11 Tips For Public Speaking & Online Meetups
One of the best ways to grow you personal or company branding is to talk about your experience and knowledge at conferences or online meetups.
This is not just for personal gain, as it’s extremely helpful to the community — people learn from your stories, they expand their knowledge pool and get insight into how things work in other companies and teams.
So, you might be tempted to give presentations at conferences, or meetups — no matter if they’re online or in-person. But how do you make sure you do it well?
Here are all the tips & tricks I’ve learned throughout my career as a public speaker at conferences & meetups which had anywhere from a dozen of people, to several hundreds! :]
#1 Always try to build a story and flow for your talk
Talks are usually just a bunch of information dropped onto the listeners, and this means if you don’t have a nice flow or story behind the information, the audience will get bored and lose out on the information.
So try to build a story or a flow of the talk, that moves from one topic/example to the other, in a meaningful way.
A good example of how I do this is in the following talk:
If you watch the talk, you’ll see how I slowly build from one component to the other, and in turn present how they work with one other, how the bigger picture is formed, and what each component does in general.
The story there was to demystify coroutines — explain how they aren’t as complex as people think, and how it all makes sense in the end.
So I take the talk one component at a time — to keep a nice pace. I also tie in the previous component, with the next one, and explain how they work together. And finally, I show the bigger picture and some examples.
If you don’t have a good flow for your talk, everything you say will feel out of place and disjointed.
#2 Learn it by heart, so you don’t need slides
Learning things by heart is usually not as good — it’s better to learn with understanding. But when it comes to conferences and meetups, you usually want to learn the talk as a conversation, or as a story, as mentioned before.
If you prepare your flow, and your story, you can easily remember how the story goes, so you don’t need to use slides.
If you keep looking behind you or looking at the computer in front of you, you won’t look as good of a speaker as if you were just sharing knowledge and focusing on the flow.
For example, what people usually do which I find to be very bad, is they introduce something and present a slide. Then they read one bullet point in the slide at a time, at a reading pace, and they add a bit more explanation or none at all.
If you came to a talk to read slides, you didn’t have to come to the talk, you could’ve just sent the audience the slides, and they’d read the slides themselves, right?
Try to avoid just blatantly reading through the slides — instead, try to show slides to the audience, and express your thoughts on the part of the story you are currently in.
Then when you finish the story for that slide, you can do an overview, and read through bullet points just to repeat what you’ve said, in a more condensed way.
By telling a story and not reading, you increase the connection with the audience, and you can express more with your thoughts, than the words that are written down.
#3 Focus on your topic, don’t stray away
What happens in a good number of talks is that the person starts talking about one thing, one topic in their talk, and then gets carried away and goes into a different topic.
That’s also why most people answer questions at the end of their talks — so they don’t stray away in the middle of the story.
Don’t stray away or start explaining things to extreme depths. This just creates confusion, and people won’t be able to follow/repeat the knowledge, using the slides (as that second topic is probably not on the slide).
Make sure you’re focused, and if you do mention something like “another thing people can look up”, make sure to add a link to the slide and say: “you can check this link”, instead of you explaining it.
Your goal is to deliver one topic, not all of them.
#4 Show what you’re talking about
Whenever you’re talking about example usage, or how something “can” “should”, “could be” or “is” used, show an example.
A good number of talks say: “Hey, if you want to build a custom XYZ, you can do so by doing ABC”, and then move onto the next slide.
Again, users can’t visualize everything in their heads. Most importantly, not everyone is on the same level of skill, so they won’t be able to visualize at all.
Always include examples in your code if you can — small snippets, not full examples — and show the most important things. But also provide external resources for anything you might’ve missed or didn’t have the time to express.
#5 Don’t do live demos unless you absolutely have to
Live demos are the bane of public speaking, as something always goes wrong, unless you’ve spent a ton of time preparing.
My best advice here is to just have screenshots/code snippets in slides, and go over them instead, paired up with images of emulators of how it “would look like” if you run the code. Or diagrams that explain an algorithm or something that’s happening.
It’s much easier to do so, and easier if you animate the things using Keynote or another slidedeck app!
But if you have to do live demos, it’s best to 100% focus on the demo and not switch between different types of content, such as slides, videos, demos, etc, as it causes complexity and confusion!
Note: I’ve been to many talks where the person did a live demo and the talks were amazing. That being said, those talks are well-prepared with many dry-runs and speakers usually have an exact set of instructions and a very narrow use case they teach.
So live demos are not to be 100% avoided, but make sure you do them correctly.
#6 Explain everything, but also only as much as you need
Most people have zero or very little knowledge of the topic you’re talking about— that’s kind of the reason they come to your talk. Most people have even less knowledge about any secondary topics in your talk.
E.g. in my Coroutines talk, I don’t just talk about coroutines. I spend a good amount talking about routines, the program stack, processes, context switching etc.
This is because I can’t say: “Coroutines are routines which can be run in parallel with other code, hence the name co-routine”, and expect everyone to understand what that is.
Probably 90–95% of the audience won’t even know what a routine is. Or they know what it is, but don’t know it’s called a routine.
Make sure you always explain everything you’re saying, but only just enough for people to understand, and don’t go too deep, to lose track and fall into the trap of #3.
#7 You can’t please everyone
There’s this rule of a third that says that about 1/3 of people won’t like whatever content you create, 1/3 will be indifferent, or won’t hate nor be absolutely enthusiastic about it, and 1/3 will just love it so much as it will be mind-opening to them.
You can’t please everyone. Don’t try to. Aim for one target group/skill level/audience, and don’t worry about the rest.
And when building content, make sure you have your target audience in mind. You can add some leeway and curate to let’s say 10% of the audience below or over your target audience, but you can’t please everyone.
For example, my Coroutines talk in Russia had an average grade of about 3.9–4.1/5 (from what I remember), in about 150–200 surveys.
That’s a good grade, right? Great even.
But I still had people giving me 1s and 2s saying: “This is the most basic information”, or “this talk was useless”, and people saying: “I couldn’t understand anything”, or “this was in English and it was hard for me to follow it”, or even: “I expected Kotlin Flow here, but it was just the fundamentals”.
This is because those were people who are either too knowledgeable about the topic, and above the target audience, or people who are below the target, and just couldn’t keep up. This was also because my topic was not “Kotlin Flow”, but “Deep dive into the Kotlin Coroutines API”. So those were also people I didn’t target.
However, I also had a lot of 4s and 5s saying: “this talk was amazing”, “I learned so much”, “Such a great overview” and other things because I hit home for those folks, in the target audience +/- 10%.
Focus on the good you did, and not on the small number of bad things/reviews.
#8 It’s okay not to know everything
This ties into questions and follow-ups, and topics that are very close to the topic you’re talking about.
For questions I don’t know the answer to, I say I don’t know the answer to, or I say, “I may not know/don’t know about XYZ, but I would suggest trying ABC or DEF out”.
Unless you’re Jake Wharton, who’s a literal deity in the Android & Kotlin community, you can’t know the answer to everything, and you shouldn’t! :]
There is enough content and topics for everyone to be an expert in something, just stick to your area and that should be good enough.
Note: Huge props to Jake, who’s been a limitless source of inspiration and motivation!
#9 Practice makes perfect
This is something that I do and don’t, depending on how comfortable I am with the topic/talk, but I always say it is important — practice your talks.
Run them 2–3–5 times by yourself, by others, do dry-runs, demos, and other ways of practicing the talk. It will help you dial it in, as mentioned in #2, but it will also let you revise the topics you talk about, before giving the talk.
That way you can easily know which parts to cut out, which to add in, which to expand, or which to shrink and dilute.
It also lets you be more confident about the talk/event in the future, which are my two last points!
#10 It’s okay to be nervous
I’ve given talks to groups of 5–10 people. I’ve also given talks to groups of 20–50 people. And some of my biggest talks had 300–700 people in the audience.
I can safely say there wasn’t a single live/public speaking engagement, and even an online engagement, in which I didn’t sweat my butt off, or I didn’t almost faint because of the stress and sweat and nausea. (Well it’s hasn’t been as rough lately!)
And I’m pretty green, I may have 30–40–50 talks in my career. People who have been giving talks for 10 + years feel the same. Most of them acknowledge that on Twitter or their blogs!
It’s important to not worry about the talk, and not worry if the audience will know you’re nervous. Because they will! :]
But they’re also nervous about the talk, as they’re sitting in a crowd, or connect to an online meeting with a bunch of other folks, and everyone’s insecure and uncomfortable, so don’t worry about it.
There are a few ways to mitigate this effect, and no, doing a few shots before the talk, or imagining people naked is not one of them! :]
- Practice your talks. If you know everything by heart, there’s nothing to be worried about. Just think of it as a conversation, with lots of energy and enthusiasm about the topic.
- Self-motivation. Small things, like actually realizing that even though there’s a 100 people in your audience, not one of them actually stood up to talk about the topic. Instead, you did! Be a bit self-conscious/conceited, at least before the talk, to bring yourself up and lose the stress of presenting anything.
- Know your worth. You know probably more about the topic than 90–95% of the crowd, otherwise, they wouldn’t have come to the talk. And, on top of it all, think about the feeling of joy and overwhelming positive energy you’ll get, the adrenaline rush, of doing the talk, and finishing with a huge round of applause.
- Be proud of your work. There are only a few things in this world that are a better feeling than doing something you’re proud of, and getting huge props at the end of your work. And in speaking engagements, it’s even more amplified by the number of people present, by the huge impact you can have and much more.
#11 Be happy!
And my final point is not actually about public speaking or meetups, it’s about life and anything you do or feel passionate about! :]
Whatever you do in life, make sure you’re getting something out of it that makes you happy!
Public speaking & community engagement is often very altruistic and selfless, but it’s important to know that you’re not just sharing knowledge and teaching people, you’re also learning a lot of skills, lots of people skills and soft skills, and you’re getting invaluable experience that will propel your careers! :]
On top of that, it’s important to know your limits. Please don’t burn out by applying to too many conferences, or by pushing yourself too much.
I’ve learned this the hard way, and since then, I’m much more casual in the community, but I still see my impact and I still get a lot of thanks and acknowledgement from people that learn from me.
That’s it from me folks! I hope these tips & tricks give you a new perspective on what public (or online) speaking can be and how to hack your way to a successful career as a speaker.
Note: I’ve had stage fright since forever, and even in elementary school I couldn’t perform in any of the plays or talk to other kids in the school without being nervous.
I’ve also had huge self-worth complexes and issues, but I powered through them and I’m sure you can too! :]If you need any advice, reach out to me via E-mail at fbabic96@gmail.com, or via LinkedIn on my profile.
