Project Your Voice to the Back of the Room

During your presentation, you should aim to project your voice to the back of the room. By doing this, you ensure that your voice reaches all the attendees at your presentation. If the venue is quite large, you should consider asking what microphones the organizers will be using to ensure that the entire audience will hear you. At big conferences, the organizers will provide you with a microphone, either as a clip-on microphone or as a headset.

At small events, however, a microphone may not be available. This means that you will need to raise your voice a bit to make sure that everyone hears you. Regardless of whether you are using a microphone or not, imagine that you are talking to the people in the back row and project your voice. Don’t worry about it being too loud through the microphone; the audio people looking after the room will deal with audio levels.

Make Eye Contact with the Audience

You should also practice making eye contact with audience members. If you avoid eye contact, your audience may see this as a sign of anxiety or a lack of confidence. Eye contact is best done when you expect a reaction from the audience. For example, you can make eye contact with your audience when you are asking a rhetorical question. You could also do this when you state conclusions or essential points in your presentation.

A good trick is to make eye contact with the people who are engaged with the presentation. Find the people who are listening to you and make eye contact with them during critical moments in your presentation.

When you make eye contact, make sure that it lasts only a few seconds so that it doesn’t seem awkward to the other person. You will need to make eye contact with one person at a time.

Accept That Some People Are Just Not Attentive

Beginners in public speaking often feel bad when they see that some members of the audience are not listening and doing something else. When you can see that some attendees are not engaged in your presentation, don’t blame your performance. These situations are out of your control. Some people just don’t have the same level of interest in the content as you do, so having a few inattentive people in a large room is normal.

Some may be busy and were forced to attend the event. Others may be tired or distracted. While you can try your best to engage the entire audience, you should expect that some people will be disengaged. The best you could do at this point is to focus your attention on the people paying attention.

What you absolutely don’t want to do is call them out in front of everyone else. This will make them feel bad and make you look petty. There could be a genuine reason that someone isn’t paying attention, but the stage isn’t the place or time to judge them. Ignore it and move on by delivering a killer talk.

Reaffirm to Yourself the Importance of Your Message

Throughout your preparations for the talk, always reaffirm to yourself why the topic you will be discussing is important. Think of what actual value the talk has for the people in the audience. You should repeat this reaffirmation right before you take the stage. By reminding yourself why this talk is important, you will be able to inject passion into your presentation. Your emotions will seem more genuine, and the audience will more likely relate to your stories.

By reaffirming the importance of your presentation to yourself, you will also feel motivated to deliver a great talk. You will care about how you deliver the talk and how the people in the audience receive it—you won’t present your topic on autopilot.

Reaffirming the importance of your topic will also help in creating content that is relevant to the target audience. It’s common for people to create unnecessary content for their talks, especially to pad the presentation to make it fill out a longer time slot. As a result, some parts of their talks are not as important from the point of view of their target audience. Some people also tend to talk about other topics when they are at the podium or on stage. They sometimes skip the script and main topics and say whatever enters their minds at the time.

You will quickly lose the interest of your audience if you go off topic often when you speak. The attendees will quickly become distracted if they are not interested in the subject. By keeping focused on the importance of your talk, you will be able to present a talk that doesn’t deviate from the topic.

Create a Great First Impression in the First Few Minutes of the Talk

Whenever you meet and talk to anyone new, they will perceive you as a stranger, which is when you have an opportunity to make a great first impression. The same is true with public speaking. Most of the audience will not know you, so you have a chance to make a good first impression. You will only have a single chance to make a good first impression, so you need to capitalize on this opportunity if you want to deliver a great presentation.

To deliver a great first impression, you need to look and sound like a person of authority in your chosen subject. You also need to make sure you are dressed appropriately for the venue. If you are at a corporate event, then showing up on stage or in the boardroom in jeans and a T-shirt may not give the first impression that you hope for. On the other side, if you are speaking in a very informal meetup group, showing up on stage dressed as if you’re headed into a boardroom may not give the right impression either.

The audience will also judge you on how you sound on stage as well as your perceived level of confidence. As you speak, you want to project your voice to the back of the room even if you are using a microphone. You need to talk slowly enough that people can understand you, but not so slowly that it sounds strange. Speaking too quickly will also come across as a lack of confidence and nervousness, which causes an audience to disengage if they can’t understand what you are saying.

The audience will judge you based on what you say, so the first few words out of your mouth are crucial when it comes to building a great first impression. Beginning your presentation with a great introduction will create a positive image of you for the audience. The best way to do this is to let your personality come out.

You should be yourself when you are presenting to your audience. While it may sound cliché, there is a reason being yourself is the best route to go when making a great first impression. When you are in front of a large audience, you will naturally feel nervous. While some people in the audience may understand that you are stressed, most of them will not care. They will simply judge you based on your behavior on stage.

I have had some people suggest in the past that you should fake your personality when presenting so that you will appear confident even when you’re not; this only works if you are a good actor. For those of us without formal acting training, this strategy may backfire. People who try to pull this off without sufficient practice will end up looking like they are faking it. Their personalities will appear inconsistent, and the audience will see through this.

Instead of faking your personality, try being more comfortable with who you are—speak to your audience just as you do when talking to friends or colleagues. Using humor can be a terrific way to engage an audience as it helps to disperse any skepticism or cynicism. Early in my speaking career, a mentor once suggested that I try to make the audience laugh or smile within the first 60 seconds of the talk. By making them laugh or smile, you automatically release any tension in the room; the audience relaxes and engages more with you. Using humor in talks helps to humanize the speaker. You are no longer a stranger on the stage blasting through monotonous slides. Humor shows you are human and that you have a playful side. Using humor also shows that you are confident and comfortable talking to the audience—even if you are terrified inside. If you smile and chuckle at your own jokes, you are also signaling to the audience that you are joking and that it is okay for them to laugh along with you.

Even though it can be a good idea to inject a little humor into your talk, don’t feel that you must be a comedian. A comedian has one job: to make the audience roll around with laughter. You’re not trying to do this; your jokes serve a different purpose than those of a comedian. You’re trying to make everyone in the room feel comfortable.

Not all jokes or humor will work in all situations. You need to think about your audience and what you feel is appropriate. If you are presenting at a corporate event, then rolling off jokes to get laughs may not be appropriate. Telling jokes that may be culturally insensitive is also a very bad idea, as is anything that could be perceived as racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or indeed anything with “ist” or “bic” at the end of it. I personally find using humor that is self-deprecating and directed at myself as opposed to the audience works best. You can say what you like about yourself—to a degree—and self-deprecation also shows a level of vulnerability.

I like to use a lot of visual jokes on my slides if they are appropriate. Memes and animated GIFs can work wonders to lighten the mood with certain audiences. I do this a lot with software development audiences where that sort of humor is more appreciated.

Take some time to think about humor and what you think will be appropriate for your audience. Try to get a small laugh or smile in the first minute of the talk and take it from there. Don’t feel you have to be a comedian—that is not your job—but a little humor can go a long way.

Use Anxiety as a Motivator

We all feel the same when we are about to face a big crowd of people—sick to the stomach. The difference between great performers and mediocre performers is the way they react. The best way to handle your nervousness is by channeling it toward your work. If you feel anxious before the presentation, think about things you can control like improving your presentation. When you feel nervous, ask yourself this question: “What can I do to improve my talk?”

This question will lead to multiple answers, which can all lead to a better presentation. You should select the answer at the top of your priority list when preparing your presentation and then work on it until you’re satisfied.

Anxiety usually attacks when the mind is idle. If you spend your time preparing for your presentation, your mind will be too busy for anxiety to take over.

Lessening Anxiety on the Day of the Talk

If you didn’t think your anxiety could get any worse in the week leading up to a talk—especially for a new speaker—then your nerves on the day of the talk could be in tatters. Your anxiety will increase tenfold on the day of the talk, especially in the hours before the talk.

In the hour prior to a talk, I like to go for a walk, especially if the weather is nice. If I can, I leave the venue for my walk, as I generally don’t want to be disturbed. By going for a walk, I can keep my body and mind active without fretting about the presentation. The more talks that you deliver and the more experienced you get, the better you become at managing and controlling your nerves. Even with all my experience, I still get nervous, and a walk before the talk usually helps. Make sure you don’t go too far from the venue and keep an eye on the time. Typically, you will have to be in your presentation room at least 15 minutes before the start of the advertised talk time to set up. Don’t walk so far from the venue that you will need to rush to get back on time, as this will just make you more stressed.

When you’re setting up on stage, there will be some time while you’re waiting for your audience to come into the room and take their places. I find that it makes me even more nervous, waiting for people to come in while I am standing there, looking around, and knowing full well that people will be staring up at me. If you are doing your talk at a smaller and more intimate event where there are fewer than 30 people in the room, you could quite easily mix with the audience and talk to people, as you would in any other social situation. I like to do this whenever I can, and it serves as a good icebreaker to get to know your audience, but this does get harder to do as the audience gets larger.

If you are speaking at a larger event where you could have over one hundred people, or possibly over five hundred to a thousand people, then interacting and mingling is harder to do. You will be in a large auditorium that is quite noisy as people are coming in and sitting down. I don’t like standing on stage, waiting to start the talk in rooms like this. The wait to get started can feel like an eternity, even if it is only ten minutes. Once the audio technician has set up my microphone and my laptop is set up correctly, I leave the title slide showing on the projector. Then I turn off my microphone pack and sit in the first row and wait there. By doing this, you are out of the gaze of the audience, and you can relax for a few minutes. You may even feel that a little bathroom break is a good idea, although try to get this done before you set up. If you do need to nip off the bathroom quickly, make sure you turn off your mic pack. I have unfortunately heard this trip up one speaker before, where their mic was not muted on the mixing desk.

One last piece of advice that I want to give you is not to be tempted to go to the bar for a small drink to calm your nerves. I can’t stress this enough; never get up on stage after having a drink or two. If your mind is too relaxed, you could easily make a mistake or say something that you later regret. If you have more than a few drinks and end up on stage inebriated, then you will slur your words. Being drunk on stage is a great way to ruin your reputation and end your speaking career before it even gets started.

Use Square Breathing to Manage Anxiety

Repeat this process three or four times in a row. I perform this breathing exercise all the time, and it is a wonderful way to calm down. If it works for elite military groups, then it will help you settle your nerves before heading onto stage.

Gain Small Victories to Create Self-Confidence

As you gain experience talking to large groups, you will eventually develop your own method on how to prevent anxiety. Most experienced speakers learn to avoid doubtful thinking and other types of anxious thoughts that can affect their performance by reminding themselves of past successes.

When you are just starting out, you may not have a lot of experience from which to draw confidence. However, you could create your own feelings of success to remind yourself that you can do this. Before talking at a big conference, for example, you can take on small user group talks that you can easily organize.

Before I spoke at large conferences and events, I practiced speaking to small meetup groups. Some of the groups I spoke to would only have ten or so attendees, but that was fine because I was getting experience. I spoke at many meetup groups before tackling a large professional conference.

When it came to getting up on a large stage and speaking to hundreds of people, I could look back at all the meetup group talks I had taken part in. I could remember all the success and use that to reassure myself that I could do this and be successful. It’s a simple technique, but it really does make a difference in the heat of the moment, as you will suffer from crippling self-doubt in the heat of the moment.

Keeping Yourself Focused on the Presentation

When you’re on stage, there’s nothing left to do but deliver the presentation as you practiced. At this point in the process, you need to keep your mind focused on the task at hand. You will need to tame your mind from wandering to other thoughts unrelated to your talk.

When you start your presentation, I mentioned doing some basic breathing exercises to clear your mind. From that point on, you should keep your mind focused on what you need to do next. When you are distracted by some random thought or by your surroundings, immediately get your head back into the presentation by looking at the laptop, stage screens, or your cue cards; this should allow you to return to your presentation-focused state of mind.

As you gain more experience, the practice of focusing on the presentation will be easier for you. Your mind will instinctively tune out distractions in your environment. You will also habitually follow your presentation process. You will be able to develop a strong resistance to distracting thoughts.

If you have a mobile phone with you, I suggest putting it into flight mode or turning it off—unless you are using the time or stopwatch features. The last thing you want is a phone call during your talk. If you forget to turn it off and someone tries to call you, obviously, you should not answer it. Try to ignore it, or subtly take the phone and disable the call. A silent phone can’t disturb you, though, so try to make sure to silence it prior to starting the talk.

Adapting to Changes in the Presentation

In an ideal situation, you want to limit the number of improvisations you make during your presentation. There may be times when certain conditions prevent you from executing the presentation that you practiced. For instance, some tools you rely on may fail to function, or you just can’t get a demo to work. At times, you may think of additional ideas that you want to add at the last minute.

You should be ready to adapt to changes in the presentation. Amateur public speakers often complain when they see that a certain part of their presentation is not going their way. This does not solve the problem. When this happens to you, try to avoid these types of excuses. Instead, you need to think of a solution to the problem that will allow you to pull off the presentation, even with the obstacle in your way.

Earlier in the book, I talked about how to mitigate having internet problems and demo failures. If you are delivering a technical talk—in my case, software development talks—it is quite common to suffer demo failures. No matter how much you practice, something always seems to go wrong when you are on stage in front of a large audience. If you are unprepared, a demo failure can completely derail your talk and shatter your self-confidence.

You can, of course, prepare for such an eventuality. I have personally fallen fowl of demo failures on many occasions, but because I had a plan, I always got to the end of the talk successfully, and the audience left with the information that they came for. The audience doesn’t care if a demo fails; they want your information and insights, so don’t be afraid to use your backup slides or prerecorded demo videos.

Sometimes, you will think of new ideas just before the presentation is due to start. Ideally, you should not entertain changes to the presentation you practiced; it is too late. These changes will only disrupt your flow because you have not practiced the new additions, and unless you are an experienced speaker, these unpracticed additions will be glaringly obvious to your audience. You could take note of these ideas, though, and add them in later versions of your presentation, which will give you an opportunity to practice them.

If your talk is new, then you will undoubtably see ways in which you can improve, so make a note of them and incorporate them later. Don’t try to wing it. Stay on plan.

Inform the Audience When You Want Questions

When you start your talk’s introduction, let the audience know how you want questions delivered. Some speakers are perfectly happy to be interrupted by raised hands during the flow of their talk and to answer questions as they come. Other speakers, myself included, prefer people to wait until the end because I am probably going to answer their question anyway; they just need to wait. Do state your preference, though, as it will stop you from being irritated if people interrupt you.

Think Before Answering

When someone asks you a question, take a few seconds to think through your response before answering. The audience won’t notice a short wait, and it gives you a chance to clarify your thoughts. Rushing into answering a question can trip you up, and you may say the wrong thing; nerves can do this.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Questions to Be Repeated

Large rooms, especially at conferences, can have a lot of background noise. If you didn’t hear the question, ask the attendee to clarify or repeat the question. Some conferences may have runners in the room who have a microphone and will get to the person asking the question. In that case, their voice will be sent across the PA system, but if the audience is shouting out the question, then the chances are that you may struggle to hear them if they are further back in the room.

Repeat the Question so Everyone Can Hear

If there’s no one in the room to run a microphone to the person asking the question, chances are that most people will not hear the question. It is always a good idea to repeat a question before you answer it; otherwise, people will only hear the answer without the question for context.

Not only is repeating the question a courtesy for the people in the room, but if the talk is being recorded for the conference website or YouTube, then repeating the question will make sense for the people watching the video.

Remain Positive

Answering random questions at the end of your talk can feel stressful, as you have no idea what the audience will ask. They may ask simple questions to clarify something you mentioned in the talk. Those questions are always easy to deal with. You may get someone talking about an alternative option to what you discussed; they are always appreciated as you learn something new. You may get the “Well, actually” person who simply wants to make you feel dumb by correcting you; they are always a little harder to deal with. No matter what the question or comment is from the audience, always thank them for their questions, suggestions, or insights.

On the extreme end of the spectrum, you may get someone who disagrees with everything you have said, and boy, do they want you to know it in front of 200 other people. No matter the scenario, always remain positive, and if an audience member is being a jerk, never have a go at them. In all my years speaking, I have only ever had one person whom I thought was being a jerk during the QA section. My talk was on cryptography using the Microsoft Dot NET platform, specifically on the libraries provided by Microsoft. However, one audience member wasn’t happy with that and essentially tried to tell me I was an idiot because I wasn’t talking about a specific third-party cryptography library, even though the talk description specifically stated it was about the default libraries provided by Microsoft. There isn’t much you can do, except thank them for the question, and in this case, I reminded them that the talk was about the Microsoft-specific libraries and then moved on.

If you get someone who comes across as though they’re looking for trouble, never argue or lose your temper because they will take your words out of context and try to make you look bad on social media. This is rare, but remain positive and polite if it happens.

Be Truthful and Never Lie

You are bound to get someone who asks a question that you don’t know the answer to. If that happens, don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world. When put on the spot, no one knows the answer to everything. If this happens, then just say you don’t know but will find out. Most audience members are very understanding. What you should never do is try to bluff your way through the answer or simply tell a lie, as you will be found out.

A great technique I have used many times is to redirect the question to the audience. In the heat of the moment, you may struggle to think, even if you ordinarily would know the answer; the stress of being on stage can cloud your mind. If you ask the audience the question, someone can have a go at answering it. By doing this, the attendee who asked the question gets an answer and is happy, and you have the pressure taken off you. Also, as the question is answered, it may help to unblock your memory if it is about something you thought you knew but just couldn’t remember.

If an audience member does help and provides an answer, make sure to repeat their answer in full so everyone else in the room can hear, and remember to thank them.

As speakers, we’re not perfect. We can’t remember the answer or know the answer to every question, so use the audience to your advantage and get them to help. No one will mind, and everyone will benefit from the answer. You may even learn something new yourself, which is always nice.

The question-and-answer section of a talk can fill even the most experienced speakers with dread, but it doesn’t have to. If you prepare and accept the fact that you can’t answer everything, you will feel more relaxed. In the previous chapter, I suggested practicing your answers for possible questions. This is a vital preparation tip, and you can often anticipate most questions that will be asked and then prepare answers to them. For everything else, don’t panic, just remain positive. As I suggested earlier, if you really can’t answer the question, just say so, and then redirect the question back at the audience. If you go in with this mindset, you can drastically reduce the level of anxiety you will face.

Webinar vs. Online Talk

When thinking about the form of online talks, a webinar might come to mind first. A webinar consists of someone speaking to their computer via a webcam and microphone, and there could be anything from one to thousands of people signed up to watch the talk. Typically, as the speaker, you can’t see the audience members; you are simply broadcasting to any number of people online. You may have a small amount of interactivity via a chat window where people can post comments and questions, but generally you are not watching this window until the end.

Online talks are like webinars and are often seen as the same thing; however, there are a few subtle differences. If you are speaking via a platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, or any of a myriad of conferencing platforms that have sprung up, then as you are speaking, you can access a gallery view of your audience. If the members of the audience have their cameras turned on, you can even see them.

Being able to see the participants when using these platforms makes the experience feel like an in-person public speaking event. In reality, it is nothing like the real thing; however, these platforms do have their advantages.

The main advantage is geography. To speak at an in-person event, you must get all the attendees in the same place at the same time. People could drive, use public transport, or even fly to an event. This means that some events are hard to get to and not as inclusive as we might otherwise want. Tickets for in-person events can be quite expensive, and that’s before you factor in travel, accommodations, and general expenses like food and drink.

With an online event, you remove that geographic barrier, which opens the event to many more people. Being online also reduces attendees’ costs quite significantly, as you don’t have to travel, book hotels, and pay for other expenses.

The Rise of Online Presenting in a COVID-19 World

Speaking online is nothing new. It has been around for many years, but with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, online programs were brought to the forefront. Overnight, all in-person events were cancelled, and many were converted at the last minute into online events. I was caught up in many events that suddenly went online.

One of the conference companies I work with, NDC Conferences based in Oslo, Norway, was no exception. Just before the pandemic officially started, I spoke at two in-person NDC events—a smaller security event in Oslo and one of their bigger multitrack conferences in London the following week. My next speaking event for NDC Conferences was scheduled in Porto, Portugal. I was looking forward to going to that event because I had never been to Porto before, but the event was quickly changed to an online event.

Personally, out of all the online events in which I participated, I liked NDC’s approach to conferences the best, as it was simple. If you were a ticket holder, then you were invited to a slack team where multiple channels were set up for each presentation room, the chill-out and chat areas, etc. Each talk took place over either Zoom or Cisco Webex. The talks were advertised in the slack channels for each room, and the participants and speaker signed into the video conference software and the speaker delivered the talk.

The experience, obviously, is different from an in-person event. However, given the unprecedented events the world was facing and everyone having to adopt social distancing, this virtual event setup worked very well.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, I think what we will continue to see a more hybrid model for conferences. In-person events will return and command higher ticket prices, but there will also be a less expensive online-only version of the event in which talks will be streamed as they happen. If anything, the pandemic has taught speakers and event companies how to innovate, so the future could be quite interesting.

Tips to Get the Most Out of Speaking Online

Speaking at an in-person event vs. an online event is similar when it comes to the actual delivery of the talk. The writing, preparation, and rehearsal are not much different; you need to put in the same level of work and effort. The delivery of the talk is where the difference lies, as you are not physically in the same room as the people you are addressing. Let’s look at some tips to help you get the most out of speaking to an online audience.