LEARNING

What I learned from speaking at CITC

If you looked at my presentations from around 5 months ago compared to my presentations now, you’d be shocked.

Fortunately for my pride, I won’t put it here. (I’m literally so close to deleting the video, but personal reflection, you know?)

Hint: They absolutely sucked. (Nope! I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m simply being truthful.)

So I’ve set myself a goal. In June I’ll look at my most recent presentation compared to the ones from September, and I want to be shocked. I want to shock myself.

Okay, no. I’m not saying I’ll be world-class or something. However, I do want to feel proud of the change I’ve made.

My Mindset

But, you may be wondering, how did I improve so fast?

What was the secret? It was my mindset. Okay, no. I’m not talking about the buzzwords your school slaps on a paper, where they talk about “new mindsets” and “learner profiles”, thinking that’ll be enough to make you a future billionaire.

For months, I was stuck in a mindset that I sucked at presenting. Okay, I’m not saying that I was amazing and I was failing to accept that, but I’m saying that I would have been better if I had something people like to call “Boss Mentality.”

Let me phrase it differently. I thought of presenting in a room of smart people as scary, and I underestimated myself. I thought I would fail and embarrass myself, but my mindset has changed since then.

This time, before presenting at the ConnectIT Conference, I didn’t think about possibly embarrassing myself. I thought of how exciting an opportunity it was, and I changed my nervousness into excitement (something my amazing TKSquad members Nyla and Anupra helped me do).

Shoutout to them — they write primarily about biology and AI, and their articles are amazing, check them out!

Tip number 1: Try to change that nervousness into excitement. It’s so hard, but here’s something that might help. Stress is a killer. *cue science-y explanation* Stress proves to have long-lasting effects on telomeres, meaning the more stressed you get in your daily life, the shorter your telomeres become.

Telomeres are essentially dispensable bits of DNA at the ends of your chromosomes. When they run out, we have senescent cells. Senescent cells are cells that are in the state between dead and alive (zombie-like) and cause aging. Cool fact! *resumes article*

4 sentences

If a friend walked up to a random person and asked them to describe your presentation, you shouldn’t want them to say:

“Oh, yeah. Their presentation was about xx.”

You should want them to say:

“Oh, yeah. A line that was super captivating from their presentation was xx. I loved the part where xx!”

Tip number 2: Center your presentation around 4 lines.

You want viewers to remember certain lines and moments from your presentation. This is why you should center your presentation around 4 lines.

I remember at my first presentation, I asked a friend of mine what he thought. He said something like “It wasn’t terrible, I guess?”

After CITC, my friends congratulated me and told me I did well. I was proud of my substantial growth.

If I was doing a presentation on motivation, I would perhaps choose the lines: Your motivation shapes the way you think, we define success as happiness but what is happiness?, and two more that I can’t think of at the moment.

You should model your entire presentation around those 4 lines. Then, the viewer will remember those lines, and that’s what will impact them.

Otherwise, they’ll only be impacted by a random bit of the presentation, and you can’t control that.

Enthusiasm

Nobody’s going to be interested in your presentation if you aren’t (or don’t at least look interested). It doesn’t matter if you were forced to do this presentation and you really really don’t want to do it.

Find something you like within the topic or something fun about it and focus on that primarily.

Tip Number 3 : Be enthusiastic and interested.

Let’s pretend (or not, this may be true) your true calling is artificial intelligence. But you’re forced to do a presentation about a type of worm. Integrate AI into this type of worm. Talk about that.

What if you can’t? Again, doesn’t matter. There is always something that will pique your interest concerning a topic. You just have to find it.

When you do that, or find something cool about it, look interested! Showcase your passion and interest in the subject and others will be interested.

Emotion

Robots are cool, they are. I promise. Sometimes they’re so cool that we want to be like them. That’s fine, I won’t pop your bubble.

However, there’s one thing of theirs that we shouldn’t mimic. Their monotone speech style.

Have you ever actually noticed that they never seem interested in what they’re talking about it? Keep in mind, they don’t have to be. They’re robots. However, you should be.

Tip number 4: Pick an emotion. Be consistent, maybe change it once or twice, but only if you need to.

No, this isn’t a repeat of my last point, it’s completely different. You should have emotion in your voice, but don’t constantly change your emotions.

People would be confused if you went sad-happy-serious every 2 seconds, but pick one emotion. Unless it isn’t consistent for that certain part, and then subtly change it.

Keep Going

If you make a mistake or stumble, keep going. Don’t stop. It looks much more professional and good if you stumble over words and pretend like it never happened than if you make a big deal about it and freak out.

Tip number 5: Keep going even if you screw up.

If you click the wrong slide, if your pacing goes awry, if whatever happens, don’t worry. Subtly fix or ignore it and keep on going!

I don’t have much to say about this, except KEEP GOING.

Don’t be a slave to your slides

Don’t stare at your slides, and don’t be their slave. If someone asks you to do your presentation without slides, you should be fine.

However, you shouldn’t have them be COMPLETELY irrelevant.

Tip number 6: Don’t be a slave to your slides.

Have them add value to your presentation but not be completely necessary to make the presentation amazing. YOU should make the presentation amazing.

Also, this means that if your clicker isn’t working or you’re transitioning from slide to slide, don’t stop and look at the slides. Like I said in my ‘Keep Going’ section, if it doesn’t work, keep going.

Eye Contact

You’d much rather watch a confident presenter who looks you in the eye than one who’s scared of you and super shifty. I know I would.

Tip number 7: Maintain eye contact and keep your audience engaged.

So look your audience in the eyes, smile, and treat it like a conversation. Treat it like you’re explaining it to your best friend who just can’t wrap her head around why this cool type of worm can levitate instead of nervously explaining it to a crowd of people who probably have tuned out by now anyway due to the lack of engagement.

This keeps your crowd in the mood and engaged! Don’t be afraid to ask some members of your crowd certain questions to keep it interactive!

If you sense your audience isn’t engaged or doesn’t care anymore, try to engage them. Suddenly start speaking in a super loud voice, make them laugh, don’t be afraid to try new things!

Legitimize yourself

Tip number 8: LEGITIMIZE YOURSELF!

It does not matter how young you are. I REPEAT, it does not matter how young you are. Your presentation can be bomb even if you’re ten.

The only problems with being younger are others underestimating you and not having enough experiences.

Neither of these need to stop you from having a great presentation. You can deliver a bomb presentation and blow people away.

In retrospect, if you’re 30 and deliver an amazing presentation, that doesn’t mean people won’t be blown away.

I wanted to thank everyone at ConnectIT there for making it such an AMAZING time!

Shoutout to :
- Jen for giving this opportunity and being amazing!
- Shifra for delivering an awesome presentation!
- Arisa for delivering a bomb presentation!
- Stephanie for delivering an amazing presentation!
- Teddy for being a great host!!

I had a great time, and I linked my video earlier, but I’ll put it here as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlmrSSOgd8w&feature=youtu.be

Key Takeaways (this is me compiling all the tips for those skimmers (I see you 👀))

• Try to change that nervousness into excitement!
• Center your presentation around 4 lines.
• Be enthusiastic and interested.
• Pick an emotion.
• Keep going even if you screw up.
• Don’t be a slave to your slides.
• Maintain eye contact and keep your audience engaged.
• Legitimize yourself.

Thank you for reading my article! If you liked it, check out my other articles!