Crafted to (im)perfection
The art of delivering conference talks that people actually listen to!
From attending zero conferences pre-pandemic to being a speaker and panellist at several global conferences and events, it is an honour to continuously learn & share my (mis)adventures in public. With a continuous feedback loop, these events not only allow me to improve my public speaking skills & technical knowledge, but I am able to do so while (hopefully) helping others who are in a similar place that I am/was in.
The first step, of course, in this whole journey is to submit a CFP. A CFP or call for proposal briefs the program committee about the talk you intend to deliver & the value it will add to the event. I don’t think I could add a novel perspective to the existing brilliant articles, Twitter threads, and talks already covering the topic. However, I try to offer MY unique outlook on the subject and elaborate the potential benefits I could bring to the audience. As a program committee member, I know that this is something we actively look out for because rehashing content that is already available on the internet does not really bring value to an attendee of the event.
Assuming your talk does get accepted (congratulations!) and you do decide to present, here are some things that have helped me deliver decent presentations. I am no Yoda and I’m continuously improving too, so there are no quick fixes or magic involved!
1. Drafting the flow
Given the virtual nature of most conferences, we have so much flexibility in the way we deliver content and the kind of content we deliver. I remember being blown away by Justin Garrison’s talk at KubeCon NA last year or even this one by Emily Freeman at GitHub Universe, more recently. Production quality and props notwithstanding, the delivered content was extremely captivating and accessible. Partly because, the narrative felt seamless and there was an underlying structure to the way it flowed. This is something I have always aimed to do with my presentations.
The hero’s journey described by Celeste Horgan in her talk at this year’s KubeCon EU is a great template for documentation & talks alike. However, it might not always be possible to incorporate a story-like aspect to every talk you deliver and that is completely fine! The aim is to customize the structure of your talk in a way that’s most logical and appropriate for the target audience.
Most of my talks so far have been about getting started in open source or talking about my experiences with various aspects of the projects I have worked with. Therefore I am always able to structure my own narrative by adding context at the beginning about where I am coming from & what I intend for the audience to take away via this experience. It probably is not the BEST trick in the playbook, but sets realistic expectations about what value the audience should expect to derive by the end of the talk.
Additionally, showing people how it is done is often more valuable than rattling off theoretical concepts from a slide. Any demonstrations, live or recorded, will only aid you in further illustration of the point you’re trying to make. Oftentimes, this is not a possibility but whenever you can it is recommended to incorporate them into the structure of your presentation.
2. Sliding down the slippery slope
Slides are great for driving points home and not for writing essays. While I am a huge fan of writing & rambling endlessly, I realized pretty early on that nobody was interested in reading essays AND listening to me. Plus, if they had to read an essay, they’d have actually picked up a book or read an article instead of attending an event.
Using bullet points for any written content on your slide and making it more visually appealing is literally the first unwritten rule in the handbook. But it’s also one that we forget frequently.
What has helped me is actually making a rough draft of what I want to speak about in the form of bullet points. These tend to be long sentences but shorter than the paragraphs I used to write on my slides before I began employing this method. These sentences/bullet points are then further trimmed down so that they capture the gist of what I intend to speak about and then make their way to the slides.
3. Content, content, content
I’m terrible at extempore speaking. If you ever put me on the spot and ask me to speak, be rest assured I will ramble endlessly. Every talk is partially or fully rehearsed at least a couple of times before it is out in the open. But again, that’s just me. You might be great at extempore speaking and maybe this rule doesn’t apply to you!
While drafting slides in #2, I already have a rough idea of what I should be speaking about. Fleshing it out further is often the only extra effort I need to be putting in at this stage along with rehearsing it. Again, an exact word-for-word rehearsing is never done because I know I will never be able to learn it by rote.
4. Have fun and be honest!
I know public speaking can be intimidating. Even more so, when it is in a virtual setting because you cannot actually see your audience. But I’ve discovered that if you’re going live on a stream or are presenting in real time, it makes total sense to engage as much with the audience as much as possible. While setting aside some time for questions is always a recommended practice, during longer workshops that I’ve been part of we’ve tried to incorporate surprise fun questions in the middle of our sessions to spruce things up a bit.
And it’s okay if you don’t know the answer to something. Yes, you are the subject matter expert on the topic you’re talking about. But acknowledging that you do not know something (when you don’t, of course!) will never make you seem less of a knowledgeable person. We’re all learning!
5. Ask for feedback
In real time, feedback was as easy as looking at your audience and gauging their reactions in real time. This becomes slightly more complicated in a virtual setting. Of course, there are communication media within the conference environment via which feedback gets conveyed. However the impact is more difficult to assess given that you’re never sure how it went.
Plus, if you factor in the fact that I still cringe at my own recorded voice I’m definitely not the best judge of my own work. Which is why, I think it is absolutely necessary to seek out feedback so that you can improve. I’ve found that running it by your peers helps. Sort-of like peer programming but for presentations!
Fun fact: The very first conference talk I delivered was qualitatively TERRIBLE. It was recorded at 4 AM in the morning after multiple technical difficulties and it ended up having a distorted sound. This was also the first event I recorded for during the testing phase for a COVID scare at my place, last year. Recently, life came full circle when my talk at KubeCon NA about Getting Involved with the K8s Release Shadow program ended up facing the same issues on a completely different device!
Even with all of this preparation, there are times I completely botch things up or the number of people tuned in are lesser or things go horribly wrong. And that’s okay! The best part about learning in public is that you get to improve over time and see how far you have come.
I’m a sucker for lists & keep one for all my speaking commitments uploaded on YouTube. I also aim to continue documenting my journey here and on Twitter. You can follow me on both avenues to stay updated with the latest goss.
Edit: Here’s a list of some great resources I found after this article was published. I believe these will be beneficial to everyone who applies ☺
- This article by Kaslin Fields: https://kaslin.rocks/apply-to-speak-kubecon-cfp/
