakers, in particular if you have spoken about the given topic before, but I'd strongly advise against not rehearsing for folks a bit newer into their speaking career. So often I have seen talks where folks either were time after half of their time slot, or they ran out of time towards the end. Or they lost track of the plot, went off on a tangent for way too long, etc. All th…
My father, who never did any public speaking, and as much an introvert as you'll find, did this for my wedding rehearsal.
I was amazed at how naturally and well he did. All he wrote down were 6-7 topics to talk about. He got a huge applause.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#37I'm always surprised by the amount of advises in rehearsal. I like to give public speaches, but I organize myself completely differently. I spend much time making Slides that are easy to follow and logically ordered, and in each I know that I can say a little more or a little less without disrupting the message. I know that I can count on 1 slide = 1 min. Unless lots of images. I don't rehearse as I know that I prepa…
I'm similar. I treat the slides as the skeleton to my talk and I use them to set the pace and go from there. Overly rehearsed talks always feel kind of boring; going off the cuff can have a disorganized awkwardness, but if the slides are decent and the speaker is good enough at explaining them I find them a lot more fun.
I do try and work hard enough on my slides to make sure that the stuff I'm talking about is paced well enough and I do prepare a light "outline" in my brain to remember keep points that I don't want to forget to bring up (that might not be directly in the slides), but most of the words I say are improvised. I don't know if the talks I've given are "good" or not but people generally laugh at my jokes and I've generally received positive feedback at Lambda Days.
I will say, one thing that really helped me become a better speaker was lecturing for two semesters at a local university. I tend to be a very fast talker and have been most of my life, and it's easy for people to not fully hear what I have said (especially if they don't know me very well and haven't adapted to my mannerisms). When I started lecturing, I learned how to force myself to slow down so that students could understand what I said I don't lose them in the dust.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#38Good advice. One of the things I suffer from is speaking too fast, and yet to find a good solution for it. I put a sticky note on my screen reminding me to slow down these days, but it only helps so much. Another comprehensive guide for tech-speakers is https://speaking.io/ by Zach Holman.
I'm the same way, I speak super fast pretty much all the time, and it can be hard for people to understand me if they're not used to it (and I don't blame them).
What really helped for me (and I realize that this doesn't scale to everyone) was lecturing for two semesters. I had pretty good motivation to slow down when students' grades and futures depended on understanding what I'm saying.
I didn't realize how much this helped until I presented at a conference after I was finished teaching, and I realized about midway through my talk that I was speaking considerably slower than I usually did at these things, because it turns out that public speaking and lecturing aren't actually that different.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#39Good advice. One of the things I suffer from is speaking too fast, and yet to find a good solution for it. I put a sticky note on my screen reminding me to slow down these days, but it only helps so much. Another comprehensive guide for tech-speakers is https://speaking.io/ by Zach Holman.
Do you think one's tendency to speak faster originates from listening to podcasts at 2.x+ speed?
That might be the case for some people, but I've been speaking super fast since I was at least nine years old, well before I had ever listened to a podcast (and I'm not sure that the term even existed in ~2000). Not just public speaking, but in general.
I'm kind of unique in my family, the rest of my family speaks at a more or less normal rate, so it could be some neuroligical or spectrum thing specific to me.
Re: Getting into public speaking
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if speaking fast is a problem in and of itself. Bryan Cantrill's talks are some of the best around, and he talks very fast. For other speakers, I usually put them at 1.5x speed. It seems to me that the problem isn't speaking fast per se, but almost speaking where you're tripping over yourself unconfidently. Bryan, for example, often does trip over his words, but he's confident in what he has to say and enunc…
:-) I think one of the problems with speaking for video is that you're self-conscious and feel you need to be perfect. When I started doing a lot of recorded presentations during COVID, I just felt uncomfortable in a way that I didn't with an in-person audience.
I forgot to mention that it was just audio! With video, it was even harder and I never ended up releasing anything further.