Items tagged speaking in 2013
Filters: Year: 2013 × speaking × Sorted by date
Why does TED refer to its speeches as “talks”?
I think this reflects a more general trend in the tech conference world which TED emerged from.
[... 115 words]How do I overcome my fear of public speaking (of people just “switching off”, or simply getting up and leaving the room)?
Look for opportunities to give “lightning talks”—5 minute talks given as part of a series of talks. These are excellent for beginner speakers as they help force you to get to the point as quickly as possible, and you only have to survive for five minutes! They are good for the audience too as if they don’t enjoy our talk they only have to sit politely for a couple of minutes before the next talk comes along.
[... 107 words]What’s your opinion on sharing your presentation slides (online for anyone to access) after speaking at an event where eventgoers paid to hear you (and others) speak?
I think sharing slides is almost always the best thing for everyone:
[... 277 words]How long does it usually take you to prepare a presentation?
Damian Conway (one of the best technical presenters I’ve ever seen, who also runs amazing tutorials on giving great talks) says “to produce really top-class presentations, budget at least ten to twenty hours per hour of speaking”.
[... 71 words]What are some tips for a successful Ignite talk?
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.
[... 92 words]What are some creative ways to pitch a new initiative to my team without slides?
Use a whiteboard.
[... 24 words]What are those most annoying problems you experience while working on presentations?
Keynote crashing and losing all of my work.
[... 43 words]I have embedded videos in a PowerPoint presentation (using a fix), but now they do not play when I save the file as a .pdf. Any idea how to make this work?
It isn’t possible to embed a video in a PDF file. If you want the embedded video to play you will need to distribute the presentation in the original PowerPoint format.
[... 69 words]Presentations, when’s the best time to give your personal background?
It’s rarely a good idea to include this—usually it adds nothing to the audience’s understanding of presentation, unless you are speaking on a topic that really needs that additional authority (security presentations sometimes benefit from this)—in which case keep it to a couple of sentences, don’t share your entire professional history.
[... 90 words]Does preparing before a presentation actually help one’s presentation?
Yes, in all cases. Not preparing adequately is disrespectful to your audience.
[... 98 words]Hackers: Who is a good speaker or author on hacktivism and/or the recent events of leaking confidential information?
Danny O’Brien comes to mind. He’s worked for the EFF and the Committee to Protect Journalists, is fully immersed in hacker culture and is a fantastic speaker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan...
[... 53 words]If I write a blog, then use the same information to create a slideshare presentation, will that help or hurt my website’s SEO?
I would be absolutely amazed if you were hit by a duplicate content penalty for this. To a search engine spider (even a super advanced one) content formatted as a blog post and similar content repurposed as slides will look completely different.
[... 71 words]How do some public speakers memorize so many statistics when speaking on stage?
It’s really not hard. If you’re memorising a complete speech, remembering a few statistics is easy in comparison. Also, the stats you use in a speech should be meaningful (otherwise thy include them at all?) which means the have a built in mnemonic.
[... 62 words]What are the simple ways to gain more self confidence in public speaking?
Be confident that you understand your subject matter. Practice, out loud, in private, as many times as possible. Have notes in your pocket so you know you can fall back on them if you really need to (you probably won’t, but I find knowing they are there helps with nerves). Then get as much speaking experience as you can. BarCamps / Unconferences are a useful place to get started.
[... 104 words]Does anyone ever had the experience where they could carry on a conversation with someone very well, but stutter and go blank when public speaking (eg. informal introduction) in front of a crowd?
This is extremely common, and will certainly go away with experience... but being well prepared is never a bad idea with respect to public speaking! Even for informal introductions it’s worth figuring out what you’ll say, writing it down, rehearsing it out loud several times in private and memorising it.
[... 132 words]How do you get invited to speak at high profile events?
SXSW has an open call for proposals—you’ll need to submit a suggestion to the panel picker and encourage people to vote for you.
[... 123 words]