Beating conference stage fright
How to stop being scared of presenting, without presenting.
On the speakup.io mailing list a few months back somebody asked about overcoming stage fright as a new conference speaker. Since it’s a question I’ve been asked a few times, I thought my top tip might be useful to a broader audience.
TL;DR: Attack the stage-fright separately from the presenting.
First find the level of interaction that you’re comfortable with. Then look for ways you can push the edges of what you can cope with. You can make a lot of progress without actually having to prepare and present a talk. Save that last step until you feel more comfortable with getting up in front of people.
Let me illustrate with the story of “Nick” (not his real name). Nick started out as the poster boy for the stay-at-home asocial geek. This is how Nick moved from being too scared to attend events to presenting.
- Initially Nick “virtually” attended local events. Chatted to folk on IRC, looked at their blogs, talked on the mailing list, looked at the slides online, etc.
- Then he started attending local events. He already felt like he knew a bunch of folk so this wasn’t too bit of a step for him.
- Then Nick started actually talking to people at the local events!
- Then he started going up to the speaker at the end of a presentation after the general Q&A to ask a question in person.
- Then he started asking questions in the general Q&A (massive step for Nick— since everybody in the room was listening to him ask a question! He was scared witless.)
- Then I persuaded him to run a session at a local Bar Camp. Not a talk — he hosted a discussion. The topic was, if I recall correctly, “How do you get over stage fright?”. This was a big step — because people were coming to a room because of “his” session. However it was much easier than a talk. He didn’t need to prepare slides, or stand up and entertain people that would be staring at him in silence for 30m. It also attracted a group who were naturally sympathetic to the problem.
- Next he gave a lightning talk at a local meeting. A demo rather than a talk. Only five minutes of being stared at. No time for Q&A. Scary. Obvious flop sweat. Went fine.
- Another lighting talk. This time with slides. And a joke. It went fine.
- Finally a 20m talk at a Bar Camp. Which, to be honest, didn’t go that well — but it was because of content and pacing issues rather than abject terror.
If you look at the above list it was only at step 7 where he needed to really prepare a presentation. By taking small steps he managed to learn that the getting-in-front-of-people part didn’t always — or indeed ever — end in a lynch mob.
Discussions, fishbowls and panels are great gateways to full talks for people with stage fright problems. They let people get used to the stage fright part without having all the worry of managing the production of a presentation. The attention is split up among several people rather than just being on the speaker.
Last time I talked to Nick he was looking forward to trying the tweaked talk again. He’s still on the scared side of nervous — but it’s at levels he can cope with. I’ve had a couple of folk take this sort of incremental route with good results.
One other bit of random advice that may or may not work for you.
Personally I find workshops and tutorials easier to manage than talks when it comes to stage fright. The former feel like “I’m working with these people” — rather than the “I have to entertain these people and it’s all going to go horribly wrong” feeling I still get from talks.
I know people have the opposite tendencies and vastly prefer talks to workshops so it’s not universal but might be worth considering.
Do you have any tips on overcoming stage fright yourself?
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