Simon Willison’s Weblog

What are some tips for a successful Ignite talk?

6th November 2013

My answer to What are some tips for a successful Ignite talk? on Quora

Practice. All public speaking can be improved by repetitive practice, but this is especially important for ignite talks. The one-slide-every-15-seconds format is extremely unforgiving—if you haven’t nailed it, in private, speaking out loud at a sensible pace there’s no chance you’ll be able to keep up with the slides when you are on stage.

Thankfully a five minute presentation can be practiced twelve times in an hour, so rehearsing properly isn’t a big time commitment.