foreign
ER said I am Katie I'm also known as
glazunt on the Internet you may remember
these slides from yesterday I had five
minutes then I have half an hour now so
I will be speaking slower and breathing
it will be great I work in developer
relations which is a fancy name for
engineers that go out into the real
world and talk to humans
well we did and then this thing happened
uh but I have been paid to give talks
before and now I would like you to get
some of my knowledge for free
in my role I have to give a lot of
presentations and hopefully by the end
of this you might be interested in
giving a presentation yourself and if
yesterday was any consolation this one
will be a little bit more detailed I
will have time this time to answer
questions at the end either during while
we're recording hello people online or
afterwards in the hallway or during the
Sprints or on Discord or by messenger
pigeon that is fine
the very first thing I have to say about
giving a presentation is that you might
freak out
are you worried about the idea of having
to stand up in front of a crowd and
speaking on purpose
here's the secret everyone freaks out
even the most experienced speakers get
butterflies before an event giving a
presentation in front of a crowd is
intimidating you are literally the
center of attention all the lights and
eyes are on you facing an audience of
any size can be very vulnerable but once
you get going get through the first
10-15 seconds of your speaking you start
to become the star of the show and you
can deliver your amazing message but
what if they
you might think
and to remember
but for your talk for a reason not to
see you crash and burn but to learn
something from you it's easy to let the
Panic of potential disappointment get
the better of you to mess up your demo
to misspeak or lose your place or repeat
yourself or lose your place and repeat
yourself but your audience won't care
about that
they will see your talk as successful if
they leave Having learned something
people are going to remember your talk
for you not necessarily your slides
slides are a mechanism to help you tell
your story and reinforce the points you
want to make and help guide your content
you could give a presentation on the
most important thing in the world but if
you deliver it flatly in a monotone
voice and are being uninterested then
people won't be interested in what you
have to say
you can't give a talk without slides but
you can't give a talk without talking
except for that one time when the person
had a deck that was all just chicken
chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken
but I'm not a lecturer I'm not teaching
in a way you are though
there are two things that people can
take away after leaving your talk
they will learn something they didn't
already know or they are reinforced with
something they already knew by hearing
you presented it validates their
perception on the same topic
and now the most important thing about
presenting to an audience they do not
care what you did
you wrote a million lines of code in a
month
you create widgets that help synergize
the fiscal prudencies at fubarakov they
care about why why did you do the thing
our users were having issues with
reliability on our platform so when
introduced a new type of testing
strategy to help validate deployments we
were never going to solve our rapidly
scaling problem so we created a code
generator that spat out millions of
loans that solved our problem and kept
our users happy the why is what gets you
out of bed in the morning you don't go
to work to code you go to work to solve
problems
what you made isn't as important as how
you made it there is a long tradition of
Storytelling in human society from Ghost
Stories to fairy tales morality plays
and Ted Talks there's entertainment in a
story but there's lessons there too it's
great to hear an amazing orator or even
better for a specially technical
presentations it is essential to
additionally have a takeaway how did you
do the thing how can people try your
thing out at their desk on Monday
morning
one of my pet peeves is going to a
technical presentation seeing this
amazing new thing and not knowing how I
can try the thing myself your talk needs
to have a call to action try this thing
consider using X read my blog learn
about this project find out more
you could condense that call to action
in a toot or a blog post but there is
power in a story and the journey and to
give a presentation you need a stage but
here's the thing this is a conference
they have an open cfp you could present
a talk at this next year there is
entirely separate series of talks I
could give about how to Market yourself
as a speaker how to write a proposal for
an event what events are out there but
there is this conference there was
lightning talks open earlier there are
going to be other talks and of
conferences in the future once you have
your idea and a potential event you're
aiming for you now need to bring the
content which brings me to slides you do
not have to have them but I like to have
them they are very important for keeping
me on track because otherwise I would
end up talking forever one time my
audience didn't notice that my slides
weren't progressing because my talk kept
going on like it was intentional but it
wasn't fun times
now we get to the part of the
presentation where I am going to making
suggestions at you these are opinions
guided based on my own experience but
also some pretty well done guidelines
but also the wisdom of some sages and
mentors that I've had over the years if
you already have opinions and things
that work for you great go do that but
if you're just starting out here are
some common best practices these are
generally suited towards technical
presentations at meetups or other
community events outside of those venues
your mileage may vary do not try to do
these at like a scientific conference
you may not get as much uh benefit out
of them also a kind reminder if you
notice anyone at this event who hasn't
given a talk yet or has given a talk
already doing things differently to what
I say do not call them out on it if you
are in the room and you have not yet
presented do not edit your slides to
suit what I'm going to say please
you don't want to do that you will be
better suited if you take these in mind
for next time
some things to do these slides are in
green because they are the good things
on average aim for about a slight a
minute maybe three if you're feeling
cheeky or yesterday this was 60 slides
in five minutes don't do that unless
you're experienced you do not want your
slides to be distracting where it sounds
like you're going
all the time when you've got a clicker
your slides one your audience wants to
hear you speak not the repeated Mouse
click your slides are signposts for your
story depending on the story you want to
tell you may want to give yourself some
breathing room to expand based on the
audience so think of your slides more as
guard rails
pick the one thing you want people to
remember after your talk for your
presentation this might be I did a thing
or learn this one weird trick you will
be presenting for some time and people
will not remember your entire
presentation word for word so they can
only take away a subset of your talk so
make sure your point is memorable is it
a link to a package or a tool maybe have
the name of the thing on a slide and if
it's something you want them to go to
like a URL put a QR code or the URL on
your last slide invite people to take
pictures make sure that slide is up for
moments so that people can take pictures
toot about it afterwards make sure that
people can follow your call to action
do not assume the prior knowledge or
technical knowledge of your audience try
to avoid the curse of knowledge
let's say you want to give a
presentation at work about what you're
building you know everything about it
your manager probably knows a lot about
it as well people outside your team may
know a lot about it but as that Circle
grows so the knowledge is lost you need
to keep your audience on track with what
you're doing so you're going to need to
fill them in
and you need to fit the audience
the if you're presenting at a Meetup it
can be a lot more casual to say an
industry event but also think about the
people in the room a room of programmers
are probably going to know basically
what the Gill is or have seen a talk
where the Gill has been described at
length
but that being said if you know the
general scope of your audience but not
their proficiency take a moment to bring
some of the newer members of your
audience up to speed on the base
Concepts that you'll be expanding on
later
you may be presenting the same content
at different events but you should make
sure it fits the people in the room
these are literally the same slides from
my lightning talk yesterday these are
also the same slides that I give
internally at work to interns who are
building presentations about their
projects
only the speaker notes have been changed
it's only the speaker notes and the
jokes have been changed yes
use images to help people visualize what
you're saying where appropriate you can
overdo this but you have all this space
so much room for activities
earlier I had more visual aids in my
opening here I'm using words but I'm
also giving a professional skills talk
if this was an engineering talk there
might be a slight of code
speaking of engineering if you have
something you want to show it do the
demo
it's always a good idea to show and not
tell
it is also a good idea to have a backup
recording just in case and making these
backup recordings can help you practice
your demo
if you're going to be putting words on
the screen adjust your text to you as to
use as few words as possible people are
going to read whatever you show on the
slide this is known as foreshadowing
one thing that people will not be able
to see are your speaker notes speaker
notes are super helpful to help you
remember what you want to say at a
particular time you can do full
transcripts or bullet points whatever
will help you remember what you want to
say and if you find these slides online
afterwards there's a little secret
hidden message in my speaker notes right
now that you will have to find yourself
and you've got to practice your talk
this is the bit that I hate the most but
you've got to practice your talk I know
it sucks but you've got to practice and
you've got to time it if you're speaking
for 30 minutes is that 30 slides is it
45 slides you won't know until you've
timed it and you've got to practice
again I'm sorry it sucks you have to
know what works and what doesn't for you
it also helps to make sure that you
don't have any accidental tongue
twisters that your flow works and that
you have at least tried to say the words
out loud before you say them out loud in
front of other humans
but you do not have to be speaking the
entire time either you use pauses after
important points to help them sink in
there is a difference between breathing
and taking breaks between content it is
useful to continue to breathe during
your presentation
something I should have done yesterday I
like to make sure I have a drink on
stage and reminders to drink
action breaks
things to avoid these are in red do not
do these things
avoid walls of text on a slide
this is a perfect example because none
of you are listening to what I'm saying
right now you're trying to read all of
this
walls of text like this are distracting
because they are going to be read faster
by your audience than you could ever
speak them
if I could add a feature to all slide
software it would be a little pop-up
that says hi it looks like you've
accidentally added your speaker notes to
your slide let me help you move that
a lot of times when you see blocks of
words
it's stuff that's important but it could
also be used in a different context
you are on a stage you have been
selected to speak you do not need to
validate why you are in front of your
audience to your audience and take up
five minutes of your valuable 30 minutes
you have to speak
and it also goes into the what that
doesn't matter it's the why and the how
I could have spent the first five
minutes telling you all about my my
entire long history in open source and
whatever but also I was introduced very
succinctly with some of the top level
stuff you only have a limited time and
you want to respect your audience so get
to the stuff that matters
and if you have less words on the screen
it means that you can make sure that
they are visible the old adage would be
can you see everything on the slides
from the back of the room nowadays that
plus can you read these slides on zoom
over a 3g connection on a mobile phone
for reference apart from this slide no
text on this deck is smaller than 20
points
if you have a demo do not fake it we can
tell it is very easy to spot a fake and
if your demo crashes it proves you're
really doing it and your audience will
empathize with you
one of the best talks I've ever seen had
a demo that went sideways after the
speaker having already gone through
hours of AP aav problems was presenting
on the second available borrowed laptop
with live debugging with the audience
the interaction and everything that went
on made it one of the best presentations
I've ever seen
it was also a talk about having to write
a virus in the second borrowed laptop
was immediately reset and wiped
afterwards
I've also given a talk where my code
samples intentionally work on my machine
when but fails when I try to put it up
to the cloud it's a talk about debugging
about the narrative is around seeing
that error happen getting really
confused and then following that error
through the system to work out how to
debug it but it's really important to
practice to know that I will
intentionally getting the specific bug I
want and not every other possible bug
again this is all based on if what
you're talking about has the ability to
have a demo
do not use memes
does anyone know what this is
if anyone wants to throw up their hand
if they know the context of this
there is one hand this is the unpopular
opinion puffin
this is a meme that people use when they
have an unpopular opinion
if you did not know that you would have
been highly confused until I referenced
it
they distract people from your content
it all goes back to the Assumption thing
memes make sense to the people that know
memes but if people aren't date aren't
up to date with the latest memes if
they've dropped off of social media
because every social media platform is
on fire or they don't get the underlying
reference then you have things on your
slides that are actively going to
distract and confuse your audience the
same goes with animations or gifs or
GIFs anything you have on the slide is
going to draw attention so what do you
want your audience to focus on you or
the animation
even if it's not a meme having things
like a cute cat picture might help you
brighten your deck but it won't provide
any substance unless you want to go meta
and have cat pictures as part of your
demo input I have gotten away with that
once and only once
do not read your slides out loud that's
what blog posts are for you are on a
stage you're allowed to perform
if you read from a script you can end up
sounding monotone having read only the
words you prepared earlier but do not
adapt to your audience you can be
monotone and you can be perceived as
nothing more than a text-to-speech
program be book
now even though you should be performing
there is such a thing as overdoing it
if you are co-presenting do not try to
fake banter between yourselves it is
really hard to pull off
if you're presenting with someone else
there are better ways to be able to hand
over between each other it can be a
single word and in flexion it could be
nothing because you've practiced and you
know exactly when your changeovers are
I have a workshop that I give where we
share different ways to respond to
problems and one of the specific parts
of it is noted as a pantomime
but it's 40 minutes into an hour-long
Workshop so it's a good time to get a
little bit silly and bring up the energy
and otherwise very important customer
facing presentation
it helps bring up the energy before the
final stretch but it's also a good
example of some of our Concepts in
practice
and it's always really well rehearsed
well it's always rehearsed
well speaking of things that are awkward
you do not have to take questions live
set your expectations with the audience
on how you want to interact answering
potentially complex questions on the fly
in front of a crowd is a completely
different set of skills to giving a
presentation based on prepared content
some speakers invite the raising of
hands throughout but they are capable of
handling that
if you want to make sure you can do your
entire talk without having to suddenly
break flow just go and do your talk you
don't have to call it out specifically
but if you do get a hand raised a simple
I'll answer questions later thank you
will suffice
and depending on the event you're
speaking at you may also get asked
before you get on stage if you do want
to have a live q a and it's okay to say
no it's a real skill to be able to be
bombarded with potentially interesting
and complicated questions on the Fly
the one thing I don't miss from
pre-pandemic in-person events were those
people who thought they were very clever
trying to trick the presenter with
questions trying to prove that they knew
more than the presenter or people that
go I have a question it's actually more
of a comment
as an attendee it's good to ask
questions that will help clarify
something if you are literally needing
clarification or to help highlight the
speaker's work
this is very good but also you have only
heard 30 minutes of what the speaker has
to say it is entirely possible they know
a whole bunch more that they couldn't
fit into their presentation they would
love to chat with you in the hallway
afterwards
in the hallway afterwards is more of a
short thing of let us go and have this
conversation later when we're not
recording and taking everyone else's
time I actively want to talk to you but
let us change the context in which we
talk it makes it more comfortable for
everyone involved
don't use tlas they can be extremely
distracting when used without context
oh tlas are three letter acronyms
they suck at the best of times but again
it harks back to audience presumptions a
python audience may know that gill
stands for uh Global something but
people don't know your acronyms unless
you tell them if you need to use
acronyms introduce the term at the start
of your presentation with the full term
and then the acronym teach people how to
pronounce your acronym as a gift or GIF
and then if anything else you've taught
your audience about the acronym
but Katie I hear you lament it's just
too hard there's so much to do well yes
you cannot make a 15-minute presentation
in 15 minutes more like 15 hours you
have to set aside time to prepare your
talk you have to set aside time to
practice your talk and this all takes
time
there's a really bad Trope of speakers
finishing their talk the night before or
writing it on the plane
explain to these things that we used to
use to be able to tr anyway
I used to try to make sure that my
slides were ready and locked before I
even started traveling to an event for
complex topics there are always going to
be things you want to add but it's
better to ensure that you don't change
things last minute for example if you
are speaking later today or soon don't
change your slides based on what you're
learning now that is a thing that I have
done before and it cost me dearly
some speakers can pull this off but if
you're just getting started you do not
have their preparation and practice
but key what is my Plantation is
boring
people have chosen to attend your talk
to hear what you have to say but you are
never going to enrapture 100 of the
audience I apologize if you are
currently looking at your phones or
laptops I'm not speaking directly at you
I'm reading from my notes
you can only speak to those people who
are engaged if say on a video call you
notice that someone isn't paying
attention there could be any number of
reasons they might be taking notes they
might be responding to something just
out of view they may have forgotten to
go camera off in an in-person audience
that person might be trying to sort out
some problems happening at the
conference happening at home or they
might be taking notes or they might be
playing Baldur's Gate streaming from
their stream deck or something but there
are always going to be people that
aren't going to give the energy back
that you're giving but focus on those
people who are those who are nodding
along those who are giving eye contact
find those people in the audience and
talk to them
but Katie I don't know what to say you
always have something to say how many
people in this room right now have a
co-worker in the audience
okay that's two heads everyone else has
a different employer so that is
literally an entire job's worth of
differences that you have your
experience is unique and you have a
different why you need to share but you
may end up using the same tools multiple
people in the room may use Pi test or
unit test may use playwright may use any
number of things but the way you're
using them is going to be different
if you do work together if you work on
separate teams you work on different
things maybe there's some weird trick
that you want to share internally that
is something you could talk about oh but
if you mean I don't know how to make the
words into the slides well let me help
you with an easy eight-step plan for how
to write your next presentation pick
your name main point
what is the thing you want to get across
sorting all my socks was wasting time so
I fixed it by buying all of the same
memory leaks made our product unusable
so we did X about it
step two make a rough outline it could
be something like introduce yourself and
frame what you're going to say share
your motivation your why how did you
solve the thing have a demo optional
extra things you did what you learned by
working on this problem things that you
found could be useful for your audience
and a call to action a Linker takeaway
this is just a starting point but it
helps you to start build a structure
around the content you want to present
next write a script put your thoughts
down make the words into paragraphs into
blocks and then start putting those
together into a script
this helps you you to give something to
read from as you practice but it also
helps you formulate what works and what
doesn't but much like a raft rough draft
may not be used you may not use your
full written script in your final
presentation this is all preparation
take that script and now slice it up
into things that make sense you may want
to swap these things around where you
want to have a continuous narrative but
once you start chopping these things up
you start to see that they form things
that look like oh this could be a slide
and then you can put those slides
together and you can make visuals to
make book back with those slides
and then you've got to read it out loud
to someone else if possible but a
plushie also counts
you really got to practice and get those
tongue twisters out you'll start to get
the Cadence happening work out what you
like and what you don't like and you can
start to perform your content instead of
just reciting it and you've got to time
it use a stopwatch either on your slides
app or on your phone go through it at a
normal Pace if you have a co-presenter
goes through it together I find that
when I present a new talk I end up
speaking much faster in person than when
I practice but that's okay ending early
is fine going over is not
it is worse the worst thing at all in
the audience to have a talk that's going
along and making you miss another talk
people have committed the half hour of
time for you and they have other things
to do so if you start late or have
technical problems try to adapt listen
to the organizers if they say you have
30 minutes from now that's fine
and again you gotta practice
if you were telling a story at a party
you wouldn't need to but you also aren't
expected to give a half hour polished
monologue at a party with a presentation
you're giving focused technical content
within a fixed time with accompanying
visuals practice to ensure you finish
within the time to respect your audience
I found success with my practices to
record myself with the intention of
sharing it to someone else but never
really do
and that's pretty much all I had except
you've seen this fake out before because
wait one more thing
you are not Steve Jobs and neither am I
there is no one more thing this is a
call back to the time that Steve Jobs
finished a Apple keynote and then in the
Encore introduced the iPhone
you might be tempted to copy this or
other signature moves from other
professional orators they have hundreds
of presentations under their belt
they've practiced and workshopped and
marketed and have their style down if
you try and copy this chances are you'll
come across as lame
or whatever the cool kids say now
dank I don't know
you can give a good presentation without
a gimmick without prizes without slang
without trying to match with the cool
kids by just being you
your audience wants you to succeed they
want to learn from you they are your
allies in this and they are really happy
that it's you on stage right now and not
them just be you and all else will
follow you've got this
that is actually the end of my slides
thank you very much
[Applause]
there is references on the link on the
slide right now glasnt.com talks and do
we have time for questions 10 minutes or
questions yay does anyone have a
question
I'm glad I was able to cover everything
thoroughly no one question
hello Katie hello
so you talked about talking to the
people in the audience who are engaged
my question is do you have a favorite
technique for re-engaging an audience
um if the Energy starts to feel a little
low
did you notice maybe the two times I did
this throughout my talk where I asked
people to raise their hands that's
really good
a introverted audience like at a
technical conference may not interact I
have tried to get people to do a
sing-along before in New Zealand that
went over just as well as you might
think
um
one thing I do have have done on
occasion is plant people in the audience
and have them be the people who
interacted the opportune times
unfortunately because this was such a
late scheduled thing I couldn't have my
normal chair squat up the front
but this is something you could also do
it's also super fun to have like people
you care about right like in these two
seats right there and you just talk to
them I mean everyone else in the room is
absolutely important but when it's like
people that you haven't seen for a year
right there and you're just like hi look
at me I'm doing a thing
it's very good
any any other questions
I'm also more than happy to talk about
this
any other time as well
I have one one question from which is
what was your first talk like awful
my first talk
was at
a conference nearly 10 years ago the
recording is online please for the love
of God do not watch it
My Demo broke
um I was trying to live debug on the Fly
I didn't have a point
but I improved from that first time
and was able to make my presentation
better more resilient I gave it again
and again I started talking about other
things
dot dot dot I read a conference
okay everyone please help me thank Katie
for her wonderful talk
foreign