How To Prepare for a Conference Talk — A Subjective Guide

I delivered my first conference talk when I was 36. As you can imagine, I wasn’t a natural. It wasn’t good. And I’m still far from being really good at it but I’d like to hope I’ve improved over the years. Here’s a video from a short one I delivered this year:

Aside: In the beginning of the video above I almost fell on stage. There was a cable going across the stage (as there often are) and before starting I noticed it and made a mental note to pay attention to it so I don’t stumble on it and fall. Obviously, I was subconsciously monitoring my location in relation to the cable which led to this awkward moment ;)

I’ve covered the reasons for speaking at conferences in a chapter of my book “Conferences for Introverts” (you can find the blog post that was the source of the chapter here). But earlier this year I decided to focus on completing a fairly big development project before I do another conference talk. So I stopped submitting proposals. My final scheduled talk was in November and I don’t have anything on my conferences speaking calendar going forward.

Having said that, I plan to return to speaking once I complete the project at hand. So, I wanted to document my talk preparation process as a “note to my future self” and, hopefully, others will find it useful as well.

The Proposal

When I was starting out I felt like I need to have a talk more or less ready before I even start proposing it to conferences. This is, obviously, the wrong way to do it.

Just figure out a topic you want to talk about or even learn. Yes, it’s totally fine to submit a proposal for a subject you are not an expert in, yet, but are willing to learn. As long as the topic is within your reach and is a good match for your target conferences, it’s totally fine and, I’d say, even preferable to submit proposals before you start working on the talk’s actual content.

When you are not a “name brand” speaker, talk’s title and description matter a lot. It should be exciting for conference attendees and conference content committees. Aim for something exciting and a tiny bit pretentious. The key is to somehow manage to catch organizer’s attention while not going as far as knowing that your listeners will be disappointed by title/content dissonance.

You may also vary and adapt the title and your bio based on the themes of the conferences your are submitting to.

The Outline

Once I’ve submitted the first proposal for the talk, I create a section for it in OneNote and start saving relevant bits of information in there as I stumble upon them in my everyday activities.

The first page of that section is usually a bullet list outline for the future talk.

And this is where I stop until I get the first invite to deliver this talk at a conference.

The Slides

After I get the first gig for the talk lined up, I start working on slides. During the first iteration I just translate my outline into a PowerPoint deck. Then I sprinkle it with relevant images, quotes, and apply subtle animations where it makes sense. I try to make slides look good to the best of my limited design abilities.

I’ve used presenter notes in the past but at some point I stopped for the most part (more on this later). I make sure that I save my slides in OneDrive so I kind of have instant backup and can also review them on the phone later. I also export the slides in PDF (just in case I have to present from someone else’s computer) and upload everything to a USB drive.

Note to self: don’t use year in directory names as some talks may be in demand for more than a year ;)

The Demos

Demos is where you are most likely to fail on stage. In recent years I’ve changed my attitude towards live demos quite a bit. As I see speakers needlessly failing with live demos or demonstrating their [lack of] typing skills under pressure, I decided that my current stance is to only do live demos where the “liveness” of it is adding substantial value. Otherwise, just put the code on the slides — it’s fine!

When I do live demos I make sure that I have versions of the files for each step. I think it’s great to use git branches for each step — something I will definitely try in the future if I do more elaborate demos.

When I feel that live(ish) coding could be impactful, I use AutoHotkey to imitate it.

I also make sure to write down steps of the demo in a bullet list and print it out (using a large enough font).

The Script

Unless I’m doing a multi-hour workshop (something I haven’t done in many years), I write down complete sentences of what I want to say for each slide. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t just stare at a slide and think about what I’m going to say. Writing it down in complete sentences brings the structure to the whole exercise. Not being a native English speaker makes this even more worthwhile. For me the script is around 7 pages of text for a 45 minute talk.

To clarify, the script is not for learning it by heart but rather for structuring my own thoughts AND for making practicing the talk easier.

Once done with the script I send it to my ebook reader and/or print it. I will read it before bed and on the flight once it gets closer to the event.

After that, I launch Audacity and read the script into a microphone. I upload the MP3 to my phone. I will listen to it at 2x speed using Music Speed Changer multiple times closer to the event.

The Checklist

I have a checklist with all the pre-talk basics on it. The common things like put phone in flight mode, PC in Focus Mode, and talk-specific things like reset the demos, etc.

I print it out in a large-enough font.

The Rehearsal

Psychologically this is the most difficult thing for me to do properly. Talking to myself for an hour (and multiple times) somehow doesn’t feel right. But this is something you absolutely have to do. It’s great if you have a group of friends or coworkers who are willing to listen to your unpolished delivery but even in that case it’s unlikely they are willing to do it more than once.

If my schedule is not really tight I often do dry runs in a hotel room. Bringing an HDMI cable so you can connect your laptop to room’s TV is a good idea (provided it’s possible at all). It’s great to have conditions that are as close to the actual venue as possible and projecting your slides to a second screen is always a good idea to avoid unnecessary surprises.

The reality is that you can never be sure what the technical setup will be (even if you got a good outline of it upfront) so you can’t be 100% certain how the stage will be setup, whether you’ll get a presenter monitor in front of you etc. That’s why I stopped doing presenter notes — you can never rely on them to be available/readable and it’s better to just not have them at all than suddenly lose your crutch at the worst possible moment. Additionally, if you are doing demos it’s best to have your laptop mirroring your screen (meaning no Presenter Mode) than extending it.

What are your secrets?

So this is pretty much how I prepare for conference talks. I definitely don’t do all of these for every single talk (especially when I’m doing the same talk for the Nth time) but I try to follow these steps for the best results.

Is your process similar? Care to share some of your tricks?