How to Start Your Talk
I’m planning my first talk at a design conference and am doing what every “first time” speaker does — desperately hoping I don’t screw it up.
Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of practice: As a classroom teacher, I was essentially giving 5 talks a day, 180 days a year, for 8 years, which comes out to around 7,200 talks, or around 6,000 hours of practice in front of a sometimes-hostile audience. So I spent a lot of time thinking about how to present effectively, how to engage an audience, how to motivate people to participate in collaborative tasks, etc.
As a result, I have high expectations when I go to a talk or workshop, especially at a major conference. At every conference I go to, I quickly go through the whole slate of sessions and apply a set of heuristics to winnow down the hundreds of talks available into the handful which are most likely be good.
Over the years, I noticed a set of behaviors that separate the “professionals” (good-to-excellent presenters) from the “novices” (people who, regardless of their talent, intellect, and all-around good-personhood, couldn’t hold an audience’s attention for 20 minutes).
So, in case anyone else is wrestling with the age-old question of “How can I avoid screwing this talk up?”, here’s the big question you need to ask yourself:
Is this talk about you, or is it about your audience?
Every slide, every index card, every moment you plan, are you thinking about how it meets your needs, or how it meets the needs of the audience?
This question informs your whole talk, starting with the very first slide — novices start out giving their biography. “I work at [such-and-such]. I got my start at [this other company], worked there for a few years, then went to [blankity blank], where we successfully launched [blah.com], which had [1 hojillion] monthly visitors…” and on and on and on.
Don’t do this.
“But I need to build credibility so the audience takes me seriously!”
WRONG. That’s a trap — if you haven’t met the minimum threshold for credibility already, they’re in a different session or already savaging you on Twitter. Everyone in the room is ready to hear what you have to say — so stop reading your resume and say it!
“But my achievements are super-impressive!”
ALSO WRONG. If they are that impressive, people already know them and you are boring them. If people don’t already know, they won’t care... yet. Feel free to weave these achievements in as they become relevant to the content of your talk, but spare everyone the up-front laundry list.
“So if they don’t care who I am, or what I’ve done, how do I start the talk?”
Well, there’s one thing people care about when a talk is starting, and that’s the same thing you’ve been asking yourself as you prepare: “Is this talk going to suck?”
This is where the ubiquitous “start with a joke” advice comes from. People like to laugh. If you’re funny, and can show it in the first 30 seconds, everyone will relax.
One of my favorite openings happened in church. We had a visiting divinity student who gave a sermon on Ephesians 2 or something. He was Chinese, ok-but-not-great English proficiency, and had been in America for a grand total of 2 days. And he KILLED it. He started with a long story about how nervous he was to be giving a sermon in English, so to prepare, he went around soliciting advice from everyone he knew. All his American mentors told him the classic “start with a joke” advice (“about Ephesians?” he wondered) while all his Chinese mentors gave him the equally classic “start with an apology” advice. He talked about how torn he was between the traditional Asian approach to showing respect for the audience with an apology to the standard American approach of being a wiseass, mused about how to bridge the cultural gap, described his own indecisiveness and frustration, then wrapped up with: “in conclusion, I apologize for not starting this sermon with a joke.”
That was over twenty years ago, and while I don’t remember a single thing he said about Ephesians, I remember his delivery of that punchline.
But you don’t need to start with a joke.
And for the love of everything, don’t start with a bad one. (Like the guy who ripped out an awkward “women suck, huh?” joke as his icebreaker and lost the room immediately.)
Show some personality. Play some music, have a goofball title slide, open with a quote from your favorite book, tell a rambling but endearing anecdote about how nervous you are to be speaking, whatever. Just make sure you’re viewing it through the lens of “If I was in the audience, would this convince me this talk will be worthwhile?”
I’ve seen a speaker start the talk by pointing to the exit and saying: “This is going to be dry and boring, so feel free to get up and leave at any point, you won’t offend me.” This was WAY more reassuring than the standard “who I am” spiel — it showed she had empathy and respect for the audience and considered their needs foremost. (It was also a lie — while technical at times, the talk was very engaging.)
Even if you don’t like jokes, don’t have personality, and know you’ll be too nervous to pull off any unconventional openings, never fear! Repeat after me: “I’m [YOUR NAME] and I’m going to talk about [TITLE OF YOUR TALK].” Then hit “next slide” and watch your audience visibly relax, assured that whatever else goes wrong, at least they are in the correct room and the speaker isn’t going to waste their time.
A few bonus quick tips for the talk itself:
- Avoid “I…” statements
Save the “I learned…”, “I feel…”, “I find…” statements for your therapist. If the content you’re delivering can’t be framed as “You should…”, “We need…”, “People can…”, “It is important to…” etc., consider how to make that content relevant to the people you’re trying to reach. - Use notes (not your slides)
If you are looking at your slides, you’re not engaging with your audience. Also, if your slides have that much information on them, they are too dense. Which brings me to… - Your slides are too dense
Unless you’ve done this a lot, there’s inevitably too much stuff on your slides. Don’t stress your audience out — go through and cut text at least twice. - Rehearse with a timer
Use a mirror or a patient friend. Yes, it’s lame, but it’ll make the actual talk go much better. Revise your notes after every few run-throughs. Don’t be the person that goes way over the allotted time. - As you rehearse, stomp on your own foot every time you say “um…”
You can do this during the talk too, it’ll liven things up! Seriously, if you are mindful as you rehearse, these tics will go away, you will feel better about yourself, and your audience will love you.
If you’re brave enough to get up on stage and put yourself out there, you’re awesome and should be proud. Public speaking can be terrifying, but like everything else, intentional practice is your friend — good luck!
Let me know if you have any other big “novice/professional” indicators!
Thanks for reading! If you made it this far, please clap so others can see it as well. You can see more about how we do things at purposeux.com, email me directly at erik@purposeux.com, or follow me on Twitter, where I’m much less verbose.
