TipsForSpeakers

From SPUG

Here are some good tips for SPUG speakers purloined from the OSCON 2003 kwiki site (http://oscon.kwiki.org).

If you have the bandwidth, check out Mark-Jason Dominus's Conference Presentation Judo (http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/). He's light-hearted, but under the humour is a rock-solid foundation of truth about how to give conference presentations.

Be prepared. This means:

• do not plan to finish your slides the day of the talk.
• practice your talk in front of an audience. A local user group is one possibility.

Some hints on slides:

• Make the text size readable.
• Don't just jump into a terminal window to demo code, unless the font size is mondo big. Prepare your examples, show the input and output in your slides in a big font.
• If you need a rough guide, keep to a maximum of six bullet points per page. Much more and you'll end up either writing down what you're going to say (too much detail), or tackling too big a topic on a single slide (you should have multiple slides).
• Save animations, garish colours, font selection until last. It's easy to lose a lifetime fiddling with frills in presentation software.
• Include a URL where people can download the slides.

Here are some hints on speaking:

• don't go too fast, and speak clearly. Record yourself to get an idea of whether you're a mumbler or a babbler.
• don't assume the audience understands everything immediately. they will nod their heads out of habit (we all do it). don't be afraid to leave some silence after you make a key point to let it "soak in". And then repeat it. slowly.  :-)
• face the audience most of the time. Obviously you have to turn around to point at the screen, but your face and your hands are important media for communication and they're lost if you face the screen.
• don't just read the slides. Use the slides as a key to memory, not as a script. If all you do is read the slides, you might as well stay silent and the attendees could read the screen themselves.
• don't banter with your friends, or let them heckle. Your injokes and the constant interruptions will irritate, not amuse, the audience.
• pee before you go on stage, because it's a long time until you can pee again
• get feedback from the audience as you go--"can you still hear me at the back?", "am I going too fast?"