Conference Speaking 101 & 102

Presenting at a conference is a very rewarding experience. But it isn't always obvious how to get started. How do you take a basic topic idea and refine it into an hour-long technical presentation? In this tutorial we will cover the steps necessary to take your desire to present from concept all the way to finished presentation, including brainstorming, abstract development, slide development, rehearsal tips, and tips on dealing with presentation jitters. There will be time during this tutorial to start working on your own abstract and talk idea, so bring a concept if you have one.

Transcript

1. PRESENTED BY JEFF CAROUTH @jcarouth conference speaking 101 & 102
2. Today we will learn how to go about making the worst decision of your life: becoming a conference speaker.
3. You will look back fondly and remember the time you made this error in judgement.
4. About this tutorial
5. This tutorial is a workshop. Walking out today you should have a talk idea ready to go.
6. About Me • Developer since 2003 • Lead Platform Engineer • Given >30 conference presentations since 2011 • Mentor & trainer
7. Who are you? • Have you given a talk at a conference before? • Submitted but been rejected? • First time at a conference? • User group leaders?
8. Agenda 1. About this tutorial 2. Call for Papers 3. The Idea 4. Abstracts 5. Writing the Talk 6. Rehearsal 7. Preparation 8. Giving the Talk 9. Rules of Speaking 10. Pro Tips
9. call for papers
10. Academic conference terminology meaning a request for people to submit ideas for consideration.
11. Steps of a CfP
14. Find open CfPs by following relevant Twitter accounts, getting on email lists, or just paying attention to conference websites.
15. https://twitter.com/callbackwomen
16. http://www.techspeak.email/
17. Remember: selection committees are looking for relevance.
18. The Idea
19. Passion and speaking
21. The 10-minute rant rule
22. CfP Hints
23. What did people speak about last year?
24. Exercise: Jot down a few topics you would like to talk about.
25. An Abstract
26. An abstract tells potential attendees why they should attend your talk.
27. An abstract should read like marketing material with a little more technical detail and accuracy.
28. There really is not a “best format” or a “silver bullet” recipe for abstracts.
29. Presenting at a conference is a very rewarding experience. But it isn't always obvious how to get started. How do you take a basic topic idea and refine it into an hour-long technical presentation? In this tutorial we will cover the steps necessary to take your desire to present from concept all the way to finished presentation, including brainstorming, abstract development, slide development, rehearsal tips, and tips on dealing with presentation jitters. There will be time during this tutorial to start working on your own abstract and talk idea, so bring a concept if you have one. Conference Speaking 101 and 102
30. Presenting at a conference is a very rewarding experience. But it isn't always obvious how to get started. How do you take a basic topic idea and refine it into an hour-long technical presentation? In this tutorial we will cover the steps necessary to take your desire to present from concept all the way to finished presentation, including brainstorming, abstract development, slide development, rehearsal tips, and tips on dealing with presentation jitters. There will be time during this tutorial to start working on your own abstract and talk idea, so bring a concept if you have one. Conference Speaking 101 and 102
31. Presenting at a conference is a very rewarding experience. But it isn't always obvious how to get started. How do you take a basic topic idea and refine it into an hour-long technical presentation? In this tutorial we will cover the steps necessary to take your desire to present from concept all the way to finished presentation, including brainstorming, abstract development, slide development, rehearsal tips, and tips on dealing with presentation jitters. There will be time during this tutorial to start working on your own abstract and talk idea, so bring a concept if you have one. Conference Speaking 101 and 102
32. Presenting at a conference is a very rewarding experience. But it isn't always obvious how to get started. How do you take a basic topic idea and refine it into an hour-long technical presentation? In this tutorial we will cover the steps necessary to take your desire to present from concept all the way to finished presentation, including brainstorming, abstract development, slide development, rehearsal tips, and tips on dealing with presentation jitters. There will be time during this tutorial to start working on your own abstract and talk idea, so bring a concept if you have one. Conference Speaking 101 and 102
33. Abstract review http://helpmeabstract.com/
34. Let’s review some abstracts.
35. When attempting to introduce tests into a legacy application, you might run into situations where it is impossible to discern what constitutes a testable unit because you are encountering a page script, a big ball of mud, or otherwise highly coupled segments of your application. Writing proper unit tests for these pieces as is is impossible so often we look to writing higher level tests and accept that as the end of our testing journey. But we should aim to get actual unit tests into our application. In this talk we will cover situations where breaking dependencies between components would allow unit tests to be written and how we can write unit tests for code as we move through the application. Testing Legacy: Breaking Dependencies
36. When working with a legacy application, it is often difficult to figure out how to add unit tests because of highly coupled segments and components in the application. In this talk we will look at how we can break dependencies between highly coupled components for the purpose of introducing unit tests. Walking out of this talk you should have a great idea how you can improve the architecture of your codebase and introduce lower-level tests where you had none before. Testing Legacy: Breaking Dependencies
37. PHP7 is going to be released soon. There are a lot of new improvements to the language. In this talk I will introduce the better parts of PHP7 that you can use if you upgrade. I will show you new features with examples of how you can use them in real-world applications and even some tips on how you can use PHP7 today with your existing applications for testing. New Features in PHP7
38. Ruby on Rails is a popular framework in the Ruby community. In this talk I will tell you: • How to install Rails • How to make a new application • How to deploy an application • Where to learn more about Rails Ruby on Rails
39. Exercise: Develop one of your topics into a rough draft of an abstract.
40. Writing the Talk
41. Outline Outline or Mindmap
42. Conference Speaking 101 & 102 ============================= Outline ------- 0. Intro (1 min) 1. About this tutorial. (4 min) a. It's a workshop. b. About me c. About you d. Agenda 2. A CfP (3 min) a. What is it? b. What they are looking for. c. How to find open cfps. d. Elements of a submission i. Abstract ii. Notes to organizers iii. Tips and tricks. 3. The Idea (13 min) a. Passion. b. The 10 minute rant rule. c. CfP tells you what talks they want. d. Exercise (10 min) 5. Abstract (23 min) a. What to include. b. What not to include. c. Formatting. d. Refinement. e. Abstract review. f. Examples g. Exercise (15 min) 6. Writing the talk (25 min) a. Outline. b. Flow. c. Rule of Three. d. Slides. e. Exercise (20 min) 7. Rehearsal (20 min) a. Privately. b. Publicly. c. Timing. d. Frequency. f. User group. g. Exercise (20 min) 8. Preparation (4 min) a. Backups. b. Backups. c. Projector. d. Bag essentials. i. adapters. ii. Batteries. iii. Remotes. iv. Chargers. 9. Giving the talk (8 min) a. Rules for day of: i. Do not edit slides. ii. Night before: get some rest. b. Bring water. c. Get up to the stage as early as possible. d. Connect your laptop, ensure you can project. e. Remove your conference badge. f. Silence your phone. g. Ensure notifications are turned off. h. Plug in your laptop. 10. Rules of Speaking (5 min) a. Talk don't read. b. Slow down. Pause. c. Learn your filler words. d. "Engage." e. Work in some jokes. f. Examples. 11. Pro tips (7 min) a. Speaker survival kit. b. Questions. c. Include ways to contact you. d. Go to the restroom before your talk. e. If you have bullets, put a joke in the last one. f. Write slide transitions in your speaker notes. g. Schedule live tweets of your talk (Omni)
43. Presentation Flow Act 1: Statement of Problem Act 2: Resolution of Problem Act 3: Summary and Retro
44. Presentation Flow Act 1: Statement of Problem Act 2: Resolution of Problem Act 3: Summary and Retro 5 min
45. Presentation Flow Act 1: Statement of Problem Act 2: Resolution of Problem Act 3: Summary and Retro 5 min 35 min
46. Presentation Flow Act 1: Statement of Problem Act 2: Resolution of Problem Act 3: Summary and Retro 5 min 35 min 5 min
47. Rule of Three Rule of Three
48. Slides Slides
49. Slides should benefit your audience. You should not need them.
50. The fewer words, the better.
51. Slides should reinforce the content you are presenting. They shouldn’t be the content.
52. • You should use bullet points sparingly. • If you do want to use bullet points in your slides, that is okay. But be careful of how much content you put into each bullet and how many bullets you are using per slide. People get very bored reading a bunch of text in bullet lists. • Large and long bulleted lists are distracting to the audience. They will be reading the slides instead of listening to you. People are not good at reading and listening. So you could just say complete nonsense and likely 75% of the audience wouldn’t even know. • The general rule is to have at most three bullet points per slide. I would also suggest not using full sentences as it will only lengthen how many words you need on the slide. Bullets
54. Illegible Code Samples
55. Legible Code Samples <?php class Container { protected $s=array(); function __set($k, $c) { $this->s[$k]=$c; } function __get($k) { return $this->s[$k]($this); } } class Foo { } class Bar { protected $foo; public function __construct(Container $c) { $this->foo= $c->foo; } } $c = new Container(); $c->foo = function() { return new Foo(); }; $bar = new Bar($c);
56. Even More Legible Code Samples <?php class Container { protected $s = array(); function __set($k, $c) { $this->s[$k] = $c; } function __get($k) { return $this->s[$k]($this); } }
57. Exercise: Take your abstract and turn it into a high-level outline.
58. Rehearsal
59. It is my opinion that you cannot rehearse enough.
60. Private rehearsal Rehearse Privately
62. Publicly Rehearse Publicly
64. Exercise: With your partner, take 10 minutes to talk through your outline. Switch and repeat.
65. Preparation
66. Make a backup of everything you need.
67. Backups in the Cloud
68. Backups on Drives
69. Bring adapters for video output. VGA is still popular.
71. Bring things that will help you succeed and promote yourself, your company, or your cause.
72. Survival Kit
73. Marketing & Swag
74. Giving the Talk
75. Develop your own pre- talk routine and rules.
76. Bring water with you Bring Water
77. Get in your room as early as possible.
78. Plug in your laptop
79. Connect your laptop to the projector. Ensure you are able to project what you want to project.
80. Don’t wear your badge during your presentation.
81. Silence your phone and notifications
82. Rules of Speaking
83. Imagine if I turned my back to you and started reading this slide to you. Wouldn’t that be terrible?
84. Slow down. Pause.
85. Learn your filler words. Actively avoid them.
86. Engage.
87. Work in some jokes.
88. Things to avoid. Don’t Broadcast Your Mistakes
89. Live demos can be awesome. They are also a risk.
90. Pro Tips
91. Develop a Survival Kit
92. Repeat questions back to the audience.
93. Include Contact Info
94. Go to the restroom before you speak.
95. If you have bullets, include a joke towards the end of the list.
97. Write slide transitions into the speaker notes as a reminder.
100. Schedule live tweets about your talk to be tweeted during your talk.
102. Expect rejection. It’s a cold, hard fact of this endeavor.
103. Why didn’t my talk get selected? https://carouth.com/blog/2015/02/05/my-proposal-was-rejected/
104. What did we learn?
105. Develop talk ideas based on passion and/or pain.
106. Subscribe to newsletters and Twitter accounts to more easily find open CfPs.
107. Abstracts should convey a problem and what attendees gain by attending the talk.
108. Design your talk around a consistent theme. Limit what you try to convey.
109. Rehearsal is key to being successful with timing.
110. Prepare for things to go wrong. Have a Plan B.
111. Get yourself ready in your room as early as possible.
112. Try to talk with your audience rather than speak to them. Your talk should feel engaging.
113. Make it easy for attendees to talk about your talk and to ask follow up questions.
114. Thank You @jcarouth joind.in/14034
115. BONUS: LIGHTNING TALKS
116. Lightning talks are generally 5 minutes long and cover a very small subject.
117. Exercise: Take one of your topics and turn it into a lightning talk.
118. Thank You @jcarouth joind.in/14034
119. Steps up to Radyr Station - https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartherbert/4782800980/ Passion - https://www.flickr.com/photos/photobrixie/4873166236/ Rest, Rant - https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/7911122500/ Mobile and wireless technologies review - mindmap - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougbelshaw/4865571845/ Three Threes - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/4146565830/ 2008 World's Strongest Man Contest - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonscottmeans/2838522958/ Rubber Duckie, You're the One - https://www.flickr.com/photos/realestatezebra/2608418319/ Go ChiLUG! - https://www.flickr.com/photos/fallentomato/8042130250/ Time - https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5281453002/ plastic water bottles - https://www.flickr.com/photos/zone41/4102673364/ Engaged - https://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/3543135684/ Standup Comedy - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmic_flurk/5712236914/ Just Slow Down Baby - https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/7884404756/ Restroom - https://www.flickr.com/photos/smartsignbrooklyn/10213630306/ NoPhone - https://www.flickr.com/photos/k6designs/14730252400/ Photo Credits