Page to Stage (part 4): the speech
Hi! My name is Oleksandr Leushchenko. I’m a senior staff engineer at Tide and GDE in Flutter and Dart. Since 2012 I have been speaking at small local meetups and big international conferences. Several companies invited me to host workshops for their employees and share my experience about where I’m looking for speaking topics, how I prepare my presentations, what I’m doing on stage, etc. This series of articles is the summary of what I’m talking about in such workshops:
In previous chapters, we discussed where to find a topic and how to prepare your speech. In this last part, we will talk about how to apply your talk and what to do during and after the presentation.
How to submit a topic? 📝
Preparation for submitting the topic 🏋️♂️
Before submitting a topic, you should write two versions of your biography: a compact one and a full one. For example:
- Paul is a turner with 15 years of experience. For the past ten years, he has been working at the “BlaBlaPin” factory, making pins.
- Paul was a web developer for 20 years before his interests changed to turning. During his 15-year experience, he managed to work for such world-famous brands as “MicroPins”, “Tokayota”, “Faceturn”. Paul is currently working as a senior turner at the “BlaBlaPin” factory. He is the founder of the turning club in the city of Old York and is a permanent mentor at “Kids in Turning”. In his free time, Paul paints and develops backends with Ruby.
It is very important always to have it at hand, I will tell you why in a minute.
You’ll also need a photo. It must be at least 1024x1024 in size, PNG, without a transparent background, and must show your face. This photo is part of your brand, so don’t submit a photo with your favorite car, where you eat barbecue, or a photo where you are with your best friends. The photo should be a bit more interesting than the one in the passport, but do not overdo it.
Prepare 2–3 topics at the “Mind Map” stage. These topics should be of different levels of complexity — at least one for a broad audience and one for a highly specialized one. DO NOT write code for the demo project, and especially don’t prepare the presentation right away! According to Parkinson’s law, the work will take up all the time it has been allocated. If you immediately start making a bunch of presentations, likely, none of them will ever be finished because you will constantly want to change something in the slides or the demo project. You will get tired and demotivated because you spent a lot of effort for nothing. In the end, you will never submit these topics. From my experience, the mind map level is sufficient to pitch an idea. Changes at this level are made in seconds, unlike changes in a presentation. In addition, with the map, you can see the entire presentation zoomed out and hierarchically arranged. This greatly simplifies the changes. Having such a speech plan, the speech itself can be completed in 1–2 weeks.
Where to submit a topic? 🤔
Most conferences have slots for newbie speakers, so don’t be afraid to apply straight away to big well-known conferences. The only obstacle here is you, not your lack of experience or expertise. However, if you are more comfortable speaking to a smaller audience first, invite your colleagues to listen to your speech (this can have a positive effect on your career within the company too). A good option is small local meetups, like those hosted by the GDG community.
Subscribe to the pages of conferences you are interested in on social networks and wait for the CFP (call for papers) opening. Don’t be afraid to submit topics at conferences that you feel underqualified for. If you get seven rejections out of eight, it’s still a win!
Be spontaneous! You must act according to the covenants of the “5 Second Rule” — don’t give yourself time to think! That’s why it’s important to have a bio, photos, and topic descriptions ready. The moment you see CFP — apply immediately, don’t give yourself time to think. You’ll be whining “oh, what was I thinking?”, “I won’t take this one out”, and “I will never perform again” later. It’s all fear of failure.
Remember: if you’re afraid, then you’re one step away from doing something cool.
The last piece of advice is don’t ignore international conferences. Of course, it will be better if you are fluent in the language of your audience, but if your knowledge of the language is mediocre and you can only speak with the help of Google Translate, this is enough. You just need to spend four times more time preparing and memorizing your speech. Do not be nervous, during the speech you will have speaker notes in front of you so that you can write down all complex or unfamiliar words there.
If you are too nervous — write your entire script in speaker notes, quickly read one sentence, look up at the audience and repeat it. Then read again. Do you think speakers don’t do that? Watch talks from big conferences one more time.
Speech 🧑🏫
Five minutes before 🕚
Adrenaline is your ally, not your enemy. It will make you more creative and engaging. At the same time, it physically prepares your body to run away from danger. Running away from the conference, for which you were preparing for so long, probably is not part of your plans. Hence you should get rid of the adrenaline in the muscles. Five minutes before the performance, go to the restroom and squat! You don’t have to pass the squat test, don’t sweat. A few times will be enough. Are you at home preparing for an online performance? Are your hands shaking? Push up!
Because of the excitement, it may even be difficult to speak. To sound better, warm up your jaw and lips. To do this, pull your chin forward several times (careful, don’t do it too hard, we don’t want you to injure yourself). To prepare the lips — take in a full lungful of air, close the lips tightly, and exhale, letting the lips make this funny “pr-rr-rr-rr” sound.
One minute before speaking, get into a superhero pose. Straight back, feet wider than shoulders, hands on hips, elbows to the side, look forward. It is very important!
A superhero pose will give a signal to your body that everything is under control.
It’s okay to worry. All the above exercises will calm your body. Eventually, it will calm your mind, but if you need to switch from fear immediately — tell yourself that you are not afraid but just excited. To be afraid is scary, to be excited is … exciting! A simple interchange of concepts can help. Remember, fear will disappear after your first words. So, be bolder — go on stage!
During the performance 🎤
We go to conferences to learn something new and have fun. No person in the audience thinks “I wish this speaker turned out to be clumsy, and I didn’t learn anything from their topic”. The audience wants you to succeed! You always start with the audience interested in what you’re talking about. Otherwise, they’d go for coffee instead of sitting and listening to you, right? The audience has shown you their affection, be friendly in return. Talk to the audience like an old friend.
Establish contact with the audience. Whether you’re speaking in front of 20 people or 500, this algorithm will work:
- Divide the audience conditionally into three parts: those sitting closer to you, those sitting in the middle, and those sitting far away;
- After your first words, you will notice people who listen to you very attentively and those who are less interested. This is immediately visible in the eyes. Choose five people sitting close to you and three people sitting in the middle, and make eye contact with them. It is advisable to do this so that your chosen viewers are evenly distributed throughout the audience.
- Present to them personally. This doesn’t mean you should ignore the rest of the audience, but:
a. having a limited number of people will be less confusing, you will know where to look, and you will immediately see the reaction to your words. Eight people is a sufficient sample to understand whether it is worth speeding up or if it is possible to say something in more detail.
b. interest (like boredom) spreads. Most of the people you have chosen will be sitting in the front, so when the people behind see that those sitting in front of them are listening attentively, they will also begin to pay attention.
c. if you choose islands of interest, then the attention will begin to spread from them, and you will capture the attention of the entire audience.
General tips:
- No matter how deep you dig in preparation, there will always be someone who understands the subject better than you. It’s good if this person is constructive, but unfortunately, sometimes such people can bombard you with questions that you won’t know the answers to. My advice is to say so about it. It won’t make you any less authoritative. But the outright delusion you can generate while trying to answer a tricky question can make you look weird.
- Don’t try to be funny. I love jokes, but they should be added to the presentation very delicately. It takes a lot of experience to make a presentation that is both useful and funny. The worst presentation I attended was full of cats, bare torsos, and sexist jokes. The speaker thought it would be funnier that way. Don’t do that.
- Do not be afraid to improvise, but remember that improvisation requires preparation. Do not think you will be able to talk about the topic without any preparation. At the same time, don’t memorize your speech unless you’re using a language you don’t speak well.
- Something will go wrong. That’s fine.
After the performance 😌
After the speech, someone will definitely approach you with additional questions. This is the perfect time to gather feedback. Ask what the person especially liked about your presentation and what could be improved. People who didn’t listen won’t ask questions, and those who did listen will always be able to give you a tip or two. Learn and improve.
Good luck!
Russia started an unfair and cruel war against my country. If you found this article interesting or useful, please, donate to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. I can recommend my friends volunteers — the “Yellow Tape”, you can be 100% sure that the money will support our victory. Thanks in advance to everyone who participated.
Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦
