How to Come Up with, Prepare, and Decide to Give a Public Speech
If you want to give a public speech at a conference, but you can’t decide or don’t know how, I’ll help you. I’ll tell you how to choose a topic, how to prepare a report and look confident in front of an audience. If the material is useful for you, I have Telegram channel — subscribe.
And then I force myself to step onto the stage and say the memorized “Hello everyone, my name is Oleg Fedotkin.” After about these words, I get into the flow and come to my senses only after the phrase “thank you for your attention, I will be happy to answer your questions.”
Five minutes after a performance are some of the best in my life. Light euphoria, live emotions from the audience's reaction and questions. I love public speaking.
But when I offer to speak to my employees or acquaintances, in nine out of ten cases colleagues refuse. There are two reasons for refusal:
“I have nothing to tell about”
“It’s kind of scary, I don’t know how to perform”
Let's go through each of these points. At the end, I'll tell you what you can do right now to start speaking.
I have nothing to tell about: how to choose a topic
Short answer: not true, your experience is unique and may be of interest to anyone who has not yet encountered the problems you have solved. Now let's answer in more detail.
When you think about topics for a speech, you look at each of them from your current position. This is wrong: in this case, any topic will look trivial to you. You have already solved the problem, you have already gained experience, so from your point of view, these topics are not interesting.
So you start thinking about topics that are interesting to dig into. These are usually areas where you don't have enough experience yet. You make a list of such topics and realize that you simply don't have enough expertise in any of them!
As a rule, this is where attempts to come up with a topic end and the person decides that he has nothing at all to talk about.
Error!
I recommend proceeding in three stages.
One: Sketch out the topics
Look at what you have been working on for the last year or two. These could be your work tasks, hobby projects, or literature you have read. Make a list of 3-7 topics and let it sit for a few hours or even a day. If nothing comes to mind at all, think about the following aspects:
Tasks that were difficult for you due to their inherent complexity or scale.
Tasks that required you to learn a new framework, database, or even language.
Bad releases and incidents you encountered that took you days to clean up.
The process you improved: introduced a new step in development, moved away from manual testing, brought a framework for architectural decisions.
Two: go back in time
Now go back in time and imagine yourself two years ago. Which of the topics would you have been interested in then? Keep in the list only those topics that you would have been happy to listen to two years ago.
This is the main life hack for choosing a topic: the story should be interesting not to you now, but to you in the past. You will not be speaking to yourself, but to an audience that is not familiar with your problems. It is for them that you bring value.
Now choose one topic. I recommend focusing on the topic where you will have more texture or the one where the target audience will be larger.
Once the theme is ready, you have two steps left to do:
Take a piece of paper, a pen and an hour of undisturbed time. Now write down on the sheet absolutely any thesis that comes to your mind. A situation, a solution, a communication, a link – absolutely everything, paper will tolerate everything. Perhaps you will need more than one sheet. I call such sheets a pile of thoughts and make one for any of my reports without exception.
Once you have the theses in front of you, all you have to do is put them together into a narrative structure. Arrange the theses in the order of their occurrence or in cause and effect order.
Done! Now you have not only a topic, but also a preliminary structure with which to apply to a conference. The main thing: do not cling to it too much, most likely, there will be little left of it in the final version of the paper. At least, this is always the case with me.
Three: Bullshit test
I first learned about this technique in the course “Verb”. Do this: record a voice message for literally a minute or two and send it to your friends and colleagues. In the message, you need to briefly outline the essence of the topic and what you will talk about. Do not go into details, leave only the most important. At this stage, you already have a structure, so it will not be difficult for you.
The reactions of your respondents are the most important test. If half or more of the people are interested in the full version of the report, consider that you have passed the test and now you have a topic!
But before we go any further, we need to answer an important question…
But what if the topic is still unsuccessful?
Don't worry. Most conferences have a Program Committee – these people know the topic of their conference, know the target audience and, most importantly, they already have experience in preparing many reports. If your topic does not fit the audience, the PC will tell you about it and give advice on what to do about it.
I am a member of the TechLead Conf PC. We validate the topic and help formulate it so that it hits the audience more accurately. Or we will recommend moving the talks to TeamLead or Highload if the topic is more suitable there.
Even if a PC rejects you, it's not the end of the world: a good PC doesn't just say no, it describes the reasons for the rejection and what can be done about them. I've been rejected by PCs at some conferences more than once, and that's okay – not every idea I have goes well with the conference audience. Don't be afraid of rejections.
If the topic is successful, but you find it difficult to promote and develop it, the PC will also tell you in which direction to develop your idea.
It's kind of scary, I don't know how to perform
No one is born with the skill of public speaking. Like any skill, public speaking requires practice, not theory alone.
I can boast: my speeches are popular with audiences. But that's now. Want to watch my first speech in Moscow? It had it all: an uncertain delivery, inappropriate pauses, and not the best layout of the report. One of the comments under the video was “the report is about nothing…” — the author's punctuation and spelling have been preserved.
I can't teach you how to perform and guarantee success. But I can give you advice that will definitely help.
Run the report five times.. During the first two runs, you will see or the audience will tell you obvious weak points and obvious mistakes. By the third run, you will have a ready draft, which you can generally present. The last two runs are polishing the report and memorizing it. I recommend doing the first two runs with a PC or with knowledgeable people.
Add cues to your slides. For example, I always add chapter breakdowns to the slides, so it's easier for me to navigate the structure. I make the last slide in a chapter special, so that I understand that this is the end of the chapter and the intonation needs to be changed.
Add some breathing room to your slides. I still get out of breath while telling a story and need to catch my breath or take a sip of water. A slide with a picture or a chart is best for this: while the audience is looking at what you have drawn there, you can take a breather and drink some water.
Learn the first five minutes of your speech to the letter.. The first five minutes are the most important in a report. The audience decides how interesting it is to listen to you. These critical five minutes can and should be rehearsed in front of a mirror so that you can reproduce them in any state. Believe me, you will be nervous, but an introduction learned to the point of automatism will greatly help you out.
At PC TechLead Conferences we help speakers prepare for their presentation. Here are some examples of how:
We help improve the structure of the report. It happens that the report “jumps” from place to place and the listener loses the sense of narrative. From the speaker's point of view, this is not always noticeable: since the speaker is on topic, everything is logical for him. The PC from the outside sees such moments and points them out.
We help remove the excessThe audience will not be able to digest all the information, and often the speaker goes into too deep a depth.
We help to further develop the topic. The opposite problem is that sometimes the speaker speaks in conclusions that are not obvious to the audience. Here it is better to dig deeper and lead to the conclusion more smoothly.
Sometimes 2-3 runs from a PC are enough for a report, sometimes more are needed – it depends on many factors. The main thing is that we help the speaker bring the report to the required condition, so do not worry that you will be left alone with the preparation.
We at TechLead also have the opportunity to practice your presentation with someone who specializes in presentation and perception of a report – he will help add confidence to your presentation.
What to do
Right now we have Call for papers for TechLead 2024 is underway in Moscow — the conference will be held on December 2 and 3, and we are accepting applications until August 15. You have just enough time to throw together ideas, a pile of thoughts, and do a bullshit test. At the very least, you can do a bullshit test on the PC members — don’t delay with your application, there is not much time left.
Public speaking is a great chance to improve as a specialist, get a lot of emotions, meet new people and add a cool achievement to your piggy bank. Believe me: it's worth it!
By the way, I run the channel “Engineer and Manager” on Telegram: subscribe if you haven’t already!
