Entries tagged speaking
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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]What are some good books on data/chart presentation?
Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is an absolute classic, and a truly beautiful book to own.
[... 34 words]How can I practice giving presentations / public speaking?
Look out for opportunities to practice in front of a friendly audience. There are two event formats that are particularly good for this.
[... 238 words]Public Speaking: Where can I find someone to represent me as a speaker?
There are speaker agencies that specialise in this kind of thing, but they’re mainly targeted at larger events which expect to pay $5,000-$50,000 or even higher for speaker. They might not be as well suited to setting you up with gigs at startup events, which are less likely to pay enough money to make it worthwhile for an agent (most agents take a cut of the speaker fee).
[... 104 words]What are some creative programs to use for presentations?
Here’s a trick I’ve used with success in the past: set up your Mac to have 9 virtual desktops, then arrange your “slides” on each desktop using a combination of applications. I’ve done this with a title slide in keynote on the first desktop, a text editor with some sample code on the second, a terminal prompt set up for live coding on the third, a browser showing a demo on the fourth and so on. Learn the keyboard commands to switch between desktops and off you go.
[... 169 words]Events (leisure): How can I get into presentations, mixers and meetups without paying the entry fee?
Speak to the organisers and volunteer to help out at the event. This works for all different sizes of events and is a very effective way of getting in to an event for free. As a volunteer you also get a great excuse to interact more with the attendees and speakers.
[... 73 words]What are some tips for giving a lightning talk at a conference?
Tips for general public speaking still hold for lightning talks. Here are some tips that might help:
[... 236 words]Does PowerPoint has a mode, where I can show slides on projector and see the slide notes on my laptop screen?
Yes. It’s called Presenter View. http://office.microsoft.com/en-u...
[... 34 words]What’s the best app to present animations and/or interactions for a UI/UX project?
I’ve seen designers use both Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote for this purpose to great effect.
[... 35 words]Product Demonstrations: What’s the best way to view/demo a website offline at an event?
If this is a static website (just HTML, images, CSS and a bit of JavaScript) you might be able to get it running on your laptop using a web server. OS X prior to Mountain Lion had a built in Apache which could be turned on using the “Web Sharing” option in the Sharing preference page, but it looks like they’ve now removed that option—a way of turning it back on again is described here: http://clickontyler.com/blog/201...
[... 377 words]Is there a feed or otherwise centralized list of calls for proposals for technical conferences?
We have a crowdsourced index of calls for proposals from (mostly technical) conferences here: http://lanyrd.com/calls/—you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for individual topics, e.g. if you want to hear about PHP conference CFPs you can subscribe to the feed linked to from this page: http://lanyrd.com/topics/php/calls/
[... 72 words]Who is the best conference panel moderator?
Two of the best moderators I’ve seen are Jeffrey Veen and Jeremy Keith, both of whom are regular contributors at SXSW.
[... 103 words]What are the ideal laser pointers for conference presentations?
I’ll swear by the Logitech Cordless Presenter: http://www.gadgetgrid.com/2008/1...—it’s very popular amongst friends of mine who speak frequently as well.
[... 234 words]Public Speaking: How can I control my stress during my presentations?
Make sure you have run through your talk, in full, out loud in the privacy of your home or hotel room at least twice.
[... 185 words]Why are TED talks 18 minutes long (or less)?
I imagine it’s because enforcing a shorter talk time results in consistently higher quality presentations, by forcing speakers to carefully structure their talk and strip out any unnecessary details.
[... 75 words]Does Google (company) have their own Audio Visual department for their large conferences, or do they contract another company?
I believe it’s their own in-house team—when we ran the first DjangoCon at Google’s Mountain View HQ a few years ago I understood that the video team were their own (the same team that records their internal Google Tech Talks). It might be an external company that they contract in, but it felt like they were permanent staff.
[... 85 words]Public Speaking: Where is a good place to get started as a speaker?
Start small. There are plenty of small local events around that accept (and even encourage) first-time speakers. The single most valuable thing you can do to improve as a speaker is to get as much experience as possible.
[... 244 words]Who are the best female speakers on the topic of social media who are equal parts knowledgeable and engaging?
Meg Pickard from the Guardian
Suw Charman-Anderson
DjangoCon and PyCon UK
September is a big month for conferences. DjangoCon was a weekend ago in Mountain View (forcing me to miss both d.Construct and BarCamp Brighton), PyCon UK was this weekend in Birmingham, I’m writing this from @media Ajax and BarCamp London 5 is coming up over another weekend at the end of this month. As always, I’ve been posting details of upcoming talks and notes and materials from previous ones on my talks page.
[... 446 words]Comet works, and it’s easier than you think
I gave a talk this morning at the Yahoo! Web Developer Summit on Comet, cometd and Bayeux.
[... 1314 words]Doing Local Right
“Doing Local Right” was the title of my talk at this year’s @media Europe. Patrick had asked me if I could put together a case study, and I jumped at the chance to share some of the work of my former colleagues at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas. I had the privilege of working at the newspaper for a year in late 2003-2004.
[... 735 words]The Implications of OpenID
My second presentation at XTech 2007. Unfortunately there’s just the Matt Webb keynote to go, and I spent most of the conference worrying about my talks. There’s a lot to be said for speaking as early as possible.
[... 76 words]Six cool things you can build with OpenID
I’ve posted the slides from my Future of Web Apps talk on OpenID, minus the demo videos. I’m planning to put together a video that combines the slides, demos and audio once the official podcasts have been published.
[... 816 words]