Powerful Presentations: Selling Your Story on Stage or In The Boardroom 1484281373, 9781484281376

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Powerful Presentations Selling Your Story on Stage or In The Boardroom ― Stephen Haunts

POWERFUL PRESENTATIONS SELLING YOUR STORY ON STAGE OR IN THE BOARDROOM

Stephen Haunts

Powerful Presentations: Selling Your Story on Stage or In The Boardroom Stephen Haunts Belper, UK ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-8137-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3

ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-8138-3

Copyright © 2022 by Stephen Haunts This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Managing Director, Apress Media LLC: Welmoed Spahr Acquisitions Editor: Shiva Ramachandran Development Editor: James Markham Coordinating Editor: Jessica Vakili Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media New York, 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 100043. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation. For information on translations, please e-mail [email protected]; for reprint, paperback, or audio rights, please e-mail [email protected]. Apress titles may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use. eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. For more information, reference our Print and eBook Bulk Sales web page at http://www.apress.com/bulk-­sales. Printed on acid-free paper

I dedicate this book to my wife, Amanda, and my children, Amy and Daniel.

Contents About the Author����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Chapter 1: Why Public Speaking Is an Important Skill����������������������������� 1 Chapter 2: Writing Engaging Presentations����������������������������������������������� 13 Chapter 3: Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience����������������������� 41 Chapter 4: Preparing to Give a Talk ������������������������������������������������������������� 55 Chapter 5: Delivering the Talk������������������������������������������������������������������������ 71 Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions������������������������������������������������������� 93 Appendix B: Presentation Creation Resources������������������������������������������� 107 Index ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 113

About the Author Stephen Haunts lives with his wife and two children in rural Derbyshire in the United Kingdom. Stephen is a trainer and writer, specializing in helping individuals and teams excel at becoming the best versions of themselves. He specializes in helping teams transition to Agile practices, as well as coaching productivity, creativity, innovation, and self-motivation. Stephen is also an accomplished public speaker who has travelled the world, delivering talks at large conferences and private companies. Stephen loves nothing more than being on a stage, in an enormous hall, and educating people on various subjects like entrepreneurship, creativity, productivity, selfmotivation, and procrastination and focus. Stephen also regularly coaches and mentors new and aspiring public speakers. For fun, Stephen likes to go hiking in the British countryside, compose electronic ambient music, and write children’s fiction.

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1 Why Public Speaking Is an Important Skill Learning how to deliver talks with confidence to an audience is a skill that will have many benefits for both you and your career. A concept that, on the surface, seems so simple can have quite big consequences. In this chapter, we’ll look at the importance of public speaking.

My Story My adventure in public speaking started in 2014. I had just started writing online training courses for a company called Pluralsight in the United States. Pluralsight is an online training company focused on topics related to app development and information technology. While I had no problems creating my online classes, promoting them was new to me.

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Chapter 1 | Why Public Speaking Is an Important Skill To attract an audience for my courses, I needed to talk to communities that might be interested in taking my classes. I needed to talk to strangers about how my online courses could help improve their knowledge and performance on software security. No amount of time preparing slides prepared me for my first presentation; I had to speak to a meetup group of 60 prospective students. Before the presentation, I was terrified about what would happen. At that point, I realized that I had a genuine fear of public speaking. But after much research, I learned that speaking to a large group is one of the most common concerns that people have. Knowing that I was not the only one with this fear, I proceeded to put more time into preparing for my presentation. I practiced with my PowerPoint slides multiple times a day, recording my voice and working on my lines. I decided when I would deliver my punchlines and when to use silence to get the attention of the audience. Before my presentation, I rehearsed in front of a few friends, and they gave me valuable insights into the areas of my performance that I could improve. With their help, I created a solid presentation that made me look like an expert, and in some ways, I knew I was in the eyes of my audience. All my practice did not make my first public-speaking experience any less terrifying. On the day of the presentation, I was on the verge of having a panic attack. I had heard of performance anxiety in the past, but I had never actually experienced it until that moment. I attempted to manage my emotions and went through my presentation. Surprisingly, my presentation went well on my first try that day. All my hard work and practice gave me the confidence to stand in front of a large crowd. People were attentive even when I discussed the more technical parts of the subject. The reception from the audience was excellent; I had piqued their interest. There was no shortage of questions after my presentation. Thankfully, I was prepared for most of the questions that the audience asked. As for those I did not anticipate, I was still able to answer them because of all the extensive preparation and content research I did beforehand. My presentation went so well that I received an invitation to do another talk the following month at a different meetup group. It was essentially the same presentation, so all my previous preparations could be used as part of this new opportunity. For the second event, I worked on a few details for the presentation, such as adding storytelling segments to illustrate my key points based on feedback from the first event. I studied new strategies for organizing my ideas and how to manage the crowd. With all the added features for my second presentation,

Powerful Presentations it was no surprise that it was even more successful than the first one. I knew the first presentation was good, but I did not know that it could be even better until after my second presentation when even more people enrolled in my courses. I continued presenting to more user groups for the next 18 months. My public-speaking success fueled people to take my online courses and to invite me to speak at more meetup groups. I realized that to boost the number of enrollees in my classes, I needed bigger audiences. I knew that I needed to summon the courage to talk at professional software development conferences. Without overthinking it, I applied to speak at the Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC) in London, one of the biggest conferences in my industry. I got in! With the new opportunity, however, came new fears. The people I was preparing to talk to were some of the leaders and senior peers in my industry. The attendees had paid a lot of money to attend and learn from authorities in their field. The margin of error was quite narrow if I wanted my courses to be taken seriously. However, with 18 months’ worth of experience as a presenter to professionals in my industry, I managed to overcome my fears and delivered a great presentation. The talk went well, and the response from the audience was excellent. People approached me with questions about my course and other topics mentioned during my talk. As more people learned about me and what I was speaking about, it became easier to line up more talking opportunities. After NDC London, I applied to give a talk on software security at Technorama in Belgium and another NDC event in Oslo, Norway. I did not shy away from more conference talks the following year. I presented at NDC London, Oslo, and Sydney. I also had the opportunity to talk at two Code Europe events in Poland: one in Krakow and another in Wroclaw. To cap the year off, I was invited to a second Technorama event in the Netherlands. In between these conferences, I continued to talk to smaller user groups to promote my courses in my local area and practice speaking in front of audiences. Public speaking brought a lot of benefits with it. With the help of my newly developed public-speaking skills, I established myself as an authority in my field, and I showed people why it was worth enrolling in my online courses. By actively building my skills in public speaking, I overcame my fears and the anxiety that used to come before every speaking engagement. When I talk to crowds these days, the level of stress I feel is insignificant compared to the stress levels when I first spoke in public. Large crowds no longer faze me. Instead, I get excited about new opportunities to speak before new user groups.

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Chapter 1 | Why Public Speaking Is an Important Skill Due to my public-speaking skills, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to new places and see the world. When I am one of the speakers, organizers of large conferences pay for flights and my accommodation. I’ve always wanted to travel the world but never actually got around to it when I was younger—one of my regrets. Through my public-speaking skills, I am now fulfilling that dream and seeing more of the world while doing what I love. Probably one of the most significant advantages of public speaking is the number of people with whom I managed to develop connections over time. Without public speaking, I would never have met some professionals with whom I now work. I help them through my courses and even with some professional advice I provide in the talks. They also do the same for me. The opportunities that came to me were primarily due to the relationships I built when talking to small and large gatherings alike. Lastly, my ability to talk to the public gave me the opportunity to maintain the lifestyle that I love. I am a freelancer, and I value having the freedom to decide how I use my time. Because of this skill set, my online courses are now successful, giving me the chance to continue this type of lifestyle. I work while I am traveling and meeting new people. I make money on my terms in a career that I built. Speaking at conferences and with small groups gave me the opportunity to continue this lifestyle. In the following chapters, I will help you learn some of the tips and tricks I learned during my years of experience in public speaking. Let’s begin by looking at some of the benefits of becoming a public speaker. It is important to mention, however, that public speaking is not limited to being on stage at a user group or a conference. Public speaking includes any situation in which you present information to a group of people, and this involves corporate presentations that you do at work. Everything in this book is just as relevant, regardless of whether you stand on stage at a conference or in a boardroom. ■■ Note  The word “stage” is used to represent either standing on a stage at a conference, addressing your audience, or standing at the front of a room at a meetup group, in your office, or in the boardroom.

The Benefits of Public Speaking In this section, I will cover what I believe are the main benefits of becoming proficient in public speaking and discuss how these benefits have applied to me.

Powerful Presentations

Critical Thinking The first benefit of public speaking is critical thinking. Designing a talk to be delivered in front of an audience requires a lot of research and planning. In the early stages, you will need to do a great deal of critical thinking on many levels to design the talk. For example, if this is a software development talk, you need to think about the parts of the programming system you want to discuss. How much of that system are you going to cover? If you have 60 minutes to talk, realistically, you want to talk for 50 minutes to allow time for questions at the end; therefore, you can’t cover everything. If you are explaining a topic that can be a little dry and potentially boring, consider weaving an interesting scenario or story into the talk to make it more interesting. How you pitch this scenario and the complexity of the features you discuss is also determined by the skill level of the audience. Is this a talk to beginners, who will have little to no knowledge of the subject, or are you speaking to people with some skills who want to learn more? On the topic of skill levels, consider how you will reshape the presentation if this is an advanced talk for professionals who are experts in the field. All these factors need to be considered carefully, and this level of critical thinking and weaving complexity, story, narration, and subject matter requires a great deal of thought and effort up front in the talk construction process. Your brain is a muscle, and the level of critical thought required to design an engaging talk is a skill. After designing a compelling talk for the first time, you will have developed new skills simply by going through the thought and design process for the talk. I personally find the design and research stage of a talk to be one of my favorite parts of the process. I really enjoy the level of thought that goes into the talk construction process. As I have progressed through my publicspeaking career, I have also become better at weaving stories into my talks. Some earlier talks, which were software development talks, were purely technical, without much story. While I am proud of those talks, they were quite difficult for audience members to follow if someone’s concentration lapsed at any point. As I became better at designing talks, I started weaving scenarios into them. Sometimes, these would be made up of stories, and at other times, they would be based on personal experience. As a species, we are hardwired to enjoy stories, so if you can take a challenging subject and weave in a narrative, you can help your audience engage with the topic—and get them to hang on your every word. The key to reaching that stage is the level of critical thinking you put in at the beginning of the process, and this is a skill you can develop over time, which not only benefits your talk but can also benefit all aspects of your life and career.

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Personal Satisfaction Some people get their adrenaline rushes by climbing mountains; other people get them from running marathons. Public speakers get their adrenaline kicks by putting themselves in the vulnerable position of standing on a stage in front of a lot of people and confidently talking about a subject—and hoping they don’t get booed off the stage. However, in all my years of public speaking, I have never seen a speaker booed off a stage, so don’t fret over that one. No matter how nervous you are before you start speaking, you will experience a massive adrenaline rush once you get started that will carry you through the talk. By the time you get to the end and the audience starts clapping, you’ll feel amazing and have a great sense of personal satisfaction. If this was your first talk, you’ll feel like you’ve climbed that mountain. The audience loved the talk and applauded you, and for that moment in time, you conquered the room. Every time I speak at a conference or meetup group, no matter the size of the audience, I always feel amazing afterward. It’s as if I’m walking on clouds. That feeling of satisfaction is addictive, and I absolutely love it. You won’t see me bungee jumping off a bridge for kicks, but I will gladly stand in front of 1,000 people and talk to them.

Increased Self-Confidence It takes a lot of confidence to stand on a stage—the same level of confidence it takes to play music on stage or act in a play. If you lack confidence, then learning to speak in public can really help you on a personal level. The first few times you speak to an audience, you will be terrified—everyone is. But the more you do it, the more confident you will become. You will still be nervous before each talk. I certainly am, but that’s a good thing. If you are a little nervous, then it means you care about the quality of the speech you are about to give. In my younger years, I lacked self-confidence. I am a classic introvert who likes spending time by myself, but I was also quite shy in my earlier career. I hated speaking to other people on an individual basis, let  alone on stage. As I progressed through the ranks in my career, I had to give presentations—it came with the territory. These presentations occurred in the organizations where I worked, either to my peers or in the boardroom to higher-level executives. At the time, I absolutely hated doing these presentations. They made me feel physically sick, but I had to do them, as it was part of the job. Over time though, I started getting used to doing them; although I was never comfortable doing them, I got used to them. Later in my career, I started making online training courses for Pluralsight, a company in the United States. When it came to promoting these courses, it

Powerful Presentations was recommended that I consider the public-speaking circuit. I was a little apprehensive at the time, but I designed my first talk and was invited by a local software development meetup group to speak. I figured presenting the talk to a small group would be a good idea. I expected around 10 to 15 people to attend, but about 60 people turned up. To say I was terrified was an understatement. Thankfully, the talk went well, and the audience was incredibly supportive, even when I made a mistake halfway through the talk. I felt amazing when I finished the talk, and I sought out my second speaking gig. Fast forward many years, and I have now spoken all over the world at conferences. I no longer fear speaking—sure, I still get nervous before a talk, but I can control my fears, and I feel that my levels of self-confidence have increased significantly. It has been a fun ride with some amazing experiences, for which I am very grateful.

Improving Communication Skills Public speaking is all about effective communication. You are standing on stage and communicating an idea to people in the audience who have come to learn from you. Communicating so that people will listen and understand you is a critical skill to develop in a career, and public speaking is a fantastic way to practice this skill. Core personal skills like this are also very desirable to employers, as they want effective communicators on their staff. If you ever get the opportunity to speak at international events, you will also master speaking to audiences whose first language isn’t English. I was a little apprehensive when I first did this because I was worried that people would struggle with my British accent, but I needn’t have worried. Provided you talk at a slower pace—not so slow that you sound strange but slower and clearer than a conversation with a friend—you will have no issues. As a British person, I am always in awe of people from other countries who can speak in their native language and are fluent in English. I can’t speak another language except some very bad French, so I always appreciate the efforts of other people from different countries. Effective communication is a crucial skill for life and business, so becoming an experienced public speaker will pay you back repeatedly in your career and can even help give you a competitive advantage over other applicants for positions if you can demonstrate excellent communication skills.

Networking and New Connections One of the biggest benefits of public speaking is networking and the people you meet along the way. The reason you get up on stage to speak is to pass on knowledge and ideas to others; therefore, public speaking is all about

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Chapter 1 | Why Public Speaking Is an Important Skill people. When you have delivered your talk and are at the venue, your audience will want to talk to you and hang out. This is all part of the public speaking package—meeting people. Meeting people in these avenues has many benefits. First, as social creatures, it’s nice to meet people with similar interests with whom you can have discussions. I have spoken to many conference attendees who have become good friends. Sometimes, after delivering a talk, someone will share an alternative view that differs from your presentation. This is a good thing, as it expands your horizons as a speaker to hear alternative viewpoints, which could make it into future versions of your talk if they are just as valid as the views you initially expressed. Another potential benefit of networking at an event after delivering a successful talk is being offered work engagements. I have had this happen several times after I have spoken at a conference, hung out with the attendees, and, in some cases, swapped contact details. Then, a few weeks or months after the event, I have been contacted about training or consulting opportunities. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it can be a great extra source of income when it does, especially if you work for yourself. I urge you to always mix with attendees; don’t simply do the talk and then run off to your hotel room and hide. People have taken the time out of their day and busy conference schedule to listen to your presentation specifically, so always try to talk with people and answer questions after the talk. People may not approach you straight away, but if you attend a social event hosted by the conference or event, people may chat with you over a drink. If you can, always be available for them.

Travel Another benefit of public speaking is that you might get to travel around your country or even the world to deliver presentations, which is fantastic if you like to visit new places. When I started speaking, I delivered my first few talks to local meetup groups in the cities nearest me—in my case, Derby and Nottingham in the UK. I gradually started to expand from near my home to places like Hereford, Leeds, and London. I really enjoyed travelling around the country to give these talks, as it allowed for a day or two to travel to other cities, stay over in a hotel, and explore a little before getting the train back home. Over time, I earned invitations to larger conferences that allowed me to travel around the world to places such as Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Holland, America, and Australia. I had never visited any of these countries before, so being accepted into these conferences broadened my travel horizons.

Powerful Presentations Another great benefit of speaking on the conference circuit is that larger conferences tend to cover your airfare and a few nights in a hotel. I normally extended my trip by a few days—at my own expense—to do a little sightseeing.

Persuasion Skills and Driving Change When you break down your process for conveying information to a group of people, what exactly are you doing? Teaching, most certainly. Entertaining, possibly. But you are also persuading people to agree with a point you are making, or at least trying to inform them of another viewpoint. Persuading people requires you to speak with confidence, have well-researched information and viewpoints, and come across as an authority. These are all skills that you can develop as a public speaker, and they will also benefit your career. Effective communication and persuasion will take you far in a career, and if you can do it onstage with several hundred people in front of you, you can do it in the office.

Performance Skills When you are in front of an audience relaying information, you want them to be entertained, engaged—and most importantly—awake. To achieve this, you need to put on a good performance. Public speaking is as much about performance as it is about passing on information. I have attended many talks in my career. Some had fascinating subjects but were delivered in a dry and boring way, which made them extremely hard for me to watch and maintain my interest. I have also seen other talks on subjects that I don’t really have any interest in, which have been excellent: well, delivered, engaging, and captivating. The more talks you complete and the more you focus on delivery, the better you will become at performing. I’m not talking about doing a dance or bursting into song, I’m talking about getting people to listen to what you have to say, which is just as important as holding a tune for a singer. The audience doesn’t want to see you hugging the lectern and trying to hide behind your laptop. I suggest using a slide clicker so you can get away from the computer keyboard and walk around the stage a little. Make sure to emphasize what you’re saying with hand and arm gestures and focus on making your voice sound animated and excited. You don’t have to go over the top, but by focusing on these details in your delivery, you will drastically improve your performance skills.

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Being Respected As an Authority in Your Field The final benefit, and one of the most important, is that you will start to be regarded as an authority in your field as you present to more audiences at large conferences. Being an authority doesn’t necessarily mean you are a top expert on the subject. An expert can demonstrate ideas with a lot of stories and personal examples from their work, but an authority will use a lot of emotions and metaphors to get their point across and draw people in. Of course, you can be an authority and an expert. Being a public speaker gives you many potential advantages over applicants for jobs. Public speaking is seen as a skill that has value, not only in your chosen subject area, but also as someone who is able to write and deliver a talk, which means you can finish what you started. You will also be seen as someone with great confidence, which carries a lot of weight in the job market. After you have written your talk, you will want to get on stage, or in a boardroom, to deliver it to an audience. If you are presenting at a private company event for work, this could happen quickly. If you are planning to present at a local meetup group or at a conference, there may be a big delay in writing and performing a talk if you do not plan. Smaller meetup groups tend to book their speakers months in advance, so at the time you are planning the content of your talk, try connecting with local groups to talk with them about dates. If they have an open date two or three months in the future, it is worth getting booked and advertising the talk. This gives you plenty of time to write and rehearse the talk. Having a date already booked in the diary will be a great motivator to get the talk written in plenty of time. If you have already written the talk and are practicing, but the earliest slot is still a few months away, let the groups know that you can be contacted if there are last-minute cancellations—provided you are comfortable with this—and they can put you on their reserve list. Some people may need to pull out at the last minute for any number of genuine reasons, so being flexible here helps. Many meetups have their own websites through which they manage their bookings, so a Google/Bing search (or other search engine) will uncover them for you. Another popular platform for booking and arranging meetups is http://meetup.com. The Meetup website lets groups promote their events and allows attendees to book spaces and speakers to contact the organizers. One useful Meetup feature allows you to do geographic searches for meetup groups on specific subjects, which makes it easy to seek out speaking opportunities near you.

Powerful Presentations If you want to speak at a larger event, such as a conference, then you need to go through a process called a Call for Papers (CFP) or Request for Papers (RFP). When a conference is in its planning stages, it will launch its CFP process, and potential speakers can submit talks for consideration. This process can start anywhere from two to six months ahead of the event date. Once the CFP process ends and speakers have submitted their talks, a conference selection panel reviews all submitted talks and works to put together a potential agenda by selecting talks they believe conference attendees will enjoy. If you have speaking at conferences in mind, then you will need to find out when conferences are scheduled during the year and when they open their CFP for submissions, which means you’ll need to plan ahead. Speaking at conferences takes a lot of planning, and it is worth starting that process early, even before you have designed your slides. When I come up with an idea for a new talk, I do a lot of planning and create a series of mind maps that document what will be in the talk. We will look at mind maps in the next chapter. I then write the talk synopsis that I will submit to the conference. At that point, I apply to several conferences with the synopsis for that talk. I don’t design the slides until the talk is accepted at a conference. With that acceptance in place and a date in the diary, I plan when I will build the slides and start rehearsing. If you are a new speaker, then you might not want to leave writing the talk until it has been accepted at an event, and that is fine, but I sometimes do the planning for two or three new talks at once and then build them when they get accepted. Sometimes my new talk idea isn’t accepted at all; that can happen, so I never spend time building a complex slide deck until I must.

Summary The ability to communicate effectively with an audience is a major skill that you can add to your professional toolbox. Presenting to an audience, either as a public speaker or presenting to a room full of your peers, is a skill that has many benefits. You will have the skills to put your point across and influence people to believe in a cause that is important to you. Effective communication skills will also help you excel in your career, as you will work even better in a team environment. Public speaking is also a fantastic way to improve your self-confidence, critical thinking skills, and ability to network with other like-minded people. Above all else, it is fun.

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Workshop Questions 1. Write down a list of personal goals that you wish to satisfy by designing and presenting in front of an audience. These goals could be something like the following: • Better research skills • Improved self-confidence and so on 2. For each of the goals you listed in question 1, think specifically about how being able to speak in front of an audience will help you. For example, if your goal was to improve your self-confidence, then speaking will help you push through a fear of being in the spotlight and having to think quickly if someone asks you a question. 3. For each of the goals you have listed in question 1, write down the success criteria so you will know how that goal has been achieved.

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2 Writing Engaging Presentations The presentation content is the foundation of your public-speaking performance. People will judge your overall performance based on the information they remember. A presentation needs to have several qualities to make it good at conveying your message.

Centered on a Relevant Problem Effective presentations focus on one problem. It is important that the people you are talking to are familiar with that problem. It is even better if they are already facing these issues, and they do not have a solution, which is why they are coming to hear you talk in the first place. If the topic you’re discussing doesn’t match the audience’s interests, they will not be engaged, and all your effort will amount to nothing if you present the wrong problem to the wrong group of people.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations My presentations focus on problems in my industry and professional fields— software development, personal development, leadership, and security. Business owners and software developers are interested in the most recent techniques in software development. The issues I discuss vary depending on the group to which I am speaking. An even more important part of talking about a problem on stage is demonstrating how you’re going to solve the problem. When people listen and engage in a presentation, they want closure. Presenting a problem whets their appetite and makes them want to listen. If you don’t present your version of the solution, they may walk away from the presentation unsatisfied. This may create a wrong impression of you as a professional, because you did not offer a solution as a good payoff.

It Should Engage the Audience The presentation itself should be engaging for the people listening. Using great slides is one way to make the presentation engaging. You can incorporate presentation techniques such as storytelling, jokes, gestures, and directly addressing the audience to make your talk entertaining and engaging. I have always found that the presentations I enjoy the most center around storytelling. The story could be a real-life story, or a fictional story used to convey the message of the talk. People are hardwired to enjoy stories, so if you are presenting a subject that could be perceived as a little boring, weaving in a narrative can be a great way to increase engagement. The most engaging presentations are those in which the audience is focusing on you on the stage. Even though you might be using slides to convey your message, you don’t want the audience to simply focus on what is on the screen, as that takes their attention away from what you are saying. We will talk more about slide and presentation design later, but it is a good idea not to clutter the slides with a lot of text that requires the audience to read instead of listening to you.

It Should Be Well Organized An excellent presentation makes use of a logical arrangement of information. The people listening to you will have trouble remembering your content if the information you present is not in a logical sequence. People usually associate a lack of organization with unpreparedness. Like a good story, your presentation should have a beginning, middle, and end—which is otherwise known as a three-act structure. In the beginning, your talk explains what you are going to cover, including introducing any problems you are trying to solve. In the middle of the talk, you present the

Powerful Presentations main context for the problem you are solving or the subject you are speaking about. You also start introducing a solution to the problem. Then at the end of the presentation, you cover the final solution to the problem or the main point you are trying to make, followed by a summary of the key points you made in the talk before ending. If you stick to a simple structure like this, then it is easier to satisfy the expectations of the audience, and they will naturally know what to expect from your presentation.

The Presentation Creation Process To become a master at public speaking, you first need to master the process of preparing for a presentation. Eventually you will come to designing your own process for building a talk, but for now, you can use the steps in this section.

 Prepare Your Script and Slides Way Before the Conference When preparing for your first talk, you might be tempted to stall until the last minute before working on your presentation. This habit will not cut it if you want to be successful as a public speaker. When people come to events—or even conferences that they have paid to attend—they expect the speakers to be professional and well prepared. They expect each talk to be as flawless as possible. A flawless presentation is only possible if you have practiced and revised it multiple times beforehand. Unfortunately, I have attended many conferences where I’ve seen speakers frantically rewriting their slides as I run through a final rehearsal in the greenroom. These last-minute changes are unprofessional and typically lead to a presentation that feels rushed. With inexperienced speakers, you can always tell when they completed their presentations at the last minute, as they regularly forget what is coming next in their slides. This introduces several awkward silences as their presentation flow is interrupted. Ideally, you should prepare your slides months before the event if it is a new talk. You will also need to practice using your slides to make sure that you know how the presentation flows. Have your family, friends, or colleagues listen to your presentation so that you can get their opinions. If this is not possible, you could also record yourself while practicing. Listening to your recordings will allow you to hear yourself presenting from a third person’s point of view. This is a fantastic way to discover what the presentation will sound like to an audience. It is better to do this as soon as you can and way before the event so that you can listen several times and make critical judgments about your performance, which will allow you to make corrections.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations You should also view your slides and compare them to presentations you’ve seen in the past. Study great presentations on YouTube and analyze the speaker’s slides. Find qualities that you like, such as color scheme, font type and style, and types of media used. You can then apply what you’ve learned from other presentations to yours. By working on your presentation in advance, you will be able to avoid cramming all the work into the week before the final presentation. You will also have time to evaluate your slides and your presentation as a whole and make changes if necessary. By preparing your slides ahead of time and practicing with them, you’ll be able to experiment with finding the most effective presentation methods well beforehand. By the day of the event, you would have practiced the presentation countless times, so you could do it even without using prompts.

Establishing the Presentation Subject or Problem You should devote the beginning of your presentation to establishing the problem with your audience; this will ensure that you are all on the same page. The challenge for you when presenting the problem will be to make people care and to establish yourself as an authority. If you have a choice about the presentation, pick one in which you have a great deal of experience. In most cases, the talk will be centered on a topic related to your job or personal interests. It is a good idea to present any evidence for the problem being discussed at the beginning of the presentation, as well as any information that will make the audience care more about the subject. An issue that may seem important to you may not be as important to the audience, so you want to paint a picture—potentially through a story—that will make the audience care. Ideally, you want the audience to feel empathy for you when presenting the problem. If you can get them to see the problem through your eyes so that they imagine themselves in your shoes, then you will keep them engaged throughout the entirety of the presentation. An efficient way to establish the problem in the audience’s minds is to present numbers and facts about the issue. When giving a software security presentation to business owners, for example, you could begin by discussing the statistics of the number of businesses victimized by hacking and data breaches. You could also consider specific cases of business owners whose identities have been stolen and leaked online. You could even add the financial damage that these security breaches caused to the victim, as financial consequences are always a great way to ensure that the audience is engaged. If the audience members are business owners, they are more likely to listen to the talk that follows because they can relate to the problem presented.

Powerful Presentations When choosing a problem to tackle in your presentation, you should have your target audience in mind by creating a persona that represents your target audience. Think about the typical characteristics of the people in the audience. Do they belong to the same line of work? Do they have common interests or hobbies? If so, what common problems do they encounter with their hobbies or their jobs? What do they want to hear from you in relation to your expertise? By creating a persona that fits the mold of the general audience, you will be able to anticipate the needs of your audience, and you can then choose a topic and problem to discuss accordingly. You could also design your slides according to their needs. For example, I have delivered a talk about Agile software development at conferences in the past. The typical persona for people who might want to listen to this talk is that of software developers, who are very technical people. When delivering a talk to these people, they expect a lot of detail and concrete facts, backed up by examples that show the principles in use. I also delivered the same talk at an event where the audience members were software company managers and members of their leadership teams. The persona for this talk is different; they expect different results for the talk. Even though 70% of the talk I delivered to the managers was the same as the talk I delivered to the software developers, I had to adjust the talk to suit the audience. In that group—mostly nontechnical professionals—I had to remove some content focused more on software development and adapt the talk to be more general and suitable for the audience. My core message about the benefits of software teams using Agile software development techniques was the same, but they didn’t need a lot of the lower-level technical detail that my software development audience expected.

Creating the Goal of Your Presentation Every time you present content to an audience, you want your presentation to lead to something; the presentation needs an end goal. Most presentations fail in this aspect. After listening to presentations that lack a goal, the audience isn’t motivated to make changes in their behavior. The presentation was unable to encourage the audience to do something about the problem. I have sat through many talks in which the speakers presented a lot of interesting information, but then they suddenly said, “Thanks for listening,” and the talk was over. In these instances, the audience received no payoff or satisfying end goal. The goal of your talk is important because it creates a sense of obligation in the audience. It’s just like saying “I’ve done my part in creating content and presenting the information. Now it is your turn to apply what you’ve learned so far.”

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations When you have established the goal of your presentation, it’s time to create a call to action, which is a message that explicitly tells your audience how they can use the information after the talk. Ideally, the call to action should be short and straight to the point. The call to action should also ideally benefit members of the audience. In other words, by following what you have presented, the audience’s lives, careers, etc., should be enriched. Your talk doesn’t need to be life changing, but it would be impressive to deliver a talk with life-changing consequences. Instead, the audience should be able to get some benefit from your content as opposed to it simply being an information dump. The call to action also provides an excellent opportunity for you to establish a community around your subject area. You could tell the audience that you created a post on your website about the presentation you just gave. Then, if they wish to follow through with your call to action, they can go to your website after the talk to learn more. By using techniques like this, you will encourage people to visit your website and review all the content you have available. If you have an email capturing tool set up, they may choose to subscribe to your website content. This technique is also useful for people who have consultancies. The information you put on your website will further establish your authority in the industry. If you have a business built around the content, you can significantly improve your revenue using this technique. ■■ Note  Understanding your overall goal is crucial to writing and presenting an effective presentation. Without it, your presentation will wander aimlessly from subject to subject with no overall payoff.

Information Gathering and Research Now that you have a topic to talk about and you have a goal for your presentation, it’s time to gather information about what you are going to present. In other words, it’s time to do some research. You should have both the topic and your purpose for the presentation in mind when deciding what information to include. For this part, you will need credible sources to support the points that you are about to make. You will also need to start thinking of the different ways to organize all the information in a way that will engage your audience. To begin, you’ll need to gather your information resources. This could include books, blog posts, online articles, or scientific journals. Much of the information you will use could be based on your experience with the topic. You could also review textbooks specific to your industry to see how they introduce topics.

Powerful Presentations The most valuable forms of information are those that your audience will not have easy access to. If you are presenting information that is not easy to come by, you are already providing value to your audience, as they can learn something that they might not easily get from a blog post or YouTube video. This could include the data that you collated and analyzed with your team. It could also mean sharing the details of a failed project you worked on—people always love hearing about failures and how to avoid them. All the information included in your presentation should be related to the goal that you want to achieve. A public speaker encouraging people to recycle, for example, should present data that supports why they should recycle their rubbish. Any data that is not related to the argument of recycling should not be included in the presentation. I suggest that you include all your sources in your slides, so remember to copy the source details when you compile your information. This way, you will not forget where you got your data. You can cite sources in your presentation in multiple ways. While presenting the data, you could also have the name of the source and the date when it was published in the corner of the slide. You could include one slide at the end that compiles all your sources so that the audience can fact-check the data you presented. This is especially important when your information is unexpected or potentially controversial.

Presenting Data in the Most Engaging Way When you find the data and information that you want to talk about in your presentation, you should start thinking of the best way to present it to the audience. For data, the best way depends on the reason you are including it in the first place. You could use graphs and other visual tools to help with your audience’s comprehension. You might also decide to use photographs or illustrations that convey the point, theme, or emotion of what you want to present. Numbers that show the declining governmental budget in education, for example, might be displayed better by using a line graph. In contrast, it would be better to use a pie chart to compare the distribution of resources. Most presentation software packages are equipped with tools for creating these visual aids. It is your task, however, to choose the most appropriate method for presenting the data. Using these methods to present information is much better than cramming a lot of text or bullet points onto slides. No one wants to read a lot of text or wade through bullet points while they are trying to listen to you. Honestly, I think it’s better to use as few slides as possible to present information or express your point. It is always preferable to convey meaning in two slides as opposed to ten, so making use of visualization tools to present information

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations will always be beneficial. If you’re filling your slides with a lot of text, this is a sign that your slides will not engage your audience—find another way to present the information.

Choosing a Presentation Style At this point, you already have data that will support the points you want to make in the presentation. You should also have an idea of how you will present this data—graphs, charts, photos, or illustrations. You can now start looking for the best way to present this data so that your presentation will be entertaining and easy to remember. To do this, you will need to choose a presentation style. There is no one best style of public speaking and presenting. Many people, tend to neglect picking a style that entertains people. A presentation is as much about art and performance as it is about conveying data. To make your presentation more engaging to your audience, you will need to insert your personality into the delivery. The presentation style is important because it will guide the creation of your design. To find a suitable style that fits your personality, you could investigate the styles of other successful presenters. YouTube is a fantastic resource when it comes to finding existing talks to watch. I view many talks on YouTube, partly to learn new information, but most of the time, I watch them to look at other speakers’ presentation styles and their delivery. Let’s discuss some styles here.

Highly Visual Presentation A public speaker using a highly visual style makes use of the slides to complement the narrative that the speaker will convey on stage. Their slides are there to back up the narrative and not as the focus. The presentation, in this case, starts with the script, which doesn’t need to be fully written, but rather an idea or outline of what the speaker will say to the audience. Your presentation’s words and information should be highly engaging in this style to be effective because the slides will not contain a lot of text, charts, or diagrams. One example of this style in practice occurred when Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone. In his presentation, he used suspense and humor to maintain the users’ engagement in the presentation. People watch these presentations because they are entertaining, and they are interested in new types of consumer technology.

Powerful Presentations In his presentations, Steve Jobs’ slides rarely contained much text. Instead, his presentation narrative delivered the message. The slides presented perfectly timed images and text that worked well with the script. When presenting the touchscreen feature of the iPhone, for example, Jobs doesn’t say that you could use your fingers to tap on the phone’s screen. Instead, he introduced suspense by first talking about how the smartphones at the time had challenges in managing QWERTY keys and some phones used a stylus. Steve Jobs’ narrative then hints that you can use your fingers to control the device. Just as he says this, he uses the clicker to show an image of a finger touching the surface of the iPhone on the slide. He used the visuals on the slide to illustrate what he was saying. While this may all seem simple, it takes a great deal of practice to pull this off. You will need to pick suitable images and practice the timing of when to make those images appear. People new to public speaking tend to use their slides as crutches so they don’t forget what to say. They do this by cramming too much information on the slide so they can look at it and remember what to say. If you are using a more visual presentation style, your slide content will be more minimal, so you can’t use them as prompts. The slides are there to support what you are saying, not the other way around. Using a more minimal style that uses images instead of text means that the speaker will need to be much more confident in what they are going to say, as well as being well rehearsed.

The Data-Rich Presentation Style If you are planning to present complicated data to your audience, you may need to use a data-rich presentation style to connect with them. This presentation style makes use of careful sequencing of information to ensure that it all leads to one central point: the message of the presentation. In this style, the presenter needs to focus on creating slides that support their conclusion. For example, if you are trying to say that eating vegetables is good, you should use data showing the life expectancy of people who eat a vegetable-rich diet. A data-rich presentation style is good when you are trying to present a lot of facts and figures. You would typically find this style used for corporate or more scientific presentations. However, it’s not as simple as showing some graphs on the screen. To make sure that the information you present has a lasting impact on the audience, you need to make everything easy to remember. You can do this by ensuring that the information you present follows these simple rules.

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The Information Should Be Easy to Understand Backing up your claims with statistics and scientific data is one of the best ways to make your presentation come across as professional. However, if the data selection and presentation are done poorly, the audience may not understand it. You need to make sure that the audience will easily understand any content you decide to include by focusing on the data’s clarity. To accomplish this, you need to choose and include the types of data that are on the level your audience will grasp. A doctor talking to an audience with no medical background, for example, should limit the use of medical jargon when presenting data. They should also try to use analogies when explaining medical concepts. In contrast, if the doctor is explaining something to other professionals in the medical profession, it is acceptable to use technical jargon, as the audience is also familiar with the terms. Nevertheless, you should still make sure to explain each piece of data in the simplest way possible. This is to make sure that all audience members will understand the data being presented and that no one feels alienated.

The Information Must Follow a Particular Order You should also decide on the best order to present the data. You could start with the most straightforward data and gradually make it more complicated as you go along. The best use of this method in lectures is whenever you are teaching a new concept to the audience—start simple and gradually build on what has come beforehand. If you are presenting historical data, you can make use of a timeline, which is an excellent way to indicate how the information you are presenting has developed or evolved over time. Explaining data in this way can be quite engaging for the audience as you can weave more of a story into how the data points change over time and the steps you took to enact that change. Make sure the method you use to arrange the data is also clear to the audience. In the previous example, you should point out that the data is organized in chronological order. This way, it will be easier for the audience to follow along if they know how the data will be presented. If you start showing historical data without any context on how you will explain it, the audience will need to use a lot of mental energy to figure out how all the data is related. The order of how you present data and information is important. It is nearly always best to start simple and then build the complexity. This way, if some audience members are at the novice level, they stand a better chance of following along and understanding. If someone gets lost near the start of a talk, they will disengage and stop listening, and that is the last thing you want.

Powerful Presentations

Avoid Overloading Your Presentation with Data Once you are clear on the order in which you will present your information, you should also make sure that the amount of information you plan to present is not mentally taxing. If you present 20 graphs, for example, the audience will barely remember one of them, let  alone all of them. Eventually, they will experience information overload, and this will make your presentation less entertaining and engaging. The audience will remember your presentation as a negative experience instead of recalling the actual points you tried to make. Here is the golden rule when presenting data: less is more. Only show your audience the minimum they need to see to understand the point you are trying to convey. You will lose your audience by presenting a huge table of data. Just show enough to prove your points and tell your story.

The Free-Flowing Presentation Style Professional stand-up comics are masters at public speaking and the freeflowing presentation style. They are so good at keeping their audiences engaged that most of them do not use slides to pull off their act. They use a conversational style of presenting to make the audience laugh. This style of presenting is not limited to comedy. Many public speakers, such as politicians, use a free-flowing style when talking to crowds. Most politicians make their public speeches as though they are simply speaking to you directly. In this case, there is no need for a slide deck at all. There is only you, the speaker, and your audience. The circumstances of the talk and the type of audience are big factors when deciding to use a free-flowing presentation style. With this style, your presentation will be more conversational—like telling a story to your friends in a bar. I find free-flowing presentation styles more suited to nondata-heavy talks or story-based talks, such as motivational stories or talks about how you overcame a problem or hurdle. If you are presenting a data-heavy talk, such as sales data or research results, then the free-flowing style might not work, and your audience will be prepared to hear hard facts as opposed to an entertaining story. In a comedy club, as another example, a stand-up comic’s audience wants to be entertained. They have already convinced themselves that they want to have a good time, and they will hopefully laugh at the comic’s jokes. A stand-up comic wouldn’t be effective if they decided to use a data-heavy presentation style and charts and graphs to tell their jokes. The free-flowing style of talk can be quite hard to deliver if you’re not good at thinking spontaneously about the story you’re telling, even if you have practiced. You don’t have the benefit of slides or slide notes to use as prompts.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations If you get stuck or forget what comes next, it can be difficult to recover, unless you have rehearsed significantly beforehand. When you are backed up by slides, if you forget a line, or can’t remember what happens next, you can usually recover by glancing at the slide notes or the next slide on the presenter view on your laptop. If the thought of speaking to an audience without visual cues fills you with dread, then I would stay away from the free-flowing style until you are more experienced with being on stage in front of a large audience.

Motivational Presentation Style The motivational presentation style appeals to the affective side of the audience. It focuses on the call-to-action part of your message. Each element in the presentation is meant to encourage your audience to better themselves by following your call to action. Motivational public speakers are often called hype men—or women—because they specialize in boosting the eagerness of the audience to do a specific task. This is easier said than done because it takes a certain level of confidence in yourself to pull it off. Without self-confidence, the speaker will not be able to motivate anyone. Aside from being self-confident, the speaker should also be able to pull off a high-energy presentation. A well-executed motivational presentation can make the members of the audience feel good afterward—motivated, in fact. Motivational speakers often use storytelling to illustrate a point. A motivational presentation about success, for instance, may feature stories on how other people became successful by showing the struggles they faced and how they overcame those struggles to become successful. The stories should not only present examples but should also be relatable to the audience. If the audience comes from a working-class background, the speaker could choose to use a story about someone who started out as an employee struggling at the bottom of a company and succeeded in reaching top positions in a company. Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story. Ideally, the protagonist in the story should be someone with distinct similarities with the people in the audience, which is why knowing your audience is particularly important. The audience might represent the same line of work or industry; they could all be teachers, parents, or rocket scientists. It is up to the speaker to establish these similarities so that the person in the story is relatable to the audience. The story aims to establish a particular belief system in the people listening to the presentation. In most sales motivational presentations, for example, the speaker tries to establish that the audience can succeed in reaching their sales

Powerful Presentations numbers. To do this, the speaker will need to make use of multiple motivational stories. The speaker will also need to make use of their own high level of energy to excite the listeners. This type of presentation is usually designed to gradually increase the emotions of the audience throughout the presentation. When the audience’s emotions hit their peak, the speaker then introduces the call to action for activities in which they want them to participate. If you wish to see motivational public speakers in action, look no further than the seminars of authors like Tony Robbins, a master of whipping an audience into a frenzy over the duration of his talks. You can find his presentations on YouTube.

Instructional Presentations Instructional presentations aim to teach the audience, as opposed to being freestyle or motivational. You can think of an instructional presentation as a lecture in which you are imparting information to teach a subject. Here, the end goal is to impart knowledge that the audience does not have prior to the presentation. The instructional presentation style is useful when showing how to use a product or technology. You shouldn’t confuse this with doing a sales pitch, which isn’t the same. Instructional presentations are about teaching. I come from a software development background. One of the fields I present on is software security, especially in the Microsoft space. On Azure, their cloud computing platform, there is a service called Azure Key Vault. It is a software system for storing and manipulating cryptographic encryption keys. Sounds complex, doesn’t it? One of my presentations explains what Key Vault is, how to set it up, and how to use it through a series of six guided examples, with each example becoming more complex as the talk goes on. In the space of an hour, the audience goes from knowing hardly anything about Key Vault to knowing how to set it up and how to use it. This is a good example of an instructional presentation style. The purpose of that talk isn’t to entertain. I am not trying to tell a fun story. I am teaching them how to use a complicated product in what I hope is an engaging way. In the software development field, most talks at conferences tend to be instructional talks—not all of them, as there are also some self-development and motivation talks.

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Establishing Yourself As an Authority on the Topic People tend to respect those who have put many hours into their craft or profession. To encourage people to listen to you—especially if you are new to public speaking and don’t yet have a following—you will need to establish that you are an authority on the topic that you are about to discuss. One of the best ways to do this is to begin your presentation with a story of you, in which you need to establish why you are standing on stage presenting this talk. The story doesn’t need to be long, but if you are presenting at a professional conference, for example, you might explain who you work for and your role. You could then list a few impressive achievements in your field and ease into the topic of your talk, or the problem you are trying to solve. You don’t need to spend much time on this story; a minute or two will suffice. You need to say enough to prove your credentials and hopefully get the audience to trust you. The first talk I ever did in front of an audience was about cryptography and encryption using Microsoft’s software development libraries. Because I was an unknown speaker at the time, I explained where I worked and my position and then briefly talked about a security system I had worked on in financial services. This helped to establish my role as an authority. I then noted that my talk would cover what I had learned while working on the security system and how to use these complex libraries from Microsoft—which at the time didn’t have good documentation. This took about a minute. I didn’t go into more detail about myself because the talk wasn’t about me; it was about the Microsoft libraries. I simply wanted the audience to know why I was qualified to talk about these libraries. You don’t always have to be an expert in your field to be a public speaker. You may be learning a new skill and want to do a talk about that skill. These types of entry-level skill talks can be quite popular. Just because you’re not an expert in that field doesn’t mean you can’t talk about the subject. If you pitch the synopsis of that talk at a beginner level, you are most likely one or two steps ahead of the people in the audience, which is fine. I personally enjoy listening to talks pitched at the beginner level, as this is a fantastic way to learn new information about a topic you would have otherwise overlooked. ■■ Note  Being an authority in a subject doesn’t mean you have to be an expert. An expert may have deep knowledge on a subject, but an authority will be able to influence someone with less experience than themselves. You can be both an expert and an authority on a subject.

Powerful Presentations

 Use an Organizational Tool That You Are Comfortable With When planning and preparing the content of your presentation, you will have a variety of options for how to organize and research the content. I use the same process each time I build a new talk.

Research We mentioned research earlier in the book, but I want to go into more detail here, as it is a vital part of the presentation creation process. A well-researched talk will always go down better with an audience, as opposed to a talk that is hastily put together. You don’t need to be an expert on a subject to talk about it, but you do need to be a good researcher. These days, with the internet, research is amazingly easy; you simply need a browser and a search engine. However, you don’t want to fall into the trap of searching only for information that confirms your views or beliefs. This is called confirmation bias, and it can lead to extremely one-sided talks. Even if you have a strong view about a particular subject and you know that differing viewpoints exist, I recommend that you research those differing viewpoints and include them in your talk. You can say you don’t agree with these views; that’s fine. As a civilized society, it is great that we can have different viewpoints on a subject, and it is fine to express those views, but a well-rounded talk should include other people’s views so your audience can make their own judgments. Today, there is a common concern about sharing opinions and worrying that others will be offended or will not agree with you, especially younger people. Personally, I think sharing your opinion is fine, especially if you live in a country that supports freedom of speech. There is always a line that you can cross, such as if your viewpoint is racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. However, expressing your own views is perfectly acceptable and encouraged during a presentation, provided your intention isn’t to cause harm or deliberately offend anyone. You will know if your views fall into that category, so I recommend exercising good judgment. However, sharing different viewpoints with others is healthy, and debate should be encouraged. When you include information from your research, I recommend making a note of it so that you can remember the source. If you want to quote someone else’s work or include any data they may have published, this is acceptable use, as long as you attribute their work, so they are credited. Attributing their work also means that the audience has a frame of reference should they want to look up any information.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations When researching information for a talk, you need to consider the sources of the information, especially if it is from someone’s blog. Information can be wrong, so you should look at the source and try to find other independent sources that corroborate the information you have found. This is the same process that a journalist uses to write a story by checking multiple sources to fact-check information. Then, if someone questions any information in your talk, you have the sources written down. Researching information for a talk can be quite an in-depth process, so make sure to record your research notes and sources clearly. I know many people who prefer to write them down in a physical notebook, but I think your life will be much easier if you use a note-taking app. If you are an Apple Mac or iPad user, Apple Notes is included free with your computer, which is what I use. There are a lot of other great note-taking applications, including Microsoft OneNote, if you are a Microsoft Office user, and Evernote, or any of the other apps in existence.

The Outline When you have conducted all your research, you will need to organize this information to build a cohesive talk. The best way to design the talk’s structure is by developing an outline. This is also how a novelist outlines a book, so they know the story’s plot arc, character development, conflict, and payoffs. By now, you already know the style of talk you’re going to prepare. Next, you want to think about breaking your talk into sections. Much like a story with a three-act structure, you want to plan the beginning, middle, and ending. Act 1 (The Beginning): Introduce yourself and why you are here talking. Then, introduce the topic or problem you want to discuss. Act 2 (The Middle): Start exploring the topic in more detail. This is where much of your research will come into play. Depending on your audience, you may have to provide a lot of introductory material or include topic details. Do you have research data to show? What are your opinions on the topic? Are there views counter to yours? This is a good place to explore them. Is your talk more instructional? If so, this is a good place to walk through the demo by starting with easier examples and then getting progressively harder. Act 3 (The End): By this point in the talk, you have covered your main content, so now you should start summarizing your key points. The summary is especially important and should be written carefully. Your talk may have included a huge amount of information that is hard for the audience to retain. If you are presenting at a larger conference, remember that the attendees will be more tired if your talk is scheduled later in the timetable. The summary is a great place to make sure that the audience leaves with a handful of the most important facts. Once you have finished your summary, you can open the floor to any questions.

Powerful Presentations There is a reason most written content is split into this three-act structure— it’s because it works, and people generally expect any type of long-form information to be presented this way. Of course, any rule can be broken, and you are free to do that. But if you are a new speaker, I recommend that you stick to the three-act structure until you have more experience in public speaking and then you can deviate. However, to be honest, I can’t see why you’d want to do that. Your outline can be written in the same note-taking application that you used to store your research notes, or you can use a more visual application, such as a mind map (Figure 2-1). Mind mapping is my preferred way of structuring a talk, as it is visual. There are many mind-mapping applications available, ranging from free and open source to paid applications; choose one that works best for you. I use an application called iThoughtsX on the Mac. The following screenshot shows the start of my talk outline on artificial intelligence.

Figure 2-1.  Outlining a talk using mind maps

■■ Note  Most modern entertainment (novels, TV shows, and films) uses a three-act structure as a basis for their storytelling. Designing a presentation is no different.

Outlining is a powerful tool, and I highly recommend that you go through this process, as it will always result in writing a well-rounded and informative talk.

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Scripting Scripting your talk is a controversial step. Some speakers swear by writing a full script for their talk. Other people hate the idea. Personally, I don’t write scripts anymore, apart from one occasion that I will cover in a moment. However, I started by scripting my first few talks. The script is the written form of your presentation. In this organizational tool, you write a complete script of what you are going to say during your presentation. This can take a couple of forms. It could be an expanded version of your outline with more extensive notes where you write a brief paragraph for each point that you want to discuss, or it could be a full script that contains word for word what you will say. Some people find it helpful to write a full script, although memorizing a script takes a lot of effort and practice. The script can be important both on the day of the presentation and when you are practicing. During practice, the script is a useful guide to remind you of the sequence of your presentation. By following the script when practicing, you will be able to memorize the progression of the presentation you’ve prepared. For some types of conventions or conferences, the organizers may ask you specifically for the script so that it can uploaded into the event’s teleprompters. In all my years as a public speaker, I was only asked for the script once ahead of time for use in a teleprompter, and I really didn’t like it. When using a teleprompter, you’re forced to stand behind a lectern and read from a screen— much like a news reader. This particular event was cautious about checking what the speakers’ presentations are, so they vetted the scripts first. I have found the use of teleprompters with written scripts to be the exception rather than the norm; however, it does happen, so make sure you know the rules of engagement with a prebooked event well ahead of time. If you are using teleprompters for the first time, you may feel uncomfortable. It can be awkward because they make the presentation restrictive. Without prompters, you can insert any topic you wish to include into the talk. With a script on the screen, however, it will be difficult for you to do this primarily because the script has been designed to fit the presentation’s exact length of time. In most of my talks, I add or remove content on the fly based on the audience’s reactions or a question that comes from the audience. Personally, I think this makes for a more fun experience, as you can inject a little more personality into the talk. Teleprompters can be valuable when you become more comfortable using them. They help the presenter keep the presentation on topic. They also help remind the presenter of the sequence of the presentation. If you’re nervous about remembering the flow of your talk, then a teleprompter may help, but bear in mind that reading from a professional teleprompter is completely different from reading a script on your laptop screen. Teleprompters are set at eye level so that you will be looking at the audience as you are reading, and

Powerful Presentations looking at the audience is important if you want them to stay engaged. If you are reading from a laptop screen, you will be looking down at the screen and not engaging with the audience. This is a huge turnoff for an audience, and it is very unprofessional. Nothing shows off inexperience as much as not looking at the people you’re addressing. I started out by writing scripts, and I still do when writing training courses, but now that I am more experienced, I simply glance at notes in my presenter view on Microsoft PowerPoint. Another big benefit to having a fully written script of your talk is that you can use it to post a blog post or a series of blog posts on the same subject. It is easy to adapt a script into articles without much effort, and it offers another great avenue to present your views to the world.

Cue Cards and Prompts Cue cards can also perform a similar purpose when there is no teleprompter at the event. These are cards on which the presenter puts the presentation outline. Cue cards will not automatically make your presentation better. To make sure that your use of cue cards works, you will need to do two simple things. First, ensure that the content on the cards is short and easily understandable. The cards should only contain keywords and phrases rather than complete sentences. The purpose of these words or phrases is to remind you of your next topic. You should be able to pick up the information you need just by glancing at the cards. Second, you need to practice using them. The use of cue cards won’t come naturally to you at first. Specifically, you’ll need to practice when you will look down at your card’s content and when you will look at your audience. While teleprompters are usually positioned so that it looks like the presenters are looking at the audience while reading, cue cards require you to look down at them to check the information. To use cue cards properly, you need to know when it is appropriate to check them and when it’s best to maintain eye contact with your audience. Ideally, you want to look at the audience when you are in the middle of discussing a topic. As long as you are on the same topic, you should keep your attention on the audience. The best time to look down at your cue cards is when you are transitioning between topics. When you look down at your cards to check which topic to discuss next, you will need to create a mental picture of the entire section that you want to discuss. Instead of simply looking at the next topic on the card, you look at the next three to five topics. This way, you will be able to discuss a substantial amount of information before looking at your cards again.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations If you are using slides for your presentation, then you can use the notes section in the presenter view of your presentation software, such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. The notes section for each slide fulfills the same purpose as cue cards; you can include a few bullet points to remind you of any content you need to cover. Again, don’t write a lot here, as it will be hard to read and stay engaged with the audience. I prefer using these presenter view notes instead of physical cue cards, but if you are doing a talk without the use of slides, the physical cards can be helpful, especially if you are nervous. A good trick to try if you are using prompts, such as cue cards or presenter notes on the laptop, is to take a small sip of water when you come to the end of a section to glance at your cards or notes. The audience will think nothing of it, as presenters often take several sips of water throughout presentations because their mouths can get quite dry.

Creating Effective Slides Slides are the primary visual tool for most presentations. With the use of slides, a presenter will be able to use all types of media content, such as text, pictures, images, and videos. If well designed, these slides will help the presenter pull off an engaging presentation. However, if the slides are not well designed, they can be a cause of disappointment to the audience. Instead of making the presentation better, poorly designed slides usually make presentations more challenging to understand, as the audience will spend more time trying to interpret the slides than listening to you speak. One of the biggest offenders here are presentations in which the slides are littered with bullet-point lists. As the presenter, you need to realize that the slides are there for the audience’s benefit, not yours. Well-designed slides support and enhance what you are saying and reinforce your message. It is a common fault among inexperienced speakers to design their slides with far too much information on them so that they can use them as visual prompts to remember what they are saying. Don’t do this; instead, rehearse often before the talk to help you remember what to say, and include some simple notes in the presenter’s view of your slide software. Let’s run through some points to consider when designing your slides.

Reduce the Amount of Text Your slides are a support aid for the narrative you share with the audience. Therefore, the most critical point at that moment is what you are saying. If you put a lot of text on a slide, then the audience’s eyes will naturally be drawn to the slide, and they will try to read the text. While they are reading,

Powerful Presentations they are not listening to you, and that will leave the audience feeling shortchanged, as you have asked too much of them. If you want the audience to read, then it would be better to point them to a blog post. Some speakers try to get around the idea of having too much text by littering their slides with bullet points, and this is almost as bad as large blocks of text. If you make the audience do more work than they need to do, then they will lose interest and disengage. That’s when you see audience members playing on their phones or their laptops. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use any text at all, but it is wise to be careful with the amount. If I want to display text, I am a fan of a technique called text chunking. You can see this in the following screenshot of a slide from one of my talks (Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2.  Using text chunking to reduce text on the screen

By using colored boxes—or chunks—you can easily summarize what you are saying with text-based prompts on the screen. If I am going to spend a minute describing the content of each box, then I might show one box at a time. In the case of the preceding example, I would display the blue box first, then the green, then orange, then yellow. Using a Bluetooth slide clicker, I would progress through the slides. As a technique, this works quite well. Sometimes, you will want to display a block of text—such as a quote—and you can make this more visually appealing with some clever imagery. In the preceding screenshot (Figure 2-3), you can see that I displayed a quote from

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The quote provides a powerful impact on the point I was making, so I tried to make the slide more visually appealing by using a cartoon of Charles Dickens.

Figure 2-3.  Using imagery to present text

There are no hard and fast rules about what to put on a slide. I am not saying never use blocks of text, but a good guide is to put yourself in the audience’s shoes when you build a slide. How much work do they need to do to interpret what is on the slide while still trying to listen to you speak?

Use a Slide Template Good slide design can be hard, as not everyone is a gifted designer. I’m certainly not. One way of creating visually impactful slides is to download either a free slide template or to purchase a template. There are many websites available that will allow you to download templates for both Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote application. Templates are a great way to create visually pleasing slides. Before you download any templates, you need to pay careful attention to the usage guidelines. Some templates state that they are only allowed to be used privately for internal company use. If you are using slides for a public performance and then potentially handing out copies of your slide deck to attendees, then you need to explicitly check that you are allowed to do so. Personally, I have never used a third-party slide template for a talk. I tend to use the default PowerPoint template and, where possible, use full-screen stock photos or text chunking, as described earlier.

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Images, Diagrams, and Reducing Clutter There is a saying that a picture speaks a thousand words, and this is true when designing slides for a presentation. Take the following screenshot as an example (Figure 2-4).

Figure 2-4.  Using images for impact

In this talk, I explain the dangers of social media addiction and how we need to educate and protect children growing up with this technology. When I was designing the slides, I used a website called Shutterstock to look for inspiration, and I found this brilliant illustration of people on a train. No one in the picture is talking to each other; they are all staring at their phones. I thought this was a powerful image that backed up the point I was making. When I deliver this talk, I put this image on the screen for a few minutes while I am making my point. The audience will look at the image to see what is going on and then immediately look back at me to listen what I am saying. I am a big believer in using full-screen photos to illustrate points and leaving that image on the screen for as long as needed. Sometimes a full-screen photograph or illustration is not suitable, and you must show some data. The problem with data is that people need to use their cognitive power to interpret the data, even if you are explaining it at that point, so you want to be careful about how much you show. In the preceding screenshot (Figure 2-5), I show timing data regarding security operations in a Microsoft software development library. The details of those timings aren’t important for the purpose of this section of the book, but what is important is how I show the data.

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Figure 2-5.  Use simple charts and tables to present data

On the left, I have a simple table with some data. Next to that, I have a chart of that data. Using this chart makes it quite easy to see how the data in both columns of the table correlate to each other. In this case, you can immediately see that there is linear growth in the relationship between the number of iterations and the timing in milliseconds. Including that chart was a deliberate decision I made to make interpreting the data easier for the audience.

Be Careful with Animation Presentation tools like PowerPoint and Keynote allow you to set up elaborate animations of elements on the screen. Animation can be a powerful way to add visual impact to your presentation, but it doesn’t take much for animation to become a distraction. If you are using animation to transition between slides and elements on the slides, this can look quite good. However, I would guard against being overly clever as you don’t want to distract the audience with too much movement. Personally, I don’t use any animation, as it can quickly go from looking subtle and tasteful to being a gimmick. I am not a particularly good visual designer, so I err on the side of caution and keep my slides as simple as possible. As the designer of your own slides, only you can decide what is acceptable for you and your audience. As previously stated, there aren’t really any hard and fast rules—only general advice.

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 Think of the People Sitting at the Back of the Room When you are designing your slide deck, it is a good idea—as previously mentioned—to think about the audience viewing the slides. You also need to think about the audience sitting toward the back of the room, especially if you are speaking to a group in a large hall. Unless the venue has screens positioned throughout the hall, most people will be looking at a screen toward the front of the stage. Building on what was already described in this chapter, imagine what it would feel like for anyone sitting at the back of the room if your slides are cluttered with text and too busy. They won’t be able to read the slides and will immediately disengage with the talk. You could be giving the talk of your life, but if the slides are hard to interpret and read, you will struggle to keep the engagement levels high in the room. The same can be said for the contrast of the slides, which can greatly impact readability. By contrast, I mean the difference in the intensity of colors on the screen. If you have a light blue box with slightly lighter blue text on it, the text will be hard to read, especially if you are at the back of the room. If you have a blue box with either white or black text, the text will be easier to read at the back of the room. Not everyone has perfect eyesight, so some people rely on high-contrast colors on the screen to comfortably read any text. ■■ Note  Planning, writing, and delivering a talk enable you to strengthen you critical thinking skills.

Summarizing Information When you get to the end of your presentation, have made all your main points, and have achieved your overall goal, you’ll need to wrap up the presentation with a good summary. By that time, the audience will have listened to your talk for up to an hour. Depending on the length of the talk, you would have conveyed a lot of information to the audience. A standard conference talk, for example, is 60 minutes. Speaking for this length of time means that you will be giving a lot of information. When you get near the end of your talk, you’ll need to summarize your main discussion points. The talk summary shouldn’t just be a brief recounting of everything that has come before it. Instead, use the summary as a chance to illustrate the talk’s main points, the key resolution to the talk’s goal, and any important takeaways.

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations Most conference attendees are likely to see at least five talks a day over a two- or three-day period. That is a lot of information to absorb in a few days. The summary provides a vital tool for making sure that your audience retains your main message. Don’t skimp on the summary; it is probably the most important and most impactful part of your entire talk.

Creating a Call to Action Once you have written your summary, you can then offer a call to action, which is an important part of the presentation because this is where you could have the most significant influence on your audience. To start, let’s talk about what a call to action is. The call to action refers to the part of your content where you encourage audience members to do something after the presentation. The activity that you ask of them to do can be as simple as following you on a social networking website. It could also require a more significant commitment, such as asking them to sign up for your newsletter or purchase a product. While you may want to promote your products and services, it might not be appropriate, depending on the nature of the event. In a conference, for example, people expect to learn rather than hear marketing pitches. In this case, it may be better to use fewer sales-based calls to action. Also, bear in mind that many conferences have strict rules against sales pitches, so make sure that you’re not breaking any event rules; otherwise, you may not be invited back in the future. The call to action may be subtly included in your presentation, or it could be delivered quickly at the end. If you are championing a cause, and you think that it fits well with your presentation, you may add it to the conclusion or create an engaging story related to the call to action for a greater impact on the audience. You could also include the call to action in your slides to remind the engaged audience that you want them to do something. You should also make sure that your call to action is easy to understand. If the tasks that the audience needs to do seem complicated, you could break them into steps and present them in sequential order. One brilliant technique that I have seen is to put a QR code on the slide that redirects to a webpage instead of putting the web address on a slide. Then, all the attendees must do is take a photo of the slide on the screen instead of trying to type in a URL. If you want to generate a QR code, there are plenty of free sites you can use.

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■■ Tip  The most effective call to action is the action that the audience member takes when they are sitting in the room with you there and then. If you are speaking at a conference, the chances are very high that they will forget to take any action that you ask of them.

Summary In this chapter, we identified what makes a good presentation. To put your point across with an audience, you need to plan ahead and design your presentation, just like you would do for any creative exploit, whether that’s software, a book, etc. If you follow the advice from this chapter and use the following workshop questions to help you, with a little planning, you can create an engaging presentation on any subject that interests you.

Workshop Questions 1. For your chosen presentation topic, write a simple elevator pitch to describe what the talk is about and what problem you will solve. This isn’t a full synopsis at this point, but what would you say if someone asked you what the talk is about. Try and write this pitch in under 150 words. 2. Based on your chosen topic, pick a style of presentation that you want to use for the slide design. • Highly visual presentation • Data-rich presentation • Free-flowing presentation • Motivational presentation • Instructional presentation

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Chapter 2 | Writing Engaging Presentations 3. Now that you know your presentation style, start to think about your three-act structure and what information you want to convey in each section. Here is a reminder of each act. • Act 1 (The Beginning): Introduce yourself and why you are speaking on this topic. Then, introduce the topic or problem. • Act 2 (The Middle): Start exploring the topic in more detail. • Act 3 (The End): You have now covered your main topic in detail. Start summarizing your key points and draw your conclusions. 4. Think about the story you want to tell in your presentation. Just presenting straight facts can make for an unappealing presentation, but weaving your topic into a story can be very engaging. Do you have a real-world example from your own experiences that you can use for your story? If so, real stories work very well as they can make your topic relatable. If you don’t have a real-world example to draw from, then you can make up a fictional scenario. 5. Using your slide-designing tool of choice (Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, etc.), start to think about your visual theme for the presentation. Don’t make it overcomplicated, and using basic templates is fine, but think about the design elements to build up a visual style guide. Consider color contrast on the screen and the size of text/images. Can you read the slides at a distance? This is important if you are presenting in a large room. Darker color themes with poor contrast are hard to read from a distance, or by people with visual impairments. • How you will format titles—font, size, title case, etc. • What color scheme you will use—blues, reds, greens, monochrome, etc. • How you will represent lists of information—your use of bullet points or text chunking • How you will use images—placement on the screen or as full-screen images

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3 Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience Once you have designed your talk and all the slides, you need to encourage meetup groups or conferences to schedule your talk. Once the talk has been selected—especially if you are speaking at a conference where the audience has a choice of talks to see at the same time—you need to convince attendees to sign up for yours. The tool for doing this is the synopsis. The synopsis contains the name of the talk and what the talk is about. Your talk synopsis is your best opportunity to make a strong first impression. In this chapter, we’ll go over the standard structure of a synopsis and then look at synopses of four talks I have presented in the past.

© Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3_3

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The Importance of a Synopsis A synopsis can make or break the success of your talk. You may believe that your talk is the best one ever given, but if your synopsis is weak and doesn’t excite your potential audience, they will choose a different talk instead. There are no fixed rules about writing a synopsis, but there is a structure you can follow. You may decide not to use this structure all the time, and that’s fine, but it gives you a solid starting point. A typical synopsis structure can be outlined as follows: • Catchy talk title • Initial hook • More details • Closing statement

Catchy Talk Title The first thing anyone will see is your talk title, which will determine whether they want to continue reading. If the title doesn’t grab them, then they will simply click to the next talk. I have always had success using a title and subtitle for a talk. This format seems to work quite well. Later in this chapter, I will take you through four talk synopsis examples from my own talks, but for now, let’s look at the titles. The first title is “Fighting Back Against a Distracted World: Increasing Your Focus and Self-Motivation.” The main title is quite catchy and draws you in with a talk about a distracted world—something most people can relate to. Then the subtitle talks about increasing your focus and self-motivation. Straight away, we can see the talk is about beating distractions and increasing focus and motivation. This title on its own offers a good impression of what the talk is about. The next title is “Dot NET Core Data Security: Hope Is Not a Strategy.” This is the title of a very technical software development talk focusing on the Microsoft Dot NET programming framework. This audience group will immediately know that this talk is about the security framework that comes with Dot NET. The subtitle says that hope is not a strategy, which implies that ignoring data security is futile, and this talk will give you a real strategy. Again, the right audience will immediately know what the talk is about just from the title. This has been by far my most popular talk, and I have done versions of it all around the world; it consistently rates very high with attendees.

Powerful Presentations The next title is “Protecting Encryption Keys with Azure Key Vault.” This title doesn’t have a subtitle, but the main title gets straight to the point. Any software developer in the Microsoft Azure cloud computing space will immediately know what this talk is about. There are no fancy clickbait style words; the title just gets to the point straight away. The final talk title I will discuss in this chapter is “Hacking Humans: Social Engineering Techniques and How to Protect Against Them.” The use of “hacking humans” was deliberately picked to be quite bold. This is a security talk about social engineering, but at first glance, hacking humans could be thought of as something else. The talk isn’t about axe murders, though, which the subtitle confirms. The talk covers social engineering techniques and how to protect against them. People who have heard this talk said that the full title and subtitle were compelling, as they immediately imply that you’ll learn about how social engineers work and how to guard against them. There has been quite a trend lately to use clickbait-style titles like those on websites such as BuzzFeed. I would say, however, that unless your talk is designed to be humorous, I would avoid clickbait. It looks bad and cheapens the impact of your talk if it is serious. If you find this interesting, you’ll never guess what I’m going to say next! I cringed just writing that.

Initial Hook Once the talk title has grabbed your readers, they will want to know more. The first few sentences of your synopsis need to provide a great hook. You may state an interesting fact or propose a problem that you are going to solve. People have short attention spans these days, so these first few sentences must draw people in. Once they have been hooked, they will continue reading. If they don’t think the talk is for them after reading your hook, they will likely stop reading and won’t attend the talk. I will look at the hooks for some of my talks later in this chapter.

More Detail Now that you have grabbed their attention with the title and the first hook, they will want more details about your talk. In this section, you can provide granular details on what you will cover. If this talk is aimed at people at an intermediate or advanced level, you’ll want to include a fair number of details so that they can determine whether your talk will be suitable for them. You don’t want attendees to come to your talk who expect certain topics but then feeling you didn’t deliver on their expectations.

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Closing Statement The closing statement is a final sentence or two that acts as a final hook for the reader. After providing the talk’s main details, you might state an interesting fact or reiterate the problem you are trying to solve. Essentially, you are trying to remind the reader about what’s in it for them if they come to your talk. These four steps for writing a synopsis are a guide, not a clear set of rules. Of course, you can write whatever you like in the synopsis, but these steps provide a solid method to create an enticing talk description. I haven’t always followed this style, but they will help if you need somewhere to start. Let’s now look at synopses for the four talks I have delivered. These are four of my most popular talks that have been accepted at conferences all over the world, and they have all been rated very highly by attendees at events that ask them to rate the talks. My talks tend to be in the realm of software development, security, and personal productivity. It doesn’t matter if your field of interest is different; it’s the principles that are important, as shown in the following examples. ■■ Note  The synopsis of your talk is one of the most important aspect of a presentation design, besides the presentation itself. If you are submitting to a conference, your talk will be accepted or rejected based on the synopsis alone. Once you are accepted to speak at an event, the synopsis becomes the primary advert to encourage people to attend your talk over someone else’s.

 Talk 1: Fighting Back Against a Distracted World: Increasing Your Focus and Self-Motivation “Fighting Back Against a Distracted World” is a productivity talk I started delivering at conferences in 2019. It has been quite popular and regularly fills halls with attendees who have given favorable feedback. I already talked about the title of this talk earlier in this section of the book and how I use a main title and a subtitle to give readers a good impression of what the talk is about. Before we break the synopsis down further, I want you to read it in its entirety. We live in an age of technical wonder, with the internet, high-end games, and streaming service all vying for our attention. We have never had so many significant innovations available at our fingertips, accessible 24/7. However, with all these systems, we are becoming increasingly distracted and struggling

Powerful Presentations to focus for extended periods. If left unchecked, these distractions can affect our work, careers, and self-confidence. We need to be able to break this cycle of distraction while still enjoying all these innovations. When I first became self-employed, I thought that I would have the ultimate freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted. To a degree, I did, but I didn’t have anyone looking over me, holding me accountable. I started to become distracted. After a while, I decided things had to change. I began a quest to become more productive, focused, and motivated—while still indulging in the occasional Netflix binge. In this talk, I share my story of personal distraction, low motivation, and increased project anxiety. I also share how I broke this cycle and got my creative and productive mojo back. This talk is aimed at anyone who strives to be more productive but struggles with distractions daily. I cover the following subjects: • Distraction and procrastination • Finding meaning in your work • Self-motivation • Locus of control • Productivity and time management • Social media addiction I now consider myself very productive, but getting there was a battle. Let me share my story so that I can help you become productive and confident too. Overall, this is a synopsis that I am proud of, and it is one of my newer talks. We have already looked at the title, but let’s break down the opening hook further. We live in an age of technical wonder, with the internet, high-end games, and streaming service all vying for our attention. We have never had so many significant innovations available at our fingertips, accessible 24/7. However, with all these systems, we are becoming increasingly distracted and struggling to focus for extended periods. If left unchecked, these distractions can affect our work, careers, and self-confidence. We need to be able to break this cycle of distraction while still enjoying all these innovations. I start off by reminding the reader that the world we live in is wonderful with all the technology at our fingertips. Just look at the humble iPad, for example, a glass screen you can carry around and access any information you want,

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Chapter 3 | Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience watch films, talk to family or friends, or play games. It wasn’t so long ago that iPad-like devices were the mainstay of science fiction. I always remember JeanLuc Picard in his ready room on the Starship Enterprise accessing information on what looked like a tablet device. I always wanted one, and now we have several similar devices in my household. I then go on to state that as wonderful as these devices are, they are brilliant at distracting us—emails, notifications, phone calls, video calls, twitter messages. A lot of distractions will stop you from being productive. I state that if these distractions are left unchecked, our careers and self-confidence can be affected. I end the hook by reaffirming that we need to break this cycle of distraction yet still enjoy our technology. Here, I am trying to imply that we will try to sort this problem out in the talk, but it isn’t the talk’s purpose to make you give up technology. This is a strong opening hook, and after reading only these few sentences, you get an idea of the talk’s tone and content. Some conferences that have accepted this talk have displayed the talk title and my opening hook on the schedule page. The reader then must click on the talk to learn more. Next, in the synopsis, we have more information about the talk for anyone who was interested after reading the opening hook. When I first became self-employed, I thought that I would have the ultimate freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted. To a degree, I did, but I didn’t have anyone looking over me, holding me accountable. I started to become distracted. After a while, I decided things had to change. I began a quest to become more productive, focused, and motivated—while still indulging in the occasional Netflix binge. In the next part of the synopsis, I introduce my personal story. My intention here is to hint to readers that I am not just going to talk through a series of tips—I am talking from experience. In my opinion, some of my favorite talks are based on the speaker’s firsthand experiences, which allows you to weave a story into the talk, and everyone likes a good story. Now, we hopefully have readers fully hooked. They know the theme of the talk and the introduction to my own personal story. Now let’s give them some more granular details. In this talk, I share my story of personal distraction, low motivation, and increased project anxiety. I also share how I broke this cycle and got my creative and productive mojo back. This talk is aimed at anyone who strives to be more productive but struggles with distractions daily. I cover the following subjects:

Powerful Presentations • Distraction and procrastination • Finding meaning in your work • Self-motivation • Locus of control • Productivity and time management • Social media addiction If the reader didn’t pick up on the fact that I was going to be talking about my personal experiences, I make it obvious by telling them that this talk is about my story of distraction, low motivation, and project anxiety. I state that I am going to talk about how I broke this cycle. I am not telling my story for the sake of it; there is a purpose in talking about how I overcame a problem. I then mention who the talk is aimed at; in this case, people who want to be more productive and reduce distractions, which is probably everybody. I then list the main topics from the talk as a bullet-point list. This means there will be no ambiguity over what I am going to cover, as I state it outright. In fact, that bullet-point list ended up becoming the main section headings for the talk. Nobody could say that they didn’t know what the talk was going to cover, as I am quite direct. Some people might say that going to that level of detail is giving away what’s in the talk, but I disagree. They know the main subjects, but not all the nuanced content. This talk is one-hour long, and I speak, on average, for 55 minutes. There’s a lot in there. Finally, we move on to the closing statement. I now consider myself very productive, but getting there was a battle. Let me share my story so that I can help you become productive and confident too. My closing statement is only two sentences, but they are specific. I first state that I now consider myself productive. In other words, I solved the problem, but it was hard. This signals to the reader that this is a battle that can be won. I then finish by saying that I will be sharing my story—just in case that wasn’t obvious already—and that I am going to help you become productive and confident. In other words, I am not only going to tell you a story, but I am also going to give you a solution. Of all the talks I have written, this is my personal favorite. That is why I talked about it first. When I give this presentation, attendees come to talk with me after the event or contact me privately to tell me how much they liked the talk and how it helped them, which is incredibly humbling. Much work went

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Chapter 3 | Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience into writing the talk, and a lot of effort went into trying to craft the perfect— in my eyes—synopsis. I didn’t write this synopsis on a single attempt; it took a few revisions. The next talk I want to cover is completely different in that it is aimed at an extremely specific technical audience.

 Talk 2: Dot NET Core Data Security: Hope Is Not a Strategy This talk is the first one I ever designed and delivered. The talk is aimed at a specific audience of Microsoft Dot NET developers, so it is quite a niche. Before we look at the initial hook, you can read the entire synopsis. Failing to encrypt your data is a risky move, and simply hoping that you won’t get hacked and compromised is not a strategy. As a software developer, you have a duty to your employer to secure and protect their data. Through this talk, you will learn how to use the .NET framework to protect data to ensure confidentiality, integrity, nonrepudiation, and authentication. This talk covers random number generation, hashing, authenticated hashing, password-based key derivation functions, and symmetric and asymmetric encryption using DES, Triple DES, AES (CBC and GCM), and RSA. You will also learn how to combine them to produce a hybrid encryption scheme that includes AES, RSA, Hashed Message Authentication Codes, and digital signatures. The main title, “Dot NET Core Data Security,” will mean something to Microsoft Dot NET developers—as I said, this is a niche talk. The subtitle says hope is not a strategy, which implies that hoping your data will not be compromised is not a good business strategy; you need to act. I then built on this further with a remarkably simple hook. Failing to encrypt your data is a risky move, and simply hoping that you won’t get hacked and compromised is not a strategy. As a software developer, you have a duty to your employer to secure and protect their data. Here, I am reaffirming the subtitle of the talk, just in case the reader doesn’t pick up on it. Again, when a conference displays a talk on its website, it typically includes the talk title and the first one or two sentences, and then the reader must click through to read more. When they want to read more, they get the subsequent details.

Powerful Presentations I then state that as a software developer, you have a duty to your employer to protect their data. Here, I am telling the reader that if you are a developer, you have a responsibility. I am hoping this makes the reader suddenly sit up and think that they need to pay attention. We then get into the main details of the talk. Through this talk, you will learn how to use the .NET framework to protect data to ensure confidentiality, integrity, nonrepudiation, and authentication. This talk covers random number generation, hashing, authenticated hashing, password-based key derivation functions, and symmetric and asymmetric encryption using DES, Triple DES, AES (CBC and GCM), and RSA. You will also learn how to combine them to produce a hybrid encryption scheme that includes AES, RSA, Hashed Message Authentication Codes, and digital signatures. The main details are quite technical, but I am aiming at a specific audience niche. If the terms are familiar with the reader, then it is most likely a talk for them. In these details, I state what cryptography primitives I will talk about and how to use them together in their software solutions. The actual talk follows what I mention in this section quite closely. This talk does not have a closing statement. Since I originally designed the talk, the synopsis hasn’t changed much. As the talk is so niche to its intended audience, what I will talk about and the level of the talk are obvious. This has been an extremely popular talk that I have been fortunate to deliver all over the world, but it is my first-ever designed talk and probably not the best in terms of design. However, I have adapted it over the years, and it always goes down well with its intended audience. The next talk I want to talk about is also a specific technical talk with a niche audience.

 Talk 3: Protecting Encryption Keys with Azure Key Vault “Protecting Encryption Keys with Azure Key Vault” is another niche software development talk aimed at Microsoft developers using Azure, their cloud computing platform. This talk focuses on a service provided by Azure called the Key Vault, which is a service that allows you to create and manage encryption keys as well as store confidential secrets such as passwords for third-party services. The type of people who would be interested in this talk are software developers working in larger corporate enterprises, so that was my target audience.

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Chapter 3 | Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience The title for this talk doesn’t have a subtitle. The main title says what the talk is about and what platform it is aimed at—Azure Key Vault. When I submit this talk to events that specialize in Microsoft-based software development, anyone who reads that title immediately knows what the talk is about. Before we look at the initial hook, you can read the entire synopsis. In a world where we put our companies’ data in the cloud, protecting that data from data breaches has never been more important. In this talk, I demonstrate how to set up and use the Microsoft Azure Key Vault to protect your encryption keys and secrets, such as passwords and connection strings. Azure Key Vault harnesses the power of hardware security modules to protect your secrets and make sure your solutions are as secure as they can be, which is particularly important in regulated industries like health care, finance, and insurance. In addition to setting up and configuring the vault, I will show you how to code against key vault libraries and various patterns for security in a cloud-based multi-tenant environment. I will cover the following topics: • Setting up Azure Key Vault • Authorizing your application to access the vault with Azure Active Directory • Accessing the vault from your applications • Using the vault to wrap local encryption keys for performance • Encrypting connection strings as Key Vault secrets to get flexible database routing in the cloud You will leave this talk with everything you need to start using Azure Key Vault today. Let’s start with the talk’s initial hook. In a world where we put our companies’ data in the cloud, protecting that data from data breaches has never been more important. The initial hook for this talk is just one sentence. Here, I state that we are putting more data into the cloud, and that it is as important, now more than ever, that we protect that data. This is the main point of the talk. We need to protect our employers’ and customers’ data from data breaches. You can turn on the TV every day and hear about a company that has had data lost or stolen. We want to stop that, and this talk is designed to help.

Powerful Presentations Next, we have the “more detail” section of the synopsis. In this talk, I demonstrate how to set up and use the Microsoft Azure Key Vault to protect your encryption keys and secrets, such as passwords and connection strings. Azure Key Vault harnesses the power of hardware security modules to protect your secrets and make sure your solutions are as secure as they can be, which is particularly important in regulated industries like health care, finance, and insurance. In addition to setting up and configuring the vault, I will show you how to code against key vault libraries and various patterns for security in a cloud-based multi-tenant environment. I will cover the following topics: • Setting up Azure Key Vault • Authorizing your application to access the vault with Azure Active Directory • Accessing the vault from your applications • Using the vault to wrap local encryption keys for performance • Encrypting connection strings as Key Vault secrets to get flexible database routing in the cloud Here, I provide a lot of details on what the talk is about. The talk is delivered more like a tutorial in which I show the audience how to set up the Key Vault, how to write software using its software development kits, and some different usage patterns. By the time the reader has finished this section of the synopsis, they will know exactly what to expect. This talk has always rated extremely well with conference attendees, and I believe that’s because of two main factors. First, I go into a lot of detail in this talk, and it is very practical and demo led. Second, the synopsis is quite clear about what to expect, so it is rare to get an attendee who shows up feeling that they already know the content, or it is too advanced. I spent a lot of time trying to pitch the synopsis at the right level. The closing summary for this talk is just one sentence. You will leave this talk with everything you need to start using Azure Key Vault today. Here, I reaffirm that by attending this talk, you will be able to start using Azure Key Vault. The talk is a practical tutorial, so the audience could take what I have said and the sample code I give them in the talk and start using the principles straight away. Let’s now look at the final synopsis.

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 Talk 4: Hacking Humans: Social Engineering Techniques and How to Protect Against Them This talk synopsis is the shortest of them all, but it is also one of my most popular talks. We have already discussed the title for this talk, in that the main title of “Hacking Humans” conjures up all sorts of vivid images. To prove that this isn’t a talk about axe murders, I use the subtitle to give extra context. This talk is about social engineering techniques and how to protect against them. The subtitle implies that we may be learning about something a little taboo, with the promise of techniques on how to protect ourselves. Let’s first look at the entire synopsis. Social engineering is one of the biggest threats to our organizations, as attackers use manipulation techniques to coerce people into revealing secrets about companies that give attackers access to critical systems. In this talk, we will look at some of the techniques used in social engineering and how to guard yourself against them. We will cover subjects such as pretexting, elicitation, and body language as manipulation techniques. First, let’s look at the main hook. Social engineering is one of the biggest threats to our organizations, as attackers use manipulation techniques to coerce people into revealing secrets about companies that give attackers access to critical systems. In the main hook, I tell the reader that social engineering is one of the biggest threats to organizations and that attackers use manipulation techniques to coerce people into revealing secrets. This hook introduces a bit of conflict because social engineering and manipulation are big problems for companies, so I try to pique their interest. In this talk, we will look at some of the techniques used in social engineering and how to guard yourself against them. We will cover subjects such as pretexting, elicitation, and body language as manipulation techniques. When I go into more detail, I state that we will look at some techniques used; that is, I will show them how to do the techniques and then how to protect themselves against them. I then mention the techniques—pretexting, elicitation, and body language as manipulation techniques. This naturally gets people interested, as I talk about techniques that would result in committing a crime if used against someone without their permission. However, the idea is that by knowing these techniques, you can protect yourself and your organizations from them.

Powerful Presentations When I have spoken to attendees of this talk, most say they like the idea that they are going to learn something that is potentially illegal, but for the purposes of good. We are naturally curious creatures, so this is quite alluring. If I am honest, even though this is one of my most popular talks, out of all my talk descriptions, this is the weakest, as I could go into more detail than I have. I have refrained from doing so as the synopsis clearly works, and many events have selected the talk and it consistently earns exceedingly high ratings from attendees. So I took the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” stance.

Summary I have spent quite a long time going over writing a talk synopsis, as it is just as important, if not more important than the talk itself. The talk must be good. If you haven’t thought out the synopsis, a conference might not select the talk. The synopsis serves multiple purposes. If you are presenting to peers at your workplace, the synopsis will inform so they can set their expectations. If you are public speaking at a conference, for example, then the synopsis is a tool that helps you beat the competition to have your talk selected. Conference speaking can be competitive, so writing this vital document is very important. If they select you to speak at a conference, then your synopsis serves a second purpose, and that is encouraging attendees to come and see your talk. It is a sales letter to the audience member. Be careful to pitch the synopsis with accurate information so that the right people attend. Don’t bluff. If people attend with the wrong expectations, then they could down-rate your talk, which can affect your ability to be reselected at that conference.

Workshop Questions 1. Start thinking about your presentation’s synopsis. It is a good idea to write the synopsis before designing the final presentation. Include each of the following items: • Catchy talk title and subtitle: Pick a title that draws the potential audience members in. Try not to make it sound like a clickbait link, but you can try a clever title provided it is not misleading. For my Hacking Humans talk, as described earlier, it is a striking title, yet the subtitle gives context, Social Engineering Techniques and How to Protect Against Them.

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Chapter 3 | Writing a Synopsis to Draw in Your Audience • Initial hook: The initial hook draws the reader in after the title. It is quite common for a conference schedule to only show the title and initial hook, and the viewer needs to click through to read more, so the impact of this initial hook could decide whether someone comes to see your talk or not. • More details: In this section, you can go into more detail about the problem you are addressing and how you will solve it. This section is there to convey more detailed information to help someone make their decision to see your talk. Don’t write too much, though; it should still be brief. • Closing statement: The closing statement is an opportunity to summarize why someone should attend your talk. 2. Once you have written your synopsis, you should show it to different people to get feedback. A useful trick is to write two or three different synopsis documents in different styles. Then get people to pick their favorite and tell you why they picked it over the others. The synopsis is as important as the actual presentation itself, as it is how you will sell the idea of your presentation to attendees and events.

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4 Preparing to  Give a Talk You don’t want to leave preparing your slides until the last minute. Not only is this unprofessional, but it sets you up for failure, as you will not have any opportunity to practice the talk to learn which elements work well and what your timings are like. If you plan and design your talk and slides as early as possible, then you have plenty of time to rehearse the talk and make necessary changes.

Getting Started When your slides are ready, you should first run through the talk by sitting at your computer. This isn’t a full rehearsal as such, but it allows you to walk through each slide to make sure that the content is correct and that you are happy with the message you are conveying. When you are happy with the content, it’s time to start practicing. I recommend putting your presentation software—such as PowerPoint or Keynote—into its presenter mode, stand up, and start working through your talk. I also recommend setting a timer, as you need to find out how long your talk will take. If, for example, you are taking a full 60-minute talk slot at a conference, then you’ll want to talk for 50 minutes and leave 10 minutes for questions at

© Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3_4

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk the end. By timing the talk now, you can see if you are in danger of running over or being way under your allocated time. Being under is better than running over, but you should try to maximize your full amount of time. If you are speaking at a conference, the talks must adhere to a strictly run schedule so that attendees can get their next room, and the next speaker has an opportunity to set up. If you are new to speaking, you will most likely find your first run-through to be incredibly painful, and you will mess up your lines, forget what comes next, and do an all-round bad attempt at the talk. Don’t worry, this is normal. Even after all the years I’ve been speaking in public, my first few run-throughs of the talk are generally terrible, which is why you practice. Imagine creating your slides at the last moment before a talk, and the first time you get to run through the talk is in front of your audience. By planning ahead, you can get those dodgy attempts out of your system in private, and nobody needs to know about them. After you have run through the talk two or three times, you will start getting the hang of the material and feeling a little more confident about how to deliver the talk. If you need a few more rehearsals like this, that’s fine. Practice as much as you need. I don’t recommend trying to do more than two run-throughs in one sitting, as you can start suffering from mental fatigue. Perform your initial practice runs over the space of a week. Take all the time you need. At this point, you should start feeling more confident. I next recommend recording your talk. You can balance your phone on a bookcase and simply record yourself with the phone’s internal camera and mic. The quality doesn’t need to be great; you just need to be able to hear your voice. If you have any screen-recording software, such as Camtasia or ScreenFlow, then you could record the slides from your computer and your voice through a microphone— this is what I do. The aim of recording yourself this way is so that you can watch/listen to it and critically assess your talk. No one else needs to see this video; you can delete it when you are finished. Creating a video like this is a great tool because it allows you to see how the presentation sounds from your audience’s perspective. I don’t recommend recording the video and then watching it back right away. Give it a few days, and then rewatch it with fresh eyes. When you have rewatched your video, you may want to rehearse some more and then film the talk again. The number of times you do this depends on your confidence level. You can practice like this as many times are you find necessary. Each time you practice, you will get better at remembering your material and delivering it confidently.

Powerful Presentations When you are confident in your delivery of the talk, the final stage is to practice in front of other people. This could be family members, friends, or colleagues at the office. You could even arrange a lunch-and-learn event at work and invite your peers to the talk. This will be a full dry run of the talk in front of a real audience. As terrifying as it sounds, it’s a good idea to practice like this in front of a group of people before you go in front of a potentially much larger audience at a conference—especially if speaking at conferences or to meetup groups is your goal.

Physical Delivery: Gestures and Facial Expressions At a conference, you will usually have access to a small table or lectern where your laptop will sit, and you will have a bottle of water—always take a bottle with you in case the event doesn’t provide one. Try to recreate this setup when you practice at home. What you want to avoid is using the lectern like a shield that you hide behind. This is common for new speakers. Try stepping away from the laptop and walking around the stage area or the room in which you are practicing. This will be easier to do if you are using a Bluetooth slide clicker so that you can progress to the next slide without touching your laptop. Many conferences set up a screen on the stage that displays what you see on your laptop. Having a screen like this is great, as it means that while you are walking around the stage, you can still see your presenter view notes and, more crucially, see what the next slide is going to be. One thing to be aware of, though, is that many conferences film their talks. If someone is operating the camera during your talk, they will follow you around as you walk and talk. Some conferences use a fixed camera pointing at the lectern, so you won’t be able to walk around as much. You should try to find out the filming situation before the start of the conference or talk to the audio/visual engineer prior to your talk, and they will tell you if there is room to walk around. Another important consideration when practicing your talk is what to do with your arms, hands, and face. If you stand on the stage bolt upright, with your arms by your side and a neutral look on your face while speaking, the audience will soon get bored with your talk and disengage from the content. Make sure to use your arms and hands to add emphasis to what you’re saying. You don’t want to go over the top and start waving your arms around like an octopus, but subtle movements in sync with your vocal delivery can add a real impact. When trying to learn how much movement is appropriate, I recommend reviewing presentation videos on YouTube and observing what other speakers do. Try to watch both good talks and not-so-good talks with the aim of learning from them. You can identify an ineffective talk by the number of

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk downvotes they have compared to upvotes. I like watching TED talks, as they are usually splendid examples of talk delivery, and you can learn as much from how the talk is delivered as what the speaker says. Your facial expressions are also a key factor, especially as people will be looking at your face—even more so if the talk is filmed and you are being displayed on a large screen. Remember to smile at the start of your talk. Delivering a talk at an event is an honor, and you should come across as excited and enthusiastic that you have the privilege of speaking to people who have chosen to spend their time listening to you. If you stand there and look terrified, the audience will probably feel a little sorry for you; more importantly, they may lose confidence in the talk, more so if they have paid a lot of money to be at the event. If you are at a free user group meeting, then the audience tends to be much more forgiving. If your talk’s message is uplifting and happy, smile and look happy. Your facial expression should mirror the intensity of the message you are delivering. If you are giving a serious or sad message, then look neutral or sad. You wouldn’t talk about someone diagnosed with a serious life-threatening illness with a smile on your face—well, I hope you wouldn’t—so try to practice facial expressions that suit the subject matter. Don’t overdo it, though. You are aiming for subtle nuance, not proving you can replicate Jim Carrey’s elastic facial expressions. ■■ Tip  When you are talking to people, try to be aware of what you do with your hands. Do you naturally raise your hands and make gestures when trying to explain concepts to people? Do you use your hand in a gesture, or do you point with your fingers? Observing how we naturally talk to people can teach you a lot about what gestures to practice for your presentation.

Creating Preperformance Rituals As you get closer to your big day and have been rehearsing your talk as much as you can, you will want to start thinking about preperformance rituals that you want to put in place for the big day. If this is your first talk, you will be nervous on presentation day. Even after many years of public speaking, I still get nervous before a talk. Your preperformance rituals are anything you want to do on the day, or leading up to the day, which will help you relax, be comfortable, and put on superior performance. Here is an example of my ritual as an example. You don’t have to use this, but it works for me, so it may be a good guide to help you develop your own rituals.

Powerful Presentations The night before a big talk, I try not to drink alcohol—or too much at least. This is easier said than done if I am at a conference and hanging out with all my speaker friends, but the last thing you want is a hangover. If I am speaking early in the morning, then I won’t drink at all. If I am speaking in the afternoon, then I might have a couple of drinks the night before with dinner, but that is it. Speaking is stressful enough as it is, let alone having to deal with a headache and dehydration. In addition to taking it easy the night before, you should try to get a good night’s sleep. Go to bed early, and don’t rehearse your talk or change any slides right before you go to bed. Otherwise, your mind will be full of thoughts about the talk, and this will stop you from falling asleep. If you are a coffee or black tea drinker, avoid caffeine a few hours before bedtime, unless you have a supply of decaffeinated drinks with you. I always travel with sachets of decaffeinated coffee. On the day of a talk, I try to plan when I am going to eat based on when the talk is. This may not apply to everyone, but I don’t like to eat within a few hours of my talk. If you have just eaten and your body is trying to digest food, you may begin to feel lethargic, which makes it hard to concentrate when speaking on stage. If I am speaking early in the morning, I normally skip breakfast. (If you are diabetic or have any diet-related medical issues, then please ignore this, and do what your doctor recommends.) Personally, I have never been a big breakfast person, so out of all the meals to skip, this is the easiest for me. If I am speaking in late morning or early afternoon, then I will have a late breakfast or light brunch, depending on when the talk is. If I am speaking later in the afternoon, then I have a larger breakfast and an early but light lunch. Whether you eat before a talk is a personal preference; for me, it makes me tired, so I try to avoid it by planning when I eat. Another essential ritual of the day is to keep hydrated. Public speaking can make you feel very thirsty, so sip a lot of water. However, try not to drink a huge amount in the hour leading up to your talk; otherwise, you will need to use the bathroom frequently, and the last thing you want is to be needing the toilet when you are on stage. At a large conference, it’s quite common to have large queues for the bathrooms. In the hour before my talk, I relax and get a bathroom break while the attendees are listening to other talks. If you wait to go to the bathroom until just before you talk, you may have to deal with a large queue that adds to your stress. While hydrating is important, try to avoid fizzy drinks before you speak. I made this mistake once when I drank a cold can of Diet Pepsi before I went on stage. I was standing there waiting to start my talk, with the microphone switched on, and the fizzy drink kept repeating on me. The talk was very hard

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk for me to deliver without burping. How I managed to get through that talk without embarrassing myself was a miracle, and it was a lesson I learned the hard way. When you are packing to go to an event or conference, I recommend putting some throat lozenges in your bag. At a large conference, you’ll be talking to many other speakers and attendees, which means you’ll be speaking much more than you usually do, and this can take its toll on your throat. Lozenges can be a very welcome remedy to a sore or strained throat before you go on stage. Before you leave for an event, make sure to check and double-check your packed equipment, including your laptop. If you are travelling to the event, make sure you have the power cable and power plug converters for foreign countries; check that you have multiple HDMI adapters if your laptop doesn’t have HDMI built in by default. Not all conference projection systems are modern; sometimes, you’ll have a lot of glitches with one adapter, while a different brand works fine. I never found out why this is the case, but it’s always a good idea to have more than one, as this reduces your stress when setting up for your talk. You should also include an older VGA adapter with you; not all venues have upgraded to HDMI, so you will need to use VGA. I have spoken at many universities, and some projector systems are very old— don’t get caught out. When you are waiting for your time slot, try to relax and sit down. Most conferences provide a green room for speakers. Find out where it is ahead of your talk and spend some time there resting beforehand. I don’t recommend doing a last-minute rehearsal in the hour before a talk, as that is a good way to get yourself in a panic. This is also not the time to make last-minute changes to your presentation—it should be written and well-rehearsed at this point. If my hotel is near the venue and is only a short walk, then I prefer to rest alone in my hotel room before my talk. I am an introvert, so this works well for me. If you enjoy being around people, you might prefer to be at the conference venue talking to people. Do whatever works for you but try to be as rested as you can. As a precaution, set an alarm on your phone for at least 30 minutes before you need to be in the room. Typically, there’s a 15-minute window from when the previous speaker has left, and you can set up before attendees start filtering into the room. Use the time wisely to work out any projector or sound issues. I’ve offered quite a few ideas for a preperformance ritual. I included this section in the chapter on preparation because it’s a good idea to think about this ritual ahead of time, not on the day of your talk. Your ritual may be quite different, but I hope by sharing my preparations, it inspires you to think about your own.

Powerful Presentations

Be Aware of the Time You Have for Presenting Timing is also critical when giving a presentation, especially if you have a fixed length for the talk. At conferences, speakers are usually assigned a specific amount of time for their presentations. This time slot must be strictly adhered to because the organizers need to make sure that each invited speaker gets enough time without impeding on anyone else’s allocated time. The conference also advertises a specific time schedule that attendees use to plan their day, so if you go over time, it can create a bad experience for the attendees, who have, potentially, paid a lot of money to be there. By ensuring that all the information in your slides is discussed within the time you are given, you are showing the people in the audience that you are a professional and that you have adequately prepared for the event. Running out of time when giving a public talk is a sign of being ill-prepared. When you practice your presentation, time yourself to make sure you do not go over the time limit. On the day of the presentation, you should expect everything that could go wrong to go wrong. You should expect delays that may shorten your presentation time. To prepare for this, try to adjust your presentation according to the changes in the time you have. If the presentation time is shorter than expected, look for areas in your presentation that you can discuss faster or that you can skip to give way to the more essential parts of the presentation. Knowing what content can be cut should the need arise is an important preparation step. Hopefully, you will never need to cut content at the last minute, but it is a good idea to have the cuts in the back of your mind—just in case. ■■ Tip  If your phone has a reminders application on it, such as “Reminders” on the iPhone, it is a good idea to set alerts to go off before your talk. I set a reminder for 30 minutes before the talk starts, as well as a reminder to make sure I have my cables and dongle bag for earlier in the day. These can be a great help when you are busy at an event and nervous, as you are more likely to forget something.

Know Your Timings When you design your talk and build the slides, you will notice that your talk breaks down into a natural structure. We have already talked about the threeact structure, but you will see that each section also breaks down into different topics. You may even have used a title to introduce these topics. With that structure in mind, write down each of those sections as titles; as you rehearse

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk them, make a note of how long each section takes. If you are given a 60-minute slot to speak in, aim to talk for 50 minutes, and leave 10 minutes at the end for questions. Once you know the rough timing for each section of your presentation, you can keep an eye on your rehearsals to make sure you stick to your timings. I do this in the presenter notes for each slide. I write a note indicating what time that section should have started. For example, if section three consists of ten slides and I expect to complete that section within 15 minutes, I mark each of those ten slides with a comment that says “Time = 15 minutes.” These marks are visual reminders of where I need to be. With applications like PowerPoint, the presenter view has a time at the top when you go into presentation mode. As soon as I start my talk, I hit the reset button to set the timer to zero. This is the timer I use to keep an eye on my timings. It is a simple little trick, but it really helps. Especially when you are nervous, you can easily start talking too quickly and get ahead of yourself on your timings. By having a constant visual reminder like this, you can ensure that you remain on track. Another technique I have seen used by speakers is an interval-time application on their phone. Interval timers are commonly used by people who do HighIntensity Interval Training (HIIT). The interval timings tell them when to start a new exercise or take a break. You can use these applications to enter the timing details for each section of your presentation. It’s a great idea, and I have seen it used many times. The only downside is that if you mess up your timings because someone asks a question or go on a tangent, the interval timer will be out of sync, which can through off your flow.

Get Your Practice Audience to Ask Questions The questions section at the end of the presentation is one of the most challenging parts to prepare for, mainly because you do not know what to expect from the audience. Even in professional talks, you will find that the nature of the questions can vary greatly. Only a small proportion of the audience will ask questions. However, not all of them will focus their questions on the content that you discussed. Some will be more interested in your career, or a side comment you gave. Others will ask for advice on their careers or their projects. Because of the wide range of possible questions that your audience will ask, there is no way to thoroughly prepare for the question-and-answer part of your presentation. What you can do is practice answering anticipated questions.

Powerful Presentations To do this, you will need to ask for help from those who are watching your presentation run-throughs. Before you show your presentation to them, give them a piece of paper, and ask them if they could write down questions that pop into their minds during your talk. After the practice presentation, collect the questions from them and prepare answers to as many as possible. Simply by reading their questions, you’ll be able to prepare for the question-and-answer portion of the talk. This technique will allow you to anticipate most questions that the audience may have after your presentation, and other questions can be answered with similar responses. I suggest adding the commonly asked questions in practice sessions into your presentation’s content so that your audience will no longer need to ask them. For example, if you are doing a presentation on software development and a particular programming library, you may get a few questions from attendees about how to set up the library. Even though your talk is mostly about how to use the library, add a small section with details about the setup process. The question-and-answer section of a talk can be quite nerve-racking, as people naturally fear uncertainties and not being able to provide an answer. However, if you prepare answers to many common questions, you will feel more relaxed and prepared. We will cover the question section of the talk in more detail later in this book when we discuss the actual talk delivery.

Memorize the Introduction to Each Section of Your Presentation After preparing your presentation, you should practice each part to the point of memorizing the entire presentation. Ideally, you should have this level of mastery for all your presentations. However, you will seldom have enough time to memorize your presentation word for word—I certainly don’t! An alternative is to memorize only the beginnings of the different sections of your presentation. A lengthy talk, for example, could be divided into five parts. When practicing, try to memorize the introduction for each of the five sections you will present. The introductions are important because they signal your brain to start recalling the sequence of information you practiced. Simply by delivering each introduction, you will signal your brain to continue with subsequent topics.

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Gathering Feedback and Improving Your Performance My last point about preparing to give a talk is to make sure you get as much feedback as you can. Ideally, you will practice the talk in front of family, friends, and colleagues. Before you deliver this practice talk, ask everyone to write down their honest feedback to give to you. This can be hard with family and friends, as their natural inclination might be to tell you that the talk was brilliant so that they don’t hurt your feelings. Make sure to stress that honest feedback is essential to performing well when you deliver to a larger audience. You want people to give feedback on your delivery: Could they hear you? Did the presentation make sense? What did they think of the pace? If you’re giving the practice speech to colleagues who are subject matter experts in your field, ask them to give an honest appraisal of the subject matter. Was your information accurate? Was it pitched at the right level, that is, beginner, intermediate, or advanced level? If people only give you brilliant feedback, then be wary—this type of feedback isn’t helpful. If you do get some negative feedback, don’t let it hurt your feelings. You want negative feedback at this stage as it gives you something to improve before the final talk. Getting feedback can be difficult, but it is essential, provided it is constructive. If someone says the talk was rubbish, that doesn’t help you. If they say it was rubbish because they couldn’t hear you, or because you explain one aspect in a way that was confusing, this is useful feedback, as you can fix the problem.

Internet/Wi-Fi Contingency Planning Throughout our lives, we’re taught there are two constants in life: death and taxes. If you are a public speaker, there is a third constant: bad conference Wi-Fi. Reading that may make you smile, but I’m not joking. I have attended a substantial number of events all over the world, from small venues to huge conference centers, and I always face issues with the Wi-Fi or cellular signal at each event. It could be that the speeds are not very good, or the Wi-Fi could drop intermittently. If you are not prepared for bad Wi-Fi or internet connectivity, then you can really increase your anxiety at the event. Not only will you be nervous about speaking, but you also must contend with potential demo failure if your talk relies on an internet connection. When you are designing your talk, you need to have an internet contingency plan in place, even if your talk has no demos that rely on the internet directly. The internet is so pervasive that sometimes we forget to think of doing any kind of work without it, as it’s always there. Conferences can easily shatter

Powerful Presentations that illusion when you have thousands of attendees all trying to connect to the same substandard Wi-Fi access points. I fell into this trap earlier in my speaking career, but now I make sure I’m prepared. ■■ Tip  Always make sure to practice your talk at least once with your internet router unplugged or your laptop Wi-Fi disabled to make sure your presentation, demos, and contingency plans will still work.

Make All Slide Resources Local You may be running your slides from PowerPoint on a laptop, but are all your resources also local on your machine? For example, do you show a video that might be streamed from YouTube or Vimeo? It’s quite easy to embed a player for a hosted video, and when you are rehearsing, the video plays fine. However, when the internet connection is struggling, or nonexistent, then you’ll be stuck with no video. The easiest solution is to first download any videos or other assets on your computer and then embed the link from the local files. Then, when you are rehearsing in the weeks before the talk, try practicing with your Wi-Fi disabled. It is an easy fix and one that you should embed into your talk preparation.

Guarding Against Demo Failure If you are performing any demos, as opposed to just showing slide content, it is also a good idea to have a contingency plan in place. This is especially true for people doing software development-based talks. The demo might be pulling code from an online source code repository or accessing services on a cloud platform. Most software these days makes use of an online service, so doing a demo with bad Wi-Fi at a conference is a problem. I’m not saying you should never attempt a demo that requires an internet connection. You may be fine, especially if the organizers can provide a wired LAN connection at the lectern, but there are some useful backup measures you can take. If the worst does happen, the first backup measure you can use is to have a second set of slides for the talk, with all the key points of the demo expressed as screenshots. If the demo fails and you can’t fix it, don’t fret over it. Just load up the second slide deck and carry on. The audience won’t mind; it is the overall talk they are interested in; they will be sympathetic, so try not to worry.

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk If you don’t want to use screenshots, you could record the demo as a video using software such as Camtasia or ScreenFlow and embed those videos in your second slide deck. Then, if you switch to those slides, you can set the video to play when the slide comes into view, and you talk over it. I have seen many speakers use this technique, and it is highly effective. One of my talks, which we looked at the synopsis for earlier in the book, is about a cloud computing service called Azure Key Vault, which is part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. In that talk, I do many software development demos, and each of those demos connects to a key vault in the cloud, so an internet connection is required. The measure I took to mitigate bad internet connections was to create what is called a programming interface, where I make a dummy copy of the library that talks to the Key Vault service. This dummy library has all the same operations as the real library. If there is an internet connection issue, I can easily modify the code while on stage to use that dummy library instead of the real Key Vault. That dummy library would return a load of fake data to make it look like the demo had run successfully. If I switch to this dummy library, I tell the audience—I even make a joke about it. This allows me to get to the end of my talk, leaving the audience satisfied. I have done this talk around 20 times at conferences, and I have had to use this backup measure five times. The first time was in Poland, where the venue had no working Wi-Fi at all. Having this measure in place really helped reduce my anxiety levels, knowing that I had alternative options to allow me to get to the end of the talk. It is worth spending that extra effort to prepare before the event. The audience will respect you and be impressed by your preparation and professionalism.

Keep Multiple Copies of Your Files If all your presentation files are on your laptop, I recommend that you also keep a copy on a USB drive, or maybe two drives: one that you keep with you and one in your hotel room if you are staying away overnight. I failed to do this once, and I got burned by it after I had accidentally deleted some slide decks from my laptop sometime before an event. I was speaking at an event in Copenhagen. It was a conference with a two-day workshop and a single-day conference. At the single-day conference, I was scheduled to speak just after lunch, and I was prepared and ready. In the morning, I was hanging out at the event, and one of the organizers told me that another speaker had pulled out at the last minute, as he was ill. The organizers, with whom I had worked with for many years, knew I had a talk on a similar topic and asked if I could step in at the last minute. I said yes and then asked what time the talk was. The organizer replied, “In ten minutes!”

Powerful Presentations I was quickly escorted to the stage, where I set up my laptop to load up the slides. However, they weren’t on my laptop in my “Talks” folder. I had somehow deleted them, and I’m not sure when or how. My recycle bin on the computer was empty. OK, I thought. I’ll load up Dropbox as I pay for their top tier and have unlimited history to recover the file. I couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi at all, and I had no phone reception. I quickly grabbed my laptop and went into the foyer to try again, but still no Wi-Fi or mobile reception. I was starting to panic at this point, as people were arriving in the room for the talk. All I had on my laptop was an old version of the slides, which were more in note form. They didn’t look great, but they had the basic structure of the talk. I scanned through very quickly to remove any glaring problems, and that was what I had to go with. Thankfully, this was a talk I was familiar with and had delivered many times. It was my Hacking Humans talk that I described earlier in the chapter on writing synopses. Even though the slides looked terrible, the talk went very well. At the beginning, I explained why I was there, as they were originally expecting the other speaker who was ill. I gave the audience an opportunity to go to a different talk if they wished, as this was not the scheduled talk. I would not have been upset if anyone had decided to go to another talk. I also explained and made a joke about my slide situation and then got on with it. Even though I had messed up by not having a copy of the slides on my laptop, I managed to get through the talk—to this day, I don’t know how or when I managed to delete the slide deck. Now, I always make sure I have copies of my slides on a separate USB thumb drive as a backup. I learned this the hard way. Along with having a backup of your slides, I also recommend having a backup of all files needed on that USB thumb drive. If for any reason your laptop dies, which can happen with the rigors of travel, you may need to use a backup machine from the conference company or someone else’s laptop. If you use any custom fonts not defaulted in your chosen operating system, put those on the USB drive too. Make sure you include any videos that need to be played, or any source code files needed for demos. Assume everything will go wrong, and you need your backup plan, and then be pleasantly surprised when everything goes well. Your anxiety levels on the day will thank you for being prepared.

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Summary In this chapter, we looked at how to make your final preparations to deliver your talk. By this point, you will have designed a brilliant synopsis, researched your talk content, and designed a killer set of slides. In this chapter, we covered your talk preparation, as giving a talk is like giving a performance. While this isn’t a Shakespearian performance, you will come across to the audience as a confident authority in your subject if you practice and prepare for any eventuality. One of the biggest preparations you can make is to practice delivering the talk, not only by yourself but in front of a test audience, if you can. If you practice the talk in front of a test audience, ask them to think of as many questions as you can. Collate these questions and work out the answers. The chances are if your test audience had those questions, then a real audience will too. If there are common themes in the questions, then consider adding some additional content to your talk to cover that subject.

Workshop Questions 1. When you have a working draft of your presentation and you have practiced a few times yourself, form a small group of trusted people that you can do the presentation too. This could be family, friends, or colleagues. Try as best as you can to pick a group who represents your target demographic. 2. When you have rehearsed several times and are feeling more confident with your presentation, record one of your rehearsals so you can watch it back and analyze your delivery. You could either • Have the slides display on your monitor and stand next to the screen. Using your mobile phone, place it on a chair or stand and record yourself while doing your presentation. Turn the brightness down on your computer screen so that you can see the slides. The recording quality doesn’t matter if you can see yourself and the screen and hear your voice. • Or using a screen-recording application such as Camtasia, /ScreenFlow or QuickTime, record your slides on the screen and a webcam feed of you presenting.

Powerful Presentations • When you have a recording of your talk and don’t worry too much about recording quality, watch the video back and look at how you did with your delivery. Things to look out for: Do you regularly get stuck? Do you know the introduction to each section by memory? Are there any areas in your delivery where more in-depth presenter notes will help you? Are your slides clear and easy to read? 3. Have your practice audience ask as many questions as possible about the subject you are presenting on. Ask them not to hold back. If there is anything they are not sure about, or they have requests for additional information, get them to ask. • Write each question down. • After the practice session, start grouping the questions into common themes. • Analyze each theme. Either prepare an answer for these themes, or if a lot of people asked similar questions, think about adding additional content into the presentation to cover the answers. 4. Spend time observing people’s face and hand gestures when they speak. When you are talking with friends, family, or colleagues, how do they use their hands to emphasize what they are saying? Can you learn from this? • Look up talks on YouTube (TED Talks are excellent) and study the speakers. How do they speak, stand, and use gestures to convey information? Practice mimicking them. 5. Time your presentation when rehearsing. Does it fit into your allocated time slot? If you are presenting at a commercial conference, then the time slot will be strictly enforced. Do you have enough time to present and leave time for questions and answers at the end? • Work out rough timings for each section. In the speaker notes in your presentation software, make a note of when in your time slot that should start. This will help you when on stage to see if you are running ahead or behind.

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Chapter 4 | Preparing to Give a Talk 6. Memorize the introduction to your talk, the first five minutes or so. This will allow you to get into a flow that puts you at ease. As part of your introduction, see if you can introduce a little joke to make the audience smile, if this is appropriate. Making the audience smile or laugh early on can help ease tension and relax the audience. 7. Look through your presentation slides and demos to determine any part of it that relies on an internet connection. Things to consider: • Videos that play online: You ideally need to download the videos to play from your laptop. • Software demonstrations that need to contact an online service: If this is a software development demo, then look at creating stubs for any online calls. 8. If there are parts of your presentation that will not work without an internet connection, then create a duplicate slide deck and take screenshots of any aspects that need the internet. If you have an internet failure on stage, you can switch to this backup slide deck.

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5 Delivering the Talk On the day of the talk, you will feel tension and anxiety about the prospect of your upcoming talk. However, try not to let this feeling affect your performance—managing your anxiety and working through it is one of your challenges as a public speaker.

Be Prepared As I’ve mentioned several times in the book, preparation is the key to your success as a public speaker. You should make sure that everything you need is set the night before the presentation. In the last chapter, we talked about your preperformance rituals, and part of that was ensuring you have everything you need packed and ready to go, such as your laptop, chargers, and HDMI adapters. On the morning of your talk, you will have enough to think about, as opposed to worrying, if you have all your adapters, slide clickers, and cables ready.

© Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3_5

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Visualize Your Success Visualization is a great technique to use before your presentation. In this technique, you imagine yourself giving a successful talk and everything running smoothly. You imagine giving the talk from start to finish at the event venue with a full audience. When doing this exercise, imagine that the audience is completely engaged in your talk. Imagine the audience laughing when you deliver your jokes and your punchlines. Also, imagine their looks of amazement when they see your killer piece of information as a revelation. Finally, imagine concluding your presentation as the audience gives you a standing ovation. This activity helps motivate you to give an excellent performance. If you have any doubts about your public speaking skills, visualizing yourself as successful will significantly help decrease the amount of uncertainty and stress you feel. It may feel a little silly imagining the presentation like this, but positive visualization is a very popular technique used by many professionals, such as athletes and performers. Nobody needs to know you are doing it, but visualizing success puts you in a positive frame of mind to do your talk. If you do the opposite and visualize your talk going wrong, then you will be in a negative frame of mind, which will set you off on the wrong path when you go to do the talk.

 People Want to See You Succeed in Giving Your Talk Most new public speakers experience extreme cases of anxiety right before the presentation. The most common reason cited is the fear of facing the audience. People fear that they will make mistakes and that they will be humiliated in front of the crowd. If this happens to you often, always remind yourself that the audience is there to see you succeed. They want you to give a successful talk because they want to learn from you. If you do everything you have practiced, you will do well in your presentation. You should remember that the audience has chosen to attend your talk. They didn’t come to see you fail. They are there because they are genuinely interested in the topic, and they want to learn from you. They are there to see you succeed. I have been to many talks where there have been technical problems—a demo fails, the internet breaks, or the speaker forgets a line and stumbles. I have never seen anyone put down the speaker because of a mistake. As someone who is prepared to put themselves out in front of an audience, there is a natural respectful relationship between the audience and the speaker.

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 the Case of Technical Difficulties, In Apologize and Move On If you plan to give more talks in the future, you will realize that some things that go wrong are out of your control. Regardless of how well you prepare, you will eventually experience disasters in your presentations. Most of them will be technical difficulties that occur when the tools we rely on don’t behave as expected. The worst thing that could happen is when these tools malfunction right before or during the presentation. If this happens to you, make sure that you act professionally in front of your audience—don’t shout, swear, or panic. Show grace under pressure. When things don’t go your way in front of the audience, you can show them how you behave during tense situations. This is an excellent chance for consultants to show their prospective clients that they are calm, even when faced with significant stress. You can also use humor to defuse an awkward situation. I remember one talk I was giving to about 300 software developers. The projector started flickering and then cut out. I tried the usual remedy of unplugging the cable and putting it back in, but that did nothing. As I was doing this, I saw the audiovisual engineer coming to the stage. I knew there was going to be a short delay, so I made a joke of it. I asked if there was anyone from IT in the room—yes, in a room filled with IT professionals. We all laughed together. I then pointed out that I forgot to make a sacrifice to the demo gods, in which I nominated the first row of the audience. This raised more laughter. By that time, the audiovisual engineer had restarted the HDMI junction box underneath the podium. With the projector working again, I just picked up and carried on. Even though I had a technical malfunction, no one cared. Everyone got the information they came for, and the talk rated well with the attendees. If you are delivering a talk that relies on software demonstrations, you can get demo failures. I joked about making a sacrifice to the demo gods, but the superstitious part of me thinks there is something in that. I always find that the hardest talks to deliver are those that rely heavily on demos, especially software development demos. You can practice these demos many times without encountering any issues; however, when you get on stage, something always seems to go wrong. We have already mentioned an internet contingency plan, but it is also worth having a demo contingency plan, even if it doesn’t rely on the internet. As mentioned previously, in this case, I have a series of slides at the back of my side deck with screenshots of the expected outcome from the demo. If you do experience a demo failure, don’t try to hide it or bluff your way through it. Just apologize and then go to the contingency slides at the back of your slide deck and show the results. Attendees know demos can go wrong.

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Chapter 5 | Delivering the Talk The stage is a high-pressure environment, and you can easily make a mistake. Instead of spending a long time trying to figure out what has gone wrong, just show the results. The audience will be fine with it. They are there to learn. Demo failures, while annoying, are not fatal. Simply prepare for every demo to fail, and have those screenshot slides ready at the back of your deck. It’s better to get to the end of the talk, showing some results—even if they are not planned—than it is to give up because something doesn’t go as expected. If anything, the audience will respect you for remaining calm and getting to the end of the talk. If the demo fails, what the audience won’t be fine with is you flailing about while they don’t get any resolution or results. Be prepared, you’ll thank me later.

 You Can, Rehearse in the Event If Venue at Least Once Rehearsing one last time at the event venue will help to improve your performance. If possible, go to the event venue the day before your presentation, and ask the people there if you can do a short rehearsal on the stage or at the podium. This isn’t always possible, especially at large conferences, but there’s no harm in asking if you can practice in the actual presentation room. The visit will allow you to learn about the venue and the facilities that you can make use of when you are presenting. For instance, you can find out how big the stage is and what type of system the organizers will use to display your slides. Some will use a projector, while others will use large televisions. When rehearsing your lines at the venue, you should already think of how you will move on the stage. If you planned to move around when presenting, you would need to make sure that you have enough space to do so; not all stages are large enough for you to walk around. Another consideration is if the talk is being filmed. Is the camera fixed into position? If so, then it would be easy for you to walk out of frame. If the camera has an operator, then you will usually have more freedom to move about. You can usually find out from the conference organizers ahead of time how they manage cameras and filming. If you can’t do a full rehearsal at the venue ahead of time, don’t worry. It’s still a good idea to find the room you’re going to be speaking in ahead of time, even if it is only to look and know where you’re going.

Powerful Presentations

On Stage The big day has arrived. You are standing on the stage. You have set up your laptop. The projector is working correctly, and the audiovisual engineer has set you up with a microphone and transmitter pack. You are standing there— silently panicking—and the attendees are entering the room and taking their seats. This is it: the day for which you have prepared. You have researched your talk, built beautiful slides, and rehearsed the talk more times than you care to admit. You have run through your preperformance ritual, and you are here on stage, waiting to start. The doors to the room are closed; the lights dim. You start talking.

Project Your Voice to the Back of the Room During your presentation, you should aim to project your voice to the back of the room. By doing this, you ensure that your voice reaches all the attendees at your presentation. If the venue is quite large, you should consider asking what microphones the organizers will be using to ensure that the entire audience will hear you. At big conferences, the organizers will provide you with a microphone, either as a clip-on microphone or as a headset. At small events, however, a microphone may not be available. This means that you will need to raise your voice a bit to make sure that everyone hears you. Regardless of whether you are using a microphone or not, imagine that you are talking to the people in the back row and project your voice. Don’t worry about it being too loud through the microphone; the audio people looking after the room will deal with audio levels.

Make Eye Contact with the Audience You should also practice making eye contact with audience members. If you avoid eye contact, your audience may see this as a sign of anxiety or a lack of confidence. Eye contact is best done when you expect a reaction from the audience. For example, you can make eye contact with your audience when you are asking a rhetorical question. You could also do this when you state conclusions or essential points in your presentation. A good trick is to make eye contact with the people who are engaged with the presentation. Find the people who are listening to you and make eye contact with them during critical moments in your presentation. When you make eye contact, make sure that it lasts only a few seconds so that it doesn’t seem awkward to the other person. You will need to make eye contact with one person at a time.

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Accept That Some People Are Just Not Attentive Beginners in public speaking often feel bad when they see that some members of the audience are not listening and doing something else. When you can see that some attendees are not engaged in your presentation, don’t blame your performance. These situations are out of your control. Some people just don’t have the same level of interest in the content as you do, so having a few inattentive people in a large room is normal. Some may be busy and were forced to attend the event. Others may be tired or distracted. While you can try your best to engage the entire audience, you should expect that some people will be disengaged. The best you could do at this point is to focus your attention on the people paying attention. What you absolutely don’t want to do is call them out in front of everyone else. This will make them feel bad and make you look petty. There could be a genuine reason that someone isn’t paying attention, but the stage isn’t the place or time to judge them. Ignore it and move on by delivering a killer talk.

Reaffirm to Yourself the Importance of Your Message Throughout your preparations for the talk, always reaffirm to yourself why the topic you will be discussing is important. Think of what actual value the talk has for the people in the audience. You should repeat this reaffirmation right before you take the stage. By reminding yourself why this talk is important, you will be able to inject passion into your presentation. Your emotions will seem more genuine, and the audience will more likely relate to your stories. By reaffirming the importance of your presentation to yourself, you will also feel motivated to deliver a great talk. You will care about how you deliver the talk and how the people in the audience receive it—you won’t present your topic on autopilot. Reaffirming the importance of your topic will also help in creating content that is relevant to the target audience. It’s common for people to create unnecessary content for their talks, especially to pad the presentation to make it fill out a longer time slot. As a result, some parts of their talks are not as important from the point of view of their target audience. Some people also tend to talk about other topics when they are at the podium or on stage. They sometimes skip the script and main topics and say whatever enters their minds at the time. You will quickly lose the interest of your audience if you go off topic often when you speak. The attendees will quickly become distracted if they are not interested in the subject. By keeping focused on the importance of your talk, you will be able to present a talk that doesn’t deviate from the topic.

Powerful Presentations

 Create a Great First Impression in the First Few Minutes of the Talk Whenever you meet and talk to anyone new, they will perceive you as a stranger, which is when you have an opportunity to make a great first impression. The same is true with public speaking. Most of the audience will not know you, so you have a chance to make a good first impression. You will only have a single chance to make a good first impression, so you need to capitalize on this opportunity if you want to deliver a great presentation. To deliver a great first impression, you need to look and sound like a person of authority in your chosen subject. You also need to make sure you are dressed appropriately for the venue. If you are at a corporate event, then showing up on stage or in the boardroom in jeans and a T-shirt may not give the first impression that you hope for. On the other side, if you are speaking in a very informal meetup group, showing up on stage dressed as if you’re headed into a boardroom may not give the right impression either. The audience will also judge you on how you sound on stage as well as your perceived level of confidence. As you speak, you want to project your voice to the back of the room even if you are using a microphone. You need to talk slowly enough that people can understand you, but not so slowly that it sounds strange. Speaking too quickly will also come across as a lack of confidence and nervousness, which causes an audience to disengage if they can’t understand what you are saying. The audience will judge you based on what you say, so the first few words out of your mouth are crucial when it comes to building a great first impression. Beginning your presentation with a great introduction will create a positive image of you for the audience. The best way to do this is to let your personality come out. You should be yourself when you are presenting to your audience. While it may sound cliché, there is a reason being yourself is the best route to go when making a great first impression. When you are in front of a large audience, you will naturally feel nervous. While some people in the audience may understand that you are stressed, most of them will not care. They will simply judge you based on your behavior on stage. I have had some people suggest in the past that you should fake your personality when presenting so that you will appear confident even when you’re not; this only works if you are a good actor. For those of us without formal acting training, this strategy may backfire. People who try to pull this off without sufficient practice will end up looking like they are faking it. Their personalities will appear inconsistent, and the audience will see through this.

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Chapter 5 | Delivering the Talk Instead of faking your personality, try being more comfortable with who you are—speak to your audience just as you do when talking to friends or colleagues. Using humor can be a terrific way to engage an audience as it helps to disperse any skepticism or cynicism. Early in my speaking career, a mentor once suggested that I try to make the audience laugh or smile within the first 60 seconds of the talk. By making them laugh or smile, you automatically release any tension in the room; the audience relaxes and engages more with you. Using humor in talks helps to humanize the speaker. You are no longer a stranger on the stage blasting through monotonous slides. Humor shows you are human and that you have a playful side. Using humor also shows that you are confident and comfortable talking to the audience—even if you are terrified inside. If you smile and chuckle at your own jokes, you are also signaling to the audience that you are joking and that it is okay for them to laugh along with you. Even though it can be a good idea to inject a little humor into your talk, don’t feel that you must be a comedian. A comedian has one job: to make the audience roll around with laughter. You’re not trying to do this; your jokes serve a different purpose than those of a comedian. You’re trying to make everyone in the room feel comfortable. Not all jokes or humor will work in all situations. You need to think about your audience and what you feel is appropriate. If you are presenting at a corporate event, then rolling off jokes to get laughs may not be appropriate. Telling jokes that may be culturally insensitive is also a very bad idea, as is anything that could be perceived as racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or indeed anything with “ist” or “bic” at the end of it. I personally find using humor that is self-deprecating and directed at myself as opposed to the audience works best. You can say what you like about yourself—to a degree— and self-deprecation also shows a level of vulnerability. I like to use a lot of visual jokes on my slides if they are appropriate. Memes and animated GIFs can work wonders to lighten the mood with certain audiences. I do this a lot with software development audiences where that sort of humor is more appreciated. Take some time to think about humor and what you think will be appropriate for your audience. Try to get a small laugh or smile in the first minute of the talk and take it from there. Don’t feel you have to be a comedian—that is not your job—but a little humor can go a long way.

Managing Anxiety When talking to a large group of people, it is normal for you to feel a certain level of anxiety. A little anxiety before the presentation can be a good thing because it will motivate you to prepare and rehearse your talk to the best of

Powerful Presentations your ability. During the event, however, anxiety can lead to performance issues that can decrease the quality of your presentation. Your goal is to manage this anxiety so that it will not affect your performance.

Use Anxiety as a Motivator We all feel the same when we are about to face a big crowd of people—sick to the stomach. The difference between great performers and mediocre performers is the way they react. The best way to handle your nervousness is by channeling it toward your work. If you feel anxious before the presentation, think about things you can control like improving your presentation. When you feel nervous, ask yourself this question: “What can I do to improve my talk?” This question will lead to multiple answers, which can all lead to a better presentation. You should select the answer at the top of your priority list when preparing your presentation and then work on it until you’re satisfied. Anxiety usually attacks when the mind is idle. If you spend your time preparing for your presentation, your mind will be too busy for anxiety to take over.

Lessening Anxiety on the Day of the Talk If you didn’t think your anxiety could get any worse in the week leading up to a talk—especially for a new speaker—then your nerves on the day of the talk could be in tatters. Your anxiety will increase tenfold on the day of the talk, especially in the hours before the talk. In the hour prior to a talk, I like to go for a walk, especially if the weather is nice. If I can, I leave the venue for my walk, as I generally don’t want to be disturbed. By going for a walk, I can keep my body and mind active without fretting about the presentation. The more talks that you deliver and the more experienced you get, the better you become at managing and controlling your nerves. Even with all my experience, I still get nervous, and a walk before the talk usually helps. Make sure you don’t go too far from the venue and keep an eye on the time. Typically, you will have to be in your presentation room at least 15 minutes before the start of the advertised talk time to set up. Don’t walk so far from the venue that you will need to rush to get back on time, as this will just make you more stressed. When you’re setting up on stage, there will be some time while you’re waiting for your audience to come into the room and take their places. I find that it makes me even more nervous, waiting for people to come in while I am standing there, looking around, and knowing full well that people will be staring up at me. If you are doing your talk at a smaller and more intimate event where there are fewer than 30 people in the room, you could quite

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Chapter 5 | Delivering the Talk easily mix with the audience and talk to people, as you would in any other social situation. I like to do this whenever I can, and it serves as a good icebreaker to get to know your audience, but this does get harder to do as the audience gets larger. If you are speaking at a larger event where you could have over one hundred people, or possibly over five hundred to a thousand people, then interacting and mingling is harder to do. You will be in a large auditorium that is quite noisy as people are coming in and sitting down. I don’t like standing on stage, waiting to start the talk in rooms like this. The wait to get started can feel like an eternity, even if it is only ten minutes. Once the audio technician has set up my microphone and my laptop is set up correctly, I leave the title slide showing on the projector. Then I turn off my microphone pack and sit in the first row and wait there. By doing this, you are out of the gaze of the audience, and you can relax for a few minutes. You may even feel that a little bathroom break is a good idea, although try to get this done before you set up. If you do need to nip off the bathroom quickly, make sure you turn off your mic pack. I have unfortunately heard this trip up one speaker before, where their mic was not muted on the mixing desk. One last piece of advice that I want to give you is not to be tempted to go to the bar for a small drink to calm your nerves. I can’t stress this enough; never get up on stage after having a drink or two. If your mind is too relaxed, you could easily make a mistake or say something that you later regret. If you have more than a few drinks and end up on stage inebriated, then you will slur your words. Being drunk on stage is a great way to ruin your reputation and end your speaking career before it even gets started.

Use Square Breathing to Manage Anxiety There is an easy breathing technique you can perform before taking the stage to help calm your anxiety, improve your mental alertness, and help you concentrate. It’s called square breathing—also known as box breathing. It is a technique used by elite military groups, such as Navy SEALS, to stay alert and calm when in stressful combat situations. It is a very simple technique, and you can do it anywhere, not just before a talk. You could use it before a job interview or before acting on stage—literally anywhere. It’s just four simple steps: 1. Breath in for four seconds so that air fills your lungs. 2. Hold your breath for four seconds. 3. Slowly exhale your breath for eight seconds. 4. Without taking a break, go straight back to the first step and fill your lungs again.

Powerful Presentations Repeat this process three or four times in a row. I perform this breathing exercise all the time, and it is a wonderful way to calm down. If it works for elite military groups, then it will help you settle your nerves before heading onto stage.

Gain Small Victories to Create Self-Confidence As you gain experience talking to large groups, you will eventually develop your own method on how to prevent anxiety. Most experienced speakers learn to avoid doubtful thinking and other types of anxious thoughts that can affect their performance by reminding themselves of past successes. When you are just starting out, you may not have a lot of experience from which to draw confidence. However, you could create your own feelings of success to remind yourself that you can do this. Before talking at a big conference, for example, you can take on small user group talks that you can easily organize. Before I spoke at large conferences and events, I practiced speaking to small meetup groups. Some of the groups I spoke to would only have ten or so attendees, but that was fine because I was getting experience. I spoke at many meetup groups before tackling a large professional conference. When it came to getting up on a large stage and speaking to hundreds of people, I could look back at all the meetup group talks I had taken part in. I could remember all the success and use that to reassure myself that I could do this and be successful. It’s a simple technique, but it really does make a difference in the heat of the moment, as you will suffer from crippling selfdoubt in the heat of the moment.

Keeping Yourself Focused on the Presentation When you’re on stage, there’s nothing left to do but deliver the presentation as you practiced. At this point in the process, you need to keep your mind focused on the task at hand. You will need to tame your mind from wandering to other thoughts unrelated to your talk. When you start your presentation, I mentioned doing some basic breathing exercises to clear your mind. From that point on, you should keep your mind focused on what you need to do next. When you are distracted by some random thought or by your surroundings, immediately get your head back into the presentation by looking at the laptop, stage screens, or your cue cards; this should allow you to return to your presentation-focused state of mind.

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Chapter 5 | Delivering the Talk As you gain more experience, the practice of focusing on the presentation will be easier for you. Your mind will instinctively tune out distractions in your environment. You will also habitually follow your presentation process. You will be able to develop a strong resistance to distracting thoughts. If you have a mobile phone with you, I suggest putting it into flight mode or turning it off—unless you are using the time or stopwatch features. The last thing you want is a phone call during your talk. If you forget to turn it off and someone tries to call you, obviously, you should not answer it. Try to ignore it, or subtly take the phone and disable the call. A silent phone can’t disturb you, though, so try to make sure to silence it prior to starting the talk.

Adapting to Changes in the Presentation In an ideal situation, you want to limit the number of improvisations you make during your presentation. There may be times when certain conditions prevent you from executing the presentation that you practiced. For instance, some tools you rely on may fail to function, or you just can’t get a demo to work. At times, you may think of additional ideas that you want to add at the last minute. You should be ready to adapt to changes in the presentation. Amateur public speakers often complain when they see that a certain part of their presentation is not going their way. This does not solve the problem. When this happens to you, try to avoid these types of excuses. Instead, you need to think of a solution to the problem that will allow you to pull off the presentation, even with the obstacle in your way. Earlier in the book, I talked about how to mitigate having internet problems and demo failures. If you are delivering a technical talk—in my case, software development talks—it is quite common to suffer demo failures. No matter how much you practice, something always seems to go wrong when you are on stage in front of a large audience. If you are unprepared, a demo failure can completely derail your talk and shatter your self-confidence. You can, of course, prepare for such an eventuality. I have personally fallen fowl of demo failures on many occasions, but because I had a plan, I always got to the end of the talk successfully, and the audience left with the information that they came for. The audience doesn’t care if a demo fails; they want your information and insights, so don’t be afraid to use your backup slides or prerecorded demo videos. Sometimes, you will think of new ideas just before the presentation is due to start. Ideally, you should not entertain changes to the presentation you practiced; it is too late. These changes will only disrupt your flow because you have not practiced the new additions, and unless you are an experienced speaker, these unpracticed additions will be glaringly obvious to your audience.

Powerful Presentations You could take note of these ideas, though, and add them in later versions of your presentation, which will give you an opportunity to practice them. If your talk is new, then you will undoubtably see ways in which you can improve, so make a note of them and incorporate them later. Don’t try to wing it. Stay on plan.

Handling Questions One part of speaking in public that can drive fear into the speaker more than the actual talk itself is the question-and-answer section at the end. It is quite natural for speakers to fear this part of the talk, and I was no different when I started out. For the entire talk, you are in control, you control the story and the pace of the talk, and you alone are in charge. When the talk is over and you open the floor to questions, and you should, the tight control over the situation can change so that the audience is more in control, as you have no idea what they are going to ask. There are some tips I can give you, though, to make the question-and-answer section less scary. Remember, you don’t have to be the world’s biggest expert in your chosen subject, and it is fine not to know and answer straight away.

Inform the Audience When You Want Questions When you start your talk’s introduction, let the audience know how you want questions delivered. Some speakers are perfectly happy to be interrupted by raised hands during the flow of their talk and to answer questions as they come. Other speakers, myself included, prefer people to wait until the end because I am probably going to answer their question anyway; they just need to wait. Do state your preference, though, as it will stop you from being irritated if people interrupt you.

Think Before Answering When someone asks you a question, take a few seconds to think through your response before answering. The audience won’t notice a short wait, and it gives you a chance to clarify your thoughts. Rushing into answering a question can trip you up, and you may say the wrong thing; nerves can do this.

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 Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Questions to Be Repeated Large rooms, especially at conferences, can have a lot of background noise. If you didn’t hear the question, ask the attendee to clarify or repeat the question. Some conferences may have runners in the room who have a microphone and will get to the person asking the question. In that case, their voice will be sent across the PA system, but if the audience is shouting out the question, then the chances are that you may struggle to hear them if they are further back in the room.

Repeat the Question so Everyone Can Hear If there’s no one in the room to run a microphone to the person asking the question, chances are that most people will not hear the question. It is always a good idea to repeat a question before you answer it; otherwise, people will only hear the answer without the question for context. Not only is repeating the question a courtesy for the people in the room, but if the talk is being recorded for the conference website or YouTube, then repeating the question will make sense for the people watching the video.

Remain Positive Answering random questions at the end of your talk can feel stressful, as you have no idea what the audience will ask. They may ask simple questions to clarify something you mentioned in the talk. Those questions are always easy to deal with. You may get someone talking about an alternative option to what you discussed; they are always appreciated as you learn something new. You may get the “Well, actually” person who simply wants to make you feel dumb by correcting you; they are always a little harder to deal with. No matter what the question or comment is from the audience, always thank them for their questions, suggestions, or insights. On the extreme end of the spectrum, you may get someone who disagrees with everything you have said, and boy, do they want you to know it in front of 200 other people. No matter the scenario, always remain positive, and if an audience member is being a jerk, never have a go at them. In all my years speaking, I have only ever had one person whom I thought was being a jerk during the QA section. My talk was on cryptography using the Microsoft Dot NET platform, specifically on the libraries provided by Microsoft. However, one audience member wasn’t happy with that and essentially tried to tell me I was an idiot because I wasn’t talking about a specific third-party cryptography library, even though the talk description specifically stated it was about the

Powerful Presentations default libraries provided by Microsoft. There isn’t much you can do, except thank them for the question, and in this case, I reminded them that the talk was about the Microsoft-specific libraries and then moved on. If you get someone who comes across as though they’re looking for trouble, never argue or lose your temper because they will take your words out of context and try to make you look bad on social media. This is rare, but remain positive and polite if it happens.

Be Truthful and Never Lie You are bound to get someone who asks a question that you don’t know the answer to. If that happens, don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world. When put on the spot, no one knows the answer to everything. If this happens, then just say you don’t know but will find out. Most audience members are very understanding. What you should never do is try to bluff your way through the answer or simply tell a lie, as you will be found out. A great technique I have used many times is to redirect the question to the audience. In the heat of the moment, you may struggle to think, even if you ordinarily would know the answer; the stress of being on stage can cloud your mind. If you ask the audience the question, someone can have a go at answering it. By doing this, the attendee who asked the question gets an answer and is happy, and you have the pressure taken off you. Also, as the question is answered, it may help to unblock your memory if it is about something you thought you knew but just couldn’t remember. If an audience member does help and provides an answer, make sure to repeat their answer in full so everyone else in the room can hear, and remember to thank them. As speakers, we’re not perfect. We can’t remember the answer or know the answer to every question, so use the audience to your advantage and get them to help. No one will mind, and everyone will benefit from the answer. You may even learn something new yourself, which is always nice. The question-and-answer section of a talk can fill even the most experienced speakers with dread, but it doesn’t have to. If you prepare and accept the fact that you can’t answer everything, you will feel more relaxed. In the previous chapter, I suggested practicing your answers for possible questions. This is a vital preparation tip, and you can often anticipate most questions that will be asked and then prepare answers to them. For everything else, don’t panic, just remain positive. As I suggested earlier, if you really can’t answer the question, just say so, and then redirect the question back at the audience. If you go in with this mindset, you can drastically reduce the level of anxiety you will face.

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Online Talks and Webinars When we think about public speaking, we assume we are talking about someone standing on a stage and addressing an audience or speaking to peers in a boardroom. While this is the conventional idea of public speaking, it isn’t the only option. Public speaking includes presenting online to an audience as a webinar or as a more interactive online facsimile of real talk.

Webinar vs. Online Talk When thinking about the form of online talks, a webinar might come to mind first. A webinar consists of someone speaking to their computer via a webcam and microphone, and there could be anything from one to thousands of people signed up to watch the talk. Typically, as the speaker, you can’t see the audience members; you are simply broadcasting to any number of people online. You may have a small amount of interactivity via a chat window where people can post comments and questions, but generally you are not watching this window until the end. Online talks are like webinars and are often seen as the same thing; however, there are a few subtle differences. If you are speaking via a platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, or any of a myriad of conferencing platforms that have sprung up, then as you are speaking, you can access a gallery view of your audience. If the members of the audience have their cameras turned on, you can even see them. Being able to see the participants when using these platforms makes the experience feel like an in-person public speaking event. In reality, it is nothing like the real thing; however, these platforms do have their advantages. The main advantage is geography. To speak at an in-person event, you must get all the attendees in the same place at the same time. People could drive, use public transport, or even fly to an event. This means that some events are hard to get to and not as inclusive as we might otherwise want. Tickets for in-person events can be quite expensive, and that’s before you factor in travel, accommodations, and general expenses like food and drink. With an online event, you remove that geographic barrier, which opens the event to many more people. Being online also reduces attendees’ costs quite significantly, as you don’t have to travel, book hotels, and pay for other expenses.

Powerful Presentations

 The Rise of Online Presenting in a COVID-19 World Speaking online is nothing new. It has been around for many years, but with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, online programs were brought to the forefront. Overnight, all in-person events were cancelled, and many were converted at the last minute into online events. I was caught up in many events that suddenly went online. One of the conference companies I work with, NDC Conferences based in Oslo, Norway, was no exception. Just before the pandemic officially started, I spoke at two in-person NDC events—a smaller security event in Oslo and one of their bigger multitrack conferences in London the following week. My next speaking event for NDC Conferences was scheduled in Porto, Portugal. I was looking forward to going to that event because I had never been to Porto before, but the event was quickly changed to an online event. Personally, out of all the online events in which I participated, I liked NDC’s approach to conferences the best, as it was simple. If you were a ticket holder, then you were invited to a slack team where multiple channels were set up for each presentation room, the chill-out and chat areas, etc. Each talk took place over either Zoom or Cisco Webex. The talks were advertised in the slack channels for each room, and the participants and speaker signed into the video conference software and the speaker delivered the talk. The experience, obviously, is different from an in-person event. However, given the unprecedented events the world was facing and everyone having to adopt social distancing, this virtual event setup worked very well. As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, I think what we will continue to see a more hybrid model for conferences. In-person events will return and command higher ticket prices, but there will also be a less expensive online-only version of the event in which talks will be streamed as they happen. If anything, the pandemic has taught speakers and event companies how to innovate, so the future could be quite interesting.

Tips to Get the Most Out of Speaking Online Speaking at an in-person event vs. an online event is similar when it comes to the actual delivery of the talk. The writing, preparation, and rehearsal are not much different; you need to put in the same level of work and effort. The delivery of the talk is where the difference lies, as you are not physically in the same room as the people you are addressing. Let’s look at some tips to help you get the most out of speaking to an online audience.

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Stand If You Can It can be tempting to sit down when you’re presenting online as you are simply talking to your computer. Therefore, it might not feel much different from attending a virtual meeting with colleagues, but I find if you stand when speaking, it puts you into a different mindset of delivering a high-quality talk. I use an electric standing desk in my office, so if I want to stand, I simply press a button to raise the desk. If you don’t have a standing desk, you can still stand if you can reposition your webcam. If you are using a separate webcam from your computer, then you can attach it to a tripod to raise its level—please note that I do recommend buying a better-quality webcam, as the camera that comes with laptops is not great.

Visualize Your Audience When you are delivering an in-person talk, it is very easy to gauge their reactions, as they are sitting close to you. Online, this is much harder, as physical distance and technology are separating you. With platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex, you can see a gallery view of participants, hopefully with their cameras turned on, so you can see their faces and reactions. While in principle this is a great idea, it rarely works out that well. During the pandemic, when I was presenting online, people were initially keen to enable their camera and be seen. At the first online event I spoke at, toward the start of the event, cameras were on. As the event ran into the final day, more attendees started turning their cameras off, as they didn’t want to be seen. I can understand this: having your camera at home can feel like an invasion of privacy, and as people get more fatigued with online talks, it is only natural that people turn off their cameras. At one event I did in January 2021, not a single person had their camera on out of 80 attendees watching my talk. Now, whenever I do an online talk, I don’t even bother showing the gallery view. I just treat it more like a webinar. I show up and do my talk.

Be Aware of Your Background This one may seem obvious, but I have watched loads of presentations where the speaker has a messy background, and it is very distracting. There is nothing worse than clutter or seeing laundry hanging up behind you. I can offer a few solutions here. First, tidy up before you present, move the clutter out of the way, and leave the background looking natural. Nobody wants to see your underpants hanging up to dry. If you can, setting a light behind you to illuminate the background can also make a substantial difference. You don’t have to

Powerful Presentations spend a lot of money on fancy lighting rigs, but a desk lamp highlighting the background can work wonders to make an interesting scene. Some people—speakers and attendees—don’t necessarily like other people seeing where they live. Modern video platforms like Zoom allow you to change your background. Zoom will do a decent job of replacing your background with a picture of your choosing, but if you really want to make it look good, you can use a green screen behind you. If you use a green screen, Zoom, or other equivalent platforms, will do a much better job of removing your physical background and replacing it with an image. This way, you can have anything you like as the background—a library, a tropical island, or, my personal favorite, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.

Focus on Lighting Good lighting is important to making sure you look good on camera. If you have poor lighting, then you will look too dark on the screen. If you are presenting while standing in front of a big window, you will look like a silhouette on the video. If you are presenting from a room that is well lit—a window to your side, decent overhead room lights—then you really don’t need to invest in a lot of expensive lighting panels. However, if your room is quite dark, then a few LED lights on either side of your monitor may be a good idea. You can buy LED lighting panels for little cost these days. I bought two lighting panels with tripods for less than $100. Don’t over-engineer your lighting. You simply need a little illumination; you are not trying to light the next Hollywood blockbuster. If your room already has good lighting, just go with that. Your attendees will most likely be looking at your slides, not at you.

Dress Appropriately Just because you’re presenting from home doesn’t mean you should look like a complete slob. Think about the event at which you are presenting, and then consider what clothing would be appropriate. If this is a corporate event full of C-suite-level executives, then you want to make some effort and dress smartly. If it is a software development conference, for example, then you can be a little more casual and wear jeans and a T-shirt. I don’t recommend wearing your pajamas for a talk, even if you just rolled out of bed ten minutes before you’re presenting—unless you are presenting at the international convention of pajama wearers.

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Chapter 5 | Delivering the Talk When you are speaking publicly, you are putting yourself out in the world to share ideas. People will judge you, and you must make a good first impression, no matter whether you are speaking online or on stage at an in-person event.

Be Careful of Where You’re Looking When presenting online through a webcam, you need to be aware of where you’re looking. It is quite natural to look at your monitor or laptop screen while you’re talking about what is on your slides. However, to the attendees watching, it looks like you’re not looking at them directly. To address this problem, make sure you look at your webcam—you don’t necessarily want to do this constantly, you should do it regularly throughout the presentation. A good trick is to stick two of those plastic googly eyes onto the webcam, and for some reason, you’ll feel compelled to look at the eyes. When we have real conversations with people, we look into their eyes, and this has the same effect. It is a great technique to ensure that you make regular eye contact.

Don’t Overcomplicate Your Speaking Setup When the pandemic took hold in early 2020, and it became obvious to everyone that they would have to work from home and make use of video conferencing software, there was a sudden rush of people buying webcams, lighting, and all sorts of gadgets for turning a humble video call into a full-scale television production. Along with all this fancy hardware, people used software like Open Broadcast System to put together different production scenes that they could switch to mid-presentation, just like a news broadcast. This is all impressive but unnecessary. I am not saying that you should never experiment with techniques like this. It is fun to play around with, but I have attended a lot of presentations that, while technically impressive, were quite shallow, as the presenters focused more on the delivery style than the content. This wasn’t always the case. Some people did fantastic talks with this technology, but they were very experienced speakers. I don’t mean to be a party pooper—by all means play with this stuff—but don’t forget the most important piece of the puzzle: constructing and delivering a great talk. Provided your talk is well structured and well rehearsed, people will love what you have to say. If you don’t master these essential pieces first, then your talk will be boring, even if it looks great. Public speaking is a simple transaction. Someone comes to your talk, hopefully enjoys it, and then moves on, enlightened by your main topic points. Nobody will be thinking three months later that they really enjoyed that talk because

Powerful Presentations multiple scenes were triggered in the Open Broadcast System. It is simply a delivery mechanism and not as important as the actual content of your talk. Don’t over-engineer it until you master the basics.

Summary We have come to the end of this book on public speaking. Speaking in front of people is usually a task that fills people with fear and dread. I certainly felt no different when I first started out. I used to suffer from a lot of anxiety about the idea of speaking in front of a large group. Of every challenge I’ve ever overcome in my life, public speaking is the one that I’m most proud to have conquered. Public speaking has given me a new sense of self-confidence, and it has opened many fun opportunities to speak at world-class events, which has enabled me to travel the world. If I can do it, so can you. The overall theme of this book is that preparation is the key to success. From researching your topic, building your slides ahead of time, practicing until you have the talk memorized, and planning for failure on stage, if you prepare ahead of time, then you can reduce your performance anxiety and deliver a fantastic talk. To be a public speaker, you don’t have to be an expert in your field. Talks can be pitched at different levels, so there will always be an audience that knows less about the subject than you. Provided you pitch the talk at the appropriate level, you will be fine. For example, if you are doing a talk about learning the Java programming language and you are a beginner or intermediate programmer, you wouldn’t advertise the talk as an advanced-level talk; otherwise, the wrong audience will attend. On the flip side, if you are delivering an advanced Java talk but advertise the talk to beginners, you will lose people in the audience, as they will be expecting a beginner’s talk. My aim in writing this book was to give you all the tools you need to succeed but in a short space of time. I would prefer you read this book quickly and then spend your time applying the techniques as opposed to wading through a 400-page tome, forgetting half the information, and then not having time to prepare the talk you have imagined. With that said, thank you for buying and reading this book. I really hope that what I have covered in these pages will help you research, plan, prepare, and deliver a fantastic talk on your chosen topic. I wish you the best of luck.

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Workshop Questions 1. Practice the visualization techniques discussed earlier in the chapter, where you imagine giving a successful presentation and the audience gives you a huge round of applause. Preparing these visualizations can help to relieve any anxiety. 2. Practice the square breathing technique so that you are familiar with it and its calming effects. • Breath in for four seconds so that air fills your lungs. • Hold your breath for four seconds. • Slowly exhale your breath for eight seconds. • Without taking a break, go straight back to the first step and fill your lungs again. 3. Pack and prepare your bag of cables, dongles, and adapters prior to attending your event. Consider the following: • Charger for your laptop • International power another country

adapters

if

travelling

to

• HDMI adapter (possibly a few different brands) • VGA adapter (some venues have very old projection systems) • Slide navigator device (which allows you to move away from your laptop while on stage) • USB memory stick with backups of all the files you need for your presentation 4. If you are planning on presenting to a virtual, online audience, then install the main platforms and familiarize yourself with them. Platforms to consider are • Zoom • Teams • Google Meet • Cisco Webex

APPENDIX

A Frequently Asked Questions Over my years as a public speaker, I have mentored and coached many new and aspiring public speakers. When I help someone who wants to start presenting to an audience, I get a lot of common questions. I have answered many of these questions in this section. The questions are in no particular order.

Can public speaking benefit my career? The short answer is yes, even if your presentation isn’t linked to your day job. Getting up on stage—or in front of your peers at the office—to speak demonstrates a high level of confidence in your abilities. Confidence is a very desirable quality to many employers. Public speaking also demonstrates that you can face up to your vulnerabilities, and presenting puts you in a vulnerable position with the audience. Presenting also demonstrates that you can take complicated subjects and break them down into a format that is interesting and relevant to your audience. Being able to reduce complexity and present it appropriately to an audience is a skill that is also a great benefit to employers, as it demonstrates excellent communication skills. After all, communication skills aren’t simply what comes out of your mouth; they represent your ability to break down complex information and prepare it for your audience. © Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3

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 hat is more important: the content W or my delivery of the content? Both are important, but a brilliant delivery of poor content is still poor content. A not-so-good delivery of excellent content is still excellent content. The quality of the content you want to present is what you will spend the majority of your time preparing, researching, and designing ahead of rehearsing. At that stage, you are only concerned with what information you are sharing and your overall message to the audience. When you have built your slides and are confident in the content and message you convey, you can start to focus on the actual delivery. To be good at delivery, you need to practice as much as you can. Nobody will expect you to sound like a highly experienced TED speaker or a professional actor. You are aiming to be articulate and clear in your delivery. Focus on the speed at which you talk, projecting your voice to the back of the room, and trying to eradicate filler words like “err” and “umm.” If you get those right, then you will come across as confident and clear.

How can I best deal with stage fright? I talked a lot about being prepared in this book. • Having your presentation written well ahead of your talk • Rehearsing a lot • Memorizing the first part of each section of the talk • Preparing for demo failure with an alternative slide deck or videos • Creating a contingency plan for internet or projector failure • Working with a test audience to anticipate audience questions ahead of time Making sure you’re prepared will dramatically lessen the effects of stage fright, but it won’t remove your fears completely. In the book, I also discussed techniques for visualizing a successful talk to prime your mind for success, which is also a very valuable technique. Stretching before the talk can also help. Just before going on stage, I am a big believer in the square breathing technique to quickly calm your nerves. Square breathing helps calm your body and mind and makes you more alert. It is a technique used by elite fighting forces all over the world to calm themselves before entering a combat situation. To recap, here are the following steps:

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions 1. Breath in for four seconds so that air fills your lungs. 2. Hold your breath for four seconds. 3. Slowly exhale your breath for eight seconds. 4. Without taking a break, go straight back to the first step and fill your lungs again.

I am not an expert in my field. Is it acceptable for me to be a public speaker? Of course, it is. Presentations can be pitched at any level, from entry level to expert. Some of my favorite presentations have been made by novices in their fields. You get to hear about people’s experiences overcoming a particular struggle, and you also get to learn about new topics that you may be a novice at yourself. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to make sure you pitch the talk at the correct level in your synopsis. If you are a novice in your field presenting an entry-level talk, make sure your synopsis reflects this fact. The last thing you want is for people to think it is an intermediate or advanced talk and to expect deep knowledge—they will leave disappointed. As long as you are open about the level of the subject you are presenting, you will be fine. In my experience with speaking at professional conferences (mainly software development conferences), the organizers will book talks on a subject that covers different experience levels, so your presentation may fill the entrylevel requirement, while one of your other speaker colleagues may fill the expert requirement; this is quite normal.

S hould I pack as much information into my talk as possible for maximum impact? There is a balance to be struck between offering lots of useful information and overloading the audience. If you are bombarding people with facts, they can easily be overwhelmed. However, if you present a few well-picked topics and spend time exploring those topics with examples and personal experiences, you are more likely to hold the audience’s attention for the whole session. While you’re rehearsing your talk, try to perform it in front of a test audience—it could be family members or peers—but get their feedback on the level of information presented and how you delivered it. Ask them to be honest about whether they managed to stay engaged.

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Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions One final thing to mention is that people like stories. Try to weave stories and a narrative into your talk as best as you can, even if it is a talk about a particular service or piece of software. Think of examples that you can build stories around to demonstrate how someone may use the service. This will be instantly more engaging than simply reading facts and figures and showing a bullet-point list on the screen.

Should you memorize the entire presentation? Memorizing an entire presentation word for word is difficult. Some people may be able to do this, but I could never do it. I only ended up becoming frustrated with myself, as I couldn’t recall everything word for word. Instead, what I do is memorize the introduction of the presentation and the beginning of each section. Then, for the rest of the talk, I talk as if I am talking to someone directly. This becomes easier to do if you are confident in the subject you are presenting. As a contingency plan, I have a basic bullet-point list of notes in the speaker notes of my presentation software. If, for any reason, I get distracted or have a mental block, I can glance at this list for the slides and remember where I was. No one else will see the list, but it is handy to have around. Don’t make the mistake of putting too much information into your presenter notes, as it will be hard to read when you are presenting. Your notes are not a script, so don’t treat them like one.

Is it acceptable to call out people during a talk if they are chatting while you are presenting? This is a tough situation to be in and needs to be handled carefully. Everyone’s tolerance of disruption is different. Here is how I handle it. If I am speaking at a small user group in a small room—less than 30 people, for example—and people are having a conversation while I am presenting, I will politely ask them to stop. I have had to do this a few times in my speaking career. Typically, they will stop their disruptive conversation at that point. If I am at a large conference where there is over 50 people, possibly hundreds of people, then I typically ignore the people having a side conversation, as it isn’t really disrupting me too much. In all honesty, however, I have never been disrupted like that at a large event. People have paid—or their companies have paid—to be there, and attendees are eager to learn.

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions If I am at a private event at which I am being paid to speak, I ignore any disruptions and complete the talk. If people are being disruptive, I would expect the company that has paid for me to be there to deal with the problem. Again, I have never had this issue. When people have an option of which talk to attend, and they pick yours, they are usually very respectful of your time and your presentation. The only real rule here is that if you do have to intervene with someone who is disruptive, never lose your temper or raise your voice. By all means, ask someone politely to stop being disruptive, but remain calm and polite. You never know who is filming the talk, or if someone will post your outburst out of context on social media.

 hat should I do with my hands during a W presentation? This is a common question from people speaking publicly for the first time, and it was something I found hard when I first started out. When you are presenting, your mouth isn’t the only part communicating with the audience— your whole body is communicating. When some people talk to others, they instinctively know what to do with their hands. These people naturally use their hands and arms to emphasize what they are saying. A lot of other people don’t find this natural, and their instinct is to put their hands down by their sides or put their hands in their pockets. While that may be fine for casual conversation, it makes you look a little static when standing in front of other people. When you are rehearsing your presentation, put some thought into how you will use your hands. Practice moving them about to help with the emphasis on the point you are making. You don’t want to overdo it by waving your arms around like an octopus, but hand movement and gestures can really help emphasize the point you are making. When speaking, if you don’t need to use hand gestures at a particular moment, then you can rest them on the podium or put them down by your side. I don’t recommend putting your hands in your pocket as I think this looks a little too casual, but it’s up to you. When I present, I like to use a Bluetooth slide clicker because I have something in my hand that I can fidget with, and I find that having a gadget in my hand makes me feel more comfortable.

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 ow can I find out if my presentation is H effective? If you are speaking at a public event, it is helpful if you can get feedback on your talk so you can learn and improve. There are several ways you can do this. Many conferences have a feedback mechanism for speakers. For example, one conference company I have regularly spoken for—NDC Conferences in Norway—places a table outside each session room that has a bucket and a stack of colored cards. As the audience leaves the session room, they pick a card and drop it into the bucket. If they like the talk, they select a green card. If they liked the talk but didn’t learn as much as they would have liked too—normally because the talk was pitched at the wrong level—they choose a yellow card. If they really didn’t like the talk at all, they drop in a red card. They are also invited to write comments on the cards if they wish, which are all anonymous. The conference companies then tally up the card colors and record the scores. This is helpful for the conference company, as they can see what talks and speakers the audience really likes. This is a key factor for determining whether which speakers to invite back. For speakers, this is a simple way to gauge the audience’s sentiments about your talk. In my case, I commonly get green cards and a few yellow cards, and I have also received a few red cards. Sadly, getting reds every now and again is inevitable, but I can tell from this feedback that my talks are generally well regarded. While this is useful, it doesn’t give you good constructive feedback unless someone writes a comment on a card, but this doesn’t happen very often. You can also be more active in your solicitation of feedback at the end of your talk and set up an anonymous Google form that the audience can use to give feedback. I have done this before, and I received a few pieces of useful feedback. Once someone has left your session and then attended other talks, they tend to forget to comment; there is, however, no harm in asking.

 ow many slides are appropriate for a H presentation? This is a hard question to answer because the answer is it depends. It is better to have a lot of slides that gradually reveal the information you want to convey, as opposed to a few slides that are too information dense. The reason for this is that if your slides contain too much text, the audience will spend too much time trying to read the slides as opposed to listening to you.

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions I favor using a lot of full-screen images that convey the message or emotion I am trying to evoke as opposed to resorting to text. But if I do use text, I like to do what is called text chunking, which breaks out the text into uniform boxes that I then reveal one box per slide (Figure A-1). As I am speaking, I use my slide clicker to reveal another box as I speak so that the audience doesn’t have to process each box and its text in one go.

Figure A-1.  Example of using text chunking to reveal details on a slide

When it comes to how many slides are appropriate, use as many slides as you need to get the message across and no more. Nobody wants death by PowerPoint, and the more slides you show, the more the audience would try to process what is going on. Your slides are there to add to what you are saying, not to be a smoke screen for you to hide behind.

 ow can I make my voice not sound H monotone or robotic? When we are nervous and not confident in what we are saying, our voices can become a little robotic or monotone. Ideally, you want to ensure you include a range of expressions in your voice, as this helps to reinforce what you are saying and make it interesting. You can use volume and pitch to modulate your voice.

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Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions If you are telling a sad or poignant story, you may use a quieter and softer tone. If you are telling a story with an action-packed ending, you may raise your voice and become more animated. Audiences react well to speakers who modulate their voices to express emotions, but it does take practice. If you sound like a robot, your audience will disengage from what you are saying, and once you have lost the audience, you will struggle to get them back. Make sure you don’t overdo the modulation in your voice for the sake of it, as you will sound strange and, at worst, like an angry goat. When you’re rehearsing your talk, pay special attention to how your voice sounds. The more confident you become with the material, the better you will be at controlling your voice. When you practice in front of a test audience, ask them to pay attention to your voice and whether the emotion and expression in your voice hold their attention.

 here can I find good examples of public W speakers to learn from? There are many recorded talks you can watch online—YouTube specifically. You can easily search for talks in your chosen area, but I also recommend watching talks in completely unrelated areas to your own field of expertise to introduce yourself to speakers in fields you might not otherwise venture. When I attend conferences, I always go to see talks from people I have not seen before, even if the talk subject isn’t something I would normally be interested in. I am watching the talk to learn from the styles of those speakers. Some are brilliant—others not so good. But no matter what the quality is, I analyze what made the talk good or bad, so I can learn. I also recommend looking up TED videos on YouTube or from the TED website and app. Their talks are brilliant, and the speakers go through a lot of training, so you can learn a lot from their delivery and how to write an engaging presentation.

 hat should I do if my mind goes blank W in the middle of a presentation? It doesn’t matter how well prepared and rehearsed you are; it is still possible for your mind to go blank while you are presenting. This can happen for several reasons: general fear and anxiety about being on stage or being interrupted by an audience member are two of the most common. You can easily prepare for your mind going blank.

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions To mitigate a blank mind partway through the talk, I use the presenter view of PowerPoint, or Apple’s Keynote, where I include a bullet-point list of the main points I need to cover for that slide. This acts as a queue card. If I get stuck or distracted, I glance at the presenter’s view and can easily see what I have covered or still have left. Be careful not to put too much information into the presenter view. I have seen some speakers try to place a script there and read from it, and this always looks bad, as you are looking down at your screen and not making eye contact with the audience. Reading from a script in the presenter’s view makes you look unprofessional and unprepared, but having a few bullet-point notes is perfectly reasonable to help if you get stuck. It happens to us all, and I use this technique all the time. Sometimes, a professional speaker does read from a script, and politicians are a good example of this, but they are usually using a teleprompter system that is set at eye level so they can still make eye contact with the audience.

I want to speak at professional conferences, but I’m not sure how to get started The best route to speaking at professional conferences is to start with smaller meetup groups. This gives you an opportunity to practice with real audiences. Sometimes, these meetup groups will record the talks and post them on YouTube, which is great, as you can use them as proof of your public-speaking experience when applying to speak at a conference. When you have built up some experience, you can then tackle a larger conference. In my experience, there are two ways into a conference. The first is being directly invited to speak by the organizers; this can become a common occurrence once you have a lot of experience and have built a name for yourself. The other, and most common, route is that you apply to speak at an event through what is called a “Call for Papers” (CFP). Before the event, the organizers will request that people submit talk suggestions. When submitting a talk, you need to write a great synopsis; that is why we spent so much time looking at synopsis writing in this book. Once the application deadline has passed, a committee will review the submitted talks and build their agenda. Many conferences want to book the experienced speakers, but they also set aside several places for new speakers to get their chance. Most conferences are commercial entities, so they need to book famous speakers so they can sell tickets, but they usually allow new speakers to participate. Therefore, it is helpful if you can get some of your earlier talks recorded, as you can submit these videos along with your submissions. Showing an example of your talk can help the agenda committee make an informed choice, as your speaking evidence can help lower the risk for them.

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I perform demos that require an internet connection. What should I do if the internet fails? Internet failure is quite common at large events, as you have so many people competing to connect to the Wi-Fi. If you are doing a demo that relies on a working internet connection, then you can prepare by creating a second slide deck with all the demo steps placed as screenshots. If you are more ambitious, you can do a screen recording of the demo and narrate over that in the presentation. By having a backup plan, you will be prepared for all demo failure possibilities. You will also feel more relaxed knowing you have a backup plan. The audience won’t mind if you must use a backup plan; in fact, they will respect you a lot more for being prepared. The audience has come to your talk to hear what you have to say and hopefully learn something new. What’s important to them is the information they receive. If you must use a backup plan to give them that information, then that’s okay. The audience still gets what they came for.

What should I do if the projector fails? I have had my fair share of projector woes when setting up for a talk, but they have always been resolved by trying a different HDMI or VGA adapter, or the audio/visual tech for that room has done some technical jiggery-pokery. I have never had to deal with a complete projector failure; neither have I witnessed this in any talks that I have attended. It is rare, but it could happen. All you can do in this situation is carry on with the talk. You will have the slides on your laptop, so progress through them as you would with a working projector, but if you show any facts or figures that the audience needs to see, then you will have to explain what is on your screen. It is a good idea to practice for this eventuality in your rehearsals, so you are used to explaining some of the more challenging slides. No harm in being prepared. Never try to cancel the talk, since people have arrived in the room to see your presentation. You will just have to make do with the laptop in front of you and get through the talk as best you can.

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions

 ow should I deal with people interrupting H my talk with questions? Some speakers are happy to be interrupted with questions partway through the talk. Other speakers don’t like it and would rather have questions at the end. Personally, I prefer questions at the end of the talk, and I don’t like being interrupted. How you tackle questions is up to you, but you should state your preferences at the beginning of the talk. If you are happy to have people ask questions during the talk, tell them at the beginning. If you would rather wait until the end, make sure you tell them.

I am speaking at a large event. What should I do if only a few people show up for the talk? There are no guarantees that you will have a full room just because you’re speaking at a large conference. Also, the time and day of your talk can affect how many people turn up. Let me use an example of one of my favorite events, which is NDC Oslo in Norway; the conference is a five-day event. The first two days are workshops, and the next three days are conference days, where you watch the presentations. Attending a conference is very tiring. By Friday, audience numbers start to dwindle. We jokingly call Friday afternoon after lunch the graveyard shift, as people are leaving the event to travel home. At one event, I was scheduled to talk in the very last Friday slot. I arrived at the room 15 minutes early to set up. I stood there waiting for my allocated time to start—the room was empty. As I got to the one-minute countdown before starting, the room was still empty. I was getting incredibly nervous that I would have an empty room. Just as I was about to start, four people walked in and sat down—at the back. I had an audience, so I started and completed the talk. Each of those four people gave me a green card at the end and asked a few questions. Four green cards mean a 100% approval rating. Not bad. All joking aside, I very nearly faced the prospect of an empty room. In this case, the talk was being recorded regardless. If the room had been empty, I would have still done the talk because the recording was being put onto YouTube. Thankfully, I have never been at an event where I had zero attendees. If the talk is not being recorded, then you need to find out from the organizers what they want you to do. I would say if the room were empty and there were no recordings being made, you wouldn’t need to do the talk, but you could still complete it just to say you spoke at the event.

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I have been approached by an event to speak, but I must pay a speaker fee. Is that normal? I have heard of events like this but never worked with one. You should not pay to speak at a commercial event. Smaller events could potentially ask you to contribute toward travel costs, but organizers of commercial events are expected to cover your travel and accommodations. The reason is that these events are selling tickets and raising money from sponsors. Attendees buying the tickets are paying to see people like you speak at the event. Therefore, you, as the speaker, are the product. I don’t think you should pay to speak at an event. The only exception occurs when you are sponsoring the event by contributing financially to the cost of running the conference. Then, the conference may offer your organization a few speaking slots, but that is the only exception I can see that is acceptable. If you are approached by a conference that wants the speakers to pay a fee, you need to think carefully about what you will get out of the transaction. If you think the fee is reasonable and you will have a large audience to make the experience worth it, then go for it, but be careful and do your research. Remember, you—the speaker—are the product. People are paying to see you speak, not the other way around.

Should you be paid for public speaking? The subject of being paid to speak can be a thorny one, and it really depends on your industry. In my experience, speaking at software development conferences, you are rarely paid unless you are the keynote speaker. I have never been paid for a commercial conference, apart from travel and accommodation expenses. I have been paid to teach two-day workshops, but they are different from conference presentations. Although I haven’t been paid directly to speak at public events, these talks have helped lead to other opportunities where I have spoken at private events for different companies. I am paid for these talks, and I charge a lot, plus travel and accommodation expenses. I always treat speaking at conferences as something that can lead to other opportunities. I also do it because it is fun. If you go in with that attitude, then you will have a great time. If you talk to a conference about speaking at their event, make sure you find out if they pay for your travel and hotel. As a speaker, you should rarely pay for them, unless it is a small community-based event that has no funding.

Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions

 hat was the most challenging talk you W have delivered, when it seemed as though everything was going wrong? Whenever I mentor a new or aspiring speaker, I’m always asked about my own horror talk stories. Somehow, it makes new speakers feel a little better to hear about the times I have struggled. I have two examples: one from an in-person talk and the other from a virtual talk. I have already mentioned my in-person example earlier in the book, but it was so harrowing at the time that I will repeat it. I was speaking at an event in Copenhagen. It was a conference with a two-day workshop and a single-day conference. At the single-day conference, I was due to speak just after lunch, and I was prepared and ready. In the morning, I was hanging out at the event, and one of the organizers told me that another speaker had pulled out at the last minute, as he was ill. The organizers, with whom I had worked for many years, knew I had a talk on a similar topic and asked if I could step in at the last minute. I said yes and asked when talk would be. The organizer replied, “In ten minutes!” I was quickly escorted to the stage to set up. I set up my laptop and went to load up the slides. They were not on my laptop in my “Talks” folder. I had somehow deleted them, and I wasn’t sure when or how. My recycle bin on the computer was empty. Okay, I thought, I’ll load up Dropbox since I pay for their top tier, so I have unlimited history to recover the file. I couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi at all, and I had no phone reception. I quickly grabbed my laptop and went into the foyer to try again, but still no Wi-Fi or mobile reception. I was starting to panic at this point, as people were arriving in the room for the talk. All I had on my laptop was an old version of the slides, which were more in note form. They didn’t look great, but they had the basic structure of the talk. I scanned through very quickly to remove any glaring problems, and that was what I had to go with. Thankfully, this was a talk I was familiar with and had delivered many times. It was my “Hacking Humans” talk, which I described in the synopsis section earlier in the book. Even though the slides looked terrible, the talk went very well. At the beginning, I explained why I was there, as they were originally expecting the other speaker who was ill. I gave the audience an opportunity to go to a different talk if they wished, as this was not the scheduled talk. I would not have been upset if anyone had decided to go to another talk. I also explained and made a joke about my slide situation and then got on with it.

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Appendix A | Frequently Asked Questions Even though I had messed up by not having a copy of the slides available on my laptop, I managed to get through the talk—to this day, I don’t know how or when I managed to delete the slide deck. Now, I always make sure I have copies of my slides on a separate USB thumb drive as a backup. I learned that the hard way. My second example was a challenging virtual talk during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. I was booked to speak at a meetup group with a new talk I had written. For some reason, I find virtual talks more nerve-racking than in-person talks, but I was prepared and well rehearsed. I went to my office and connected to Zoom, and I had my slides loaded up and ready. The organizers did their usual group introductions and then introduced me. I got about 30 seconds into the talk, and my office internet connection dropped, kicking me off the call. If Wi-Fi drops at an in-person event, you still have the audience there, so you can interact with them while you try to sort out the issue; but in this case, I was completely kicked off the call. I then tethered to my phone, which thankfully had a good signal. I rejoined the call, explained what had happened, and then tried to carry on. At that point, PowerPoint crashed; I got through about two slides, and it started locking up. I don’t know what happened, but it made my computer unstable, to the point where the machine was unresponsive. I had no choice but to reboot the computer. At that point, I noticed that the light on my internet router had come back on, so the internet was back. I quickly logged back in and reloaded PowerPoint, and, thankfully, everything worked from that point on. I made a little joke that I needed someone from IT to help me out (it was a software development talk, so everyone on the call was an IT professional). I lost nearly ten minutes of my allocated speaking time, but being a meetup group, they were flexible, so I was able to run overtime and complete the talk. In the end, I received a big applause from the audience, and many people left nice comments on the meetup group web page, saying they were impressed that I had managed to stay calm under the pressure, which was nice of them, as I didn’t feel calm inside at the time. When you hit technical hurdles during an online talk, it is harder than at an in-person event, as you have no one there to help, so you need to think fast. In my case, I had an internet backup that I could tether to my phone instantly. There wasn’t much I could do about PowerPoint crashing and making my computer unstable than to reboot and try to carry on.

APPENDIX

B Presentation Creation Resources In this appendix, I have listed many useful tools and resources that will help you deliver a brilliant presentation either at work or on stage at a conference.

Slide Creation Tools Most talks and presentations use a slide deck to support what the speaker is trying to communicate. There are many great options you can use, ranging from free ones to paid applications.

Microsoft PowerPoint One of the most popular slide creation tools. Most companies standardize the use of PowerPoint from the Microsoft Office suite of tools. It is quite intuitive to use after a little practice, and if you need to swap slide decks with © Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3

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Appendix B | Presentation Creation Resources other people, PowerPoint is one of the most common formats. Most of my talk slide decks have been produced with PowerPoint.

Apple Keynote Part of the Apple iWork’s suite of tools given away for FREE by Apple with their Mac computers. If you are a Mac owner and you don’t currently use Microsoft PowerPoint, then Keynote is available for free and is particularly good and easy to use. I have used Keynote for a few talks just to try it out, and I found it a joy to use. Unless you must use PowerPoint for your job, or if you don’t want to pay for PowerPoint, then give Keynote a try.

Google Docs This cloud-based office suite includes a tool for creating slide decks, called Slides. Google Docs runs in your browser, so you don’t need to install additional tools to make it work. In its default state, you need an internet connection to use Google Docs, but you can work offline, which I recommend you do before presenting in case you hit Wi-Fi issues at an event.

Research Tools Conducting content research is one of the most important and earlier phases of writing a talk. Many software packages are available to help you collate and organize your research.

Microsoft OneNote Part of the Office 365 suite, OneNote is a note-taking tool that replicates a binder full of notes. It is an extremely powerful tool that makes collating notes very easy. If you are an Office user, then you should already have access to OneNote.

Apple Notes This application is like Microsoft OneNote and comes free with every Mac or IOS computer device from Apple. Notes isn’t as feature rich as OneNote, but it is a very capable application. If you own an Apple device, it is a great option. It follows a similar binder and note structure like OneNote and makes the organization of your research notes quite easy. You can also access a web version of Notes through iCloud, meaning that if you are on a non-Apple machine, you can still access and edit your notes.

Appendix B | Presentation Creation Resources

Evernote This is another note-taking application like OneNote and Apple Notes. Using Evernote over OneNote is a personal preference, as its features are quite evenly matched. Evernote is very popular, but you do need—at the time of this writing—to pay a monthly fee to use it.

Google Keep In a similar vein to Apple Notes, Google Keep is Google’s version of a notetaking and research collation tool.

Online Video Platforms Not all presentations are performed with your audience in the same room. Online presentations have been around for many years, but they became popular during the coronavirus pandemic, when all in-person events were cancelled around the world.

Zoom This video meeting system has been around for many years, but Zoom rose to become one of the most popular video platforms during the coronavirus pandemic. As a video platform, it is simple for speakers and participants alike. Most of the meetup groups switched over to using Zoom during the pandemic when they were not allowed to meet in person. Zoom was also very popular with conferences. Zoom has client apps for all major platforms, such as Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.

Microsoft Teams The video and collaboration platform is very popular for communications inside organizations that are also Office 365 subscribers. Some meetups and conferences have adopted Teams as their platform, but it is nowhere near as prevalent as Zoom. It is worth it for all speakers to become familiar with how Teams works. It has client apps for all major platforms, such as Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.

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Appendix B | Presentation Creation Resources

Google Meet Increasing in popularity, this is Google’s own video platform. People may be familiar with Meet from its earlier incarnation, Google Hangouts. It is not as popular as Zoom for public speaking, but it is worth knowing.

Cisco Webex Large organizations favor this big corporate video platform. Several large conferences have adopted it, and it is straightforward to use. You may not find smaller events using Webex, but you should become familiar with it.

Free Stock Photo Libraries A visually striking slide presentation will always help engage your audience. You can achieve an eye-catching presentation by including many photographs and illustrations. Full-page photographs can be a wonderful way to add impact to the message you are trying to convey. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend much money on photographs. It is always best to check copyright-free or Creative Commons image libraries. Make sure to check the license agreement to see if you need to attribute the photographer. Some of the most popular free image sites include Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, The Noun Project (The Noun Project is especially good for vector art icons), and Storyblocks.

Paid Stock Photo Libraries If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the free stock photo sites, there are some excellent paid/subscription sites you can use, such as Shutterstock, iStock Photo, Adobe Stock, and The Noun Project (which has paid tiers with more options than the free version). If you are an Adobe Creative Cloud user, you get a special offer for using Adobe Stock.

Audience Participation Tools No matter whether you are presenting on a stage, in the boardroom, or online via a platform such as Zoom or Teams, adding a little interactivity to the presentation to get the audience involved can be fun for everyone.

Appendix B | Presentation Creation Resources Services such as Kahoot!, Mentimeter, and AhaSlides allow you to create interactive quizzes and questions that you can easily invite attendees to access from their phones. When used carefully, these services can inject an element of fun and interactivity into a presentation to gauge the audience’s sentiment on your main talking points.

Screen Recording for Demos Earlier in the book, we talked about the idea of recording your demos and adding the videos to a separate slide deck. If you face a demo failure on stage, or failing Wi-Fi, you can switch to the backup slide deck and use the videos instead. The following tools help to easily create and edit these videos.

Camtasia When you talk about screen recording and video editing in the same package, people usually think of Camtasia, which is available for both Windows and MacOS. It allows you to record your screen, webcam, and microphone and offers an exceptionally good editing experience to piece together your video.

ScreenFlow If you are a Mac user, ScreenFlow is a fantastic application that is like Camtasia but offers a more Mac-like application experience. ScreenFlow is the application I use for all my videos and training content. It does essentially the same work as Camtasia and offers a very slick editing experience.

Screenflick If you simply want to record your screen, webcam, and microphone, but you use another video editing package, such as Premier, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve, then Screenflick is just the tool you need. It is a simple and inexpensive utility that will handle the screen-recording tasks with ease; then it lets you use whatever application you want for video editing. Screenflick is a Mac-only utility.

QuickTime If you are a Mac user, you can use the inbuilt QuickTime utility to record your screen. It is a no-frills recording experience, but if you just need to record the screen, it works well.

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I Index A, B

G

Apple iWork’s suite, 108

Geography, 86

Apple. Notes, 108

Google Docs, 108

Azure Key Vault, 25, 66

Google Hangouts, 110

C Call for Papers (CFP), 11, 101 Camtasia, 68, 111

Google Keep, 109 Google Meet, 92

H

COVID-19, 87, 106

Hacking Humans definition, 52 events, 53 techniques, 52

Cue cards, 31

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), 62

D

I, J, K, L

Data-rich presentation style, 21

Instructional presentation, 25

Dot NET Core data security Azure Key Vault, 49–51 definition, 48 developers, 48 software developer, 49

Internet/Wi-Fi contingency planning demo-failure, 65 slide resources local, 65 USB drive, 66, 67

E

Microsoft Dot NET platform, 84

Catchy Talk Title, 42 Cisco Webex, 92

M

Evernote, 109

Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote, 32

F

N

Free-flowing style, 23

Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC), 3

© Stephen Haunts 2022 S. Haunts, Powerful Presentations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8138-3

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Index

O

definition, 20 free-flowing, 23 instructional, 25 motivational, 24 visual, 20, 21

OneNote, 108 Online talks, 86 Online Talks and Webinars COVID-19 pandemic, 87 lighting, 89 public speaking, 86, 90 software development conference, 89, 90 speakers, 89 speaking online, 87 standing desk, 88 visualize audience, 88 Open Broadcast System, 90

P Pluralsight, 1 PowerPoint, 108 Presentation audience, 14 creating call to action, 38 creation process data, 19 goal, 17 information gathering/ research, 18, 19 script/slide, 15, 16 subject/problem, 16, 17 cue cards, 31, 32 definition, 13 design elements, 40 outline, 28, 29 problems, 13 research, 27, 28 scripting, 30, 31 slide, 39 slides animation, 36 audience, 37 definition, 32 images/diagrams/clutter, 35 reduce text, 32–34 template, 34 style, 40 authority, 26 data-rich, 21–23

Presentation creation resources audience participation tool, 111 free stock photo libraries, 110 online video platforms, presentations, 109, 110 paid stock photo libraries, 110 research tools, 108, 109 screen recording, 111 slide creation tools, 107 Public speaking anxiety, 3 attract audience, 2 benefits authority, field, 10, 11 communication skills, 7 critical thinking, 5 networking/new connection, 7, 8 performance skills, 9 personal satisfaction, 6 self-confidence, 6 skills/driving change, 9 travel, 8 communication skills, 93 definition, 4, 91, 93 events, 104 internet connection, 102 NDC, 3 paid, 104, 105 people interruption, 103 PowerPoint, 106 presentation, 2, 11, 96–98, 100 professional conferences, 101 projector, 102 slides, 98, 99 square breathing, 94 synopsis, 95 TED speaker, 94, 100 tools, 91

Q QWERTY keys, 21

Index

R

lessening, 79, 80 motivator, 79 presentation, 81, 82 self-confidence, 81 square breathing, 80 audience, 72 event venue, 74 HDMI adapters, 71 speakers, 85 on stage create impression, 77, 78 make eye contact, audience, 75 public speaking, 76 reaffirm, 76 voice to back room, 75 technical difficulties, 73 technique, 85 visualization, 72

Request for Papers (RFP), 11 Robotic or monotone, 99

S ScreenFlow, 111 Screen-recording application, 68 Social engineering, 52 Software development-based talks, 65 Synopsis closing statement, 44 definition, 41, 42 focus/self-motivation, 44–47 initial hook, 43 structure, 42

T, U Talk and slides audience, 62 creating video, 56 gathering feedback/improve performance, 64 physical delivery, 57, 58 preperformance rituals, 58–60 presentation, 61, 63, 70 presentation software, 55 public speaking, 56 timing, 62 Talk, delivering anxiety audience, 83, 84

Teleprompters, 30 Three-act structure, 14

V VGA adapter, 92 Visualization, 72

W, X, Y Webex, 110 Webinar, 86

Z Zoom, 92, 109

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