Tips for speaking

Last year I wrote a blog post called My tips for speaking. In the face of SCALE 10X and other events coming up, this is my refactoring of that talk.

My experience in giving talks? I've been presenting on the job since 1999. I've been presenting at conferences since autumn of 2008. This past year (2011) I gave a lot of talks, helped others with their talks, and did a number of cooperative talks where I shared the stage with another person. I've learned a lot, from my own mistakes and those of others. Since I like to share, here we go.

You aren't Steve Jobs

In terms of presenting, Steve Jobs was no mere mortal. He got away with wearing black in front of a black background. His slides were frequently dark. And he held up tiny objects in front of literally billions of people. He did all of this and got away with it.

You. Won't.

Steve Jobs was billionaire leading a multi-billion dollar company. His presentations were highly choreographed affairs where every detail from lighting to audio to who got to attend was tightly controlled.

For example, Steve could wear black because of amazingly proficient stage lighting techniques. Carefully watch a high definition video of him showing off the latest product while in a black sweater and you'll see that he's literally standing in a column of light. Odds are most conferences don't have spotlights or fancy lighting, and even if they do - the stage crew are not being promised a bonus for doing it right and financial ruin if they fail.

What this means is be very, very careful about using the attributes of Steve's talks for inspiration or arguments on how you are going to do a talk.

What to wear

Bring several presentation shirts to the conference so you can be sure that what you are wearing shows up in front of the background. Be a little classy and wear a polo shirt instead of that t-shirt. If the background is the same as your shirt, go and change. If you don't have a shirt that works, go buy one or wear your jacket.

The reason being is the same as why Newscasters don't wear some colors on video. They don't want to look like floating heads and hands. It happens to them, it happens at technical conferences, and it will happen to you.

Black text on white background

I said it last year and I'll say it again: High contrast slides please. If a designer, manager, friend, or spouse tries to stick colored backgrounds or text into your slides, politely remind them that what shows up nicely on the monitor or laptop will absolutely fail to be appreciated by the attendees of the talk. Social media and IRC will be filled with comments about the unreadable colors of your slides.

Remember, unlike Steve Jobs, you have no control over the AV team or whatever the conference venue provides when it comes to projectors and screens. So play it as safe as possible.

I really prefer the black text on white background. The people in the vision community (arts, theatre, animantion, and eye doctors) all agree with me.

This past year I've had technical people (all with jobs outside the vision community) quote some interesting material about the validity of white text on black background, but I personally find it hard to read those slides if I'm in the back. Also, if the room is brightly lit, the letters are barely visible.

The happiest alternative I've seen was at a Mongo event, and was a certain shade of dark blue with bright yellow letters. However, I think like the black background, it would be suspect in the wrong light.

One last note: Don't use color gradients in your slides. Please.

Cheat at the command line!

I'm giving a talk today at Southern California Linux Exposition 10x called Intro to Python. It's inspired by folks like Raymond Hettinger and David Beazley. And the big thing I'll be doing is avoiding the command-line like the plague.

This is because the command-line is treacherous in front of an audience. Conference networks are notoriously prone to going down at the wrong moment. Same goes for laptops, especially when connecting to projector hardware it's never touched before.

Also, you know what it is like typing with someone looking over your shoulder? Imagine that times hundreds, or thousands when your video is being uploaded so people around the world can view it.

So either use something like PLayer Piano to record a command-line session in a docstring, or do what I do and use slide transitions to mock typing.

Be rested, fed, and sober for your talk.

In 2011 I watched a guy fumble through a talk with beer in hand, a personal hero of mine blearily try to get through his talk after a late night of drinking, and a couple people try to present after all-nighters.

Respect your audience and take care of yourself before the talk. Get some sleep, eat well, and drink moderately. This will really help you get invited to more events.

Practice, practice, practice

In the past I've said I don't practice much. If at all. Ahem...

It has been pointed out to me that I practice. A lot. Maybe not in front of a mirror, but I'm constantly going through my slides and coming up with things to say. I'll go through all my slides one-by-one and mouth what I'll be saying, and work out the timing of things. Which means that while I haven't been projecting my voice, I have been practicing.

In 2011 I did the curious thing of actually trying to practice on a couple presentations. And I have to say that I've seen a huge amount of improvement. I certainly felt more confident and I feel like the talk goes better! For example, A talk I gave at PyCon AU 2011 that had some issues after a lot of practice went smashingly better at DjangoCon 2011.

Push questions and comments to the end

Your talk should have a flow, a pace as it were. And lots of interruptions will cause you to lose your chain of thought, or cause the audience to lose focus. If someone asks a question during your talk, ask them to wait until the end.

If they keep asking questions or giving comments, ask them nicely to talk to you after your presentation. People are decent and will respond nicely to your request.

Sign up for Pycon US!

Early bird registration closes on January 25th. Sign up for it beforehand and you'll have enough money for a really good dinner with drinks. What are you waiting for? Go do it!

My tips for speaking

I've been presenting on the job since 1999. I've been presenting at conferences since autumn of 2008. I've got some tricks I've picked up over the years. I'll be using these tricks (and more) at PyCon, so you'll be able to see and judge them in action.

Black text on white background

Remember the old days of Geocities when people had purple backgrounds with yellow text? Or dark green backgrounds with white text? Or crazy fonts? We make fun of that sort of thing now. Unfortunately, I've seen presentations done that way in the recent past and so have you.

Yup, background colors that look great on a laptop or monitor screen often lose something in the transition to a projector. You can't predict what the venue will give you in regards to quality/brand of projector, so why take unnecessary risks?

So I stick with the classic of what people have been doing forever. I choose the lightest possible background, the darkest colored text, and I use the default font of the slide software. Maybe its not fancy or artistic, but my message isn't obfuscated by forcing people to squint to see slides reinforcing what I'm saying.

Fear the command line!

The sucky thing about giving a tutorial is that you have to touch the command-line. And something invariably goes wrong. If you do have to use the command-line remember the following tips:

• White background and black text and increase the size of the text. I don't care if you prefer to code with a black background with tiny green letters - your audience simply won't be able to follow you as easily. Since I heard a Walt Disney Animation Studios technical lead have the same opinion, I now feel empowered enough  to complain after any talk featuring an unreadable shell.

• Try to fake the command-line. I've heard player piano is a great tool for doing that and will save you from that minute of silence when you try to figure out what you did wrong.

Don't read the slides to the audience

Listening to someone read the content off a slide is dull. I try to say anything BUT what is on the slide. When I do it speak the content of a slide exactly its because I'm purposefully breaking my pattern to make a point. Or to be silly because I'm getting tense.

What you should be doing is using the slides to remind yourself of your next point. Think of them as notes for your speech, not the speech itself

Bullets are dangerous

Bullets are live ammunition. Even in small quantities they can kill a talk. They can put an audience to sleep, cause them to start checking twitter, or even leave. So I use bullets very sparingly in presentations (classes can be different) because of their potency. Because of their inherent silliness I tend to use bullets in self-deprecating humor.

A better tactic than bullets is to create a subject header on a number of slides and put a single bullet under that subject header. So instead of one (1) slide about 'Python' with bullets of 'Monty', 'Guido', and 'Spam', I like to have three (3) slides each with a header of 'Python' and the content simply being 'Monty', 'Guido', and 'Spam'.

Sixty seconds per slide

If you wait too long your slide will become boring to the audience and their brains will drift. This ties right into the problem with bullets. Keep things moving along.

Be rested, fed, and sober for your talk

Skip the late night party and get a good night's rest. The day of the talk eat food that makes you feel physically better.

In January I went to a talk where the speaker was presenting on a technical matter with beer in hand. Maybe he thought it was hip, but his talk sucked. He got out of sync with his slides and stumbled around his own thoughts.  Not only was the talk of poor quality but it was disrespectful of the speaker.

Needless to say, the audience was very grumbly about the 45 minutes they wasted.

That was a terrible shame because his slides were pretty good. I bet if he had been sober that talk would have rocked.

If people ask questions during the talk, ask them to wait until the end

They'll break your pace, rhythm, and timing. If they can't wait until the end then they now fall under my definition of heckler and are not worth answering anyway.

Be nice to people who come up to you after a talk

You never know who is that new person who comes up to you. Maybe they are planning to blog about you or write about you in the press. Maybe they are a possible business or job lead. Maybe they are someone who wants to throw a gajillion dollars at you. Be nice to them and you'll find out. Try to find time to talk to everyone, even if for just a minute each.