Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions
Over my years as a public speaker, I have mentored and coached many new and aspiring public speakers. When I help someone who wants to start presenting to an audience, I get a lot of common questions. I have answered many of these questions in this section. The questions are in no particular order.
Can public speaking benefit my career?
The short answer is yes, even if your presentation isn’t linked to your day job. Getting up on stage—or in front of your peers at the office—to speak demonstrates a high level of confidence in your abilities. Confidence is a very desirable quality to many employers. Public speaking also demonstrates that you can face up to your vulnerabilities, and presenting puts you in a vulnerable position with the audience.
Presenting also demonstrates that you can take complicated subjects and break them down into a format that is interesting and relevant to your audience. Being able to reduce complexity and present it appropriately to an audience is a skill that is also a great benefit to employers, as it demonstrates excellent communication skills. After all, communication skills aren’t simply what comes out of your mouth; they represent your ability to break down complex information and prepare it for your audience.
What is more important: the content or my delivery of the content?
Both are important, but a brilliant delivery of poor content is still poor content. A not-so-good delivery of excellent content is still excellent content. The quality of the content you want to present is what you will spend the majority of your time preparing, researching, and designing ahead of rehearsing. At that stage, you are only concerned with what information you are sharing and your overall message to the audience.
When you have built your slides and are confident in the content and message you convey, you can start to focus on the actual delivery. To be good at delivery, you need to practice as much as you can. Nobody will expect you to sound like a highly experienced TED speaker or a professional actor. You are aiming to be articulate and clear in your delivery. Focus on the speed at which you talk, projecting your voice to the back of the room, and trying to eradicate filler words like “err” and “umm.” If you get those right, then you will come across as confident and clear.
How can I best deal with stage fright?
I talked a lot about being prepared in this book.
Having your presentation written well ahead of your talk
Rehearsing a lot
Memorizing the first part of each section of the talk
Preparing for demo failure with an alternative slide deck or videos
Creating a contingency plan for internet or projector failure
Working with a test audience to anticipate audience questions ahead of time
Making sure you’re prepared will dramatically lessen the effects of stage fright, but it won’t remove your fears completely. In the book, I also discussed techniques for visualizing a successful talk to prime your mind for success, which is also a very valuable technique. Stretching before the talk can also help.
Just before going on stage, I am a big believer in the square breathing technique to quickly calm your nerves.
Square breathing helps calm your body and mind and makes you more alert. It is a technique used by elite fighting forces all over the world to calm themselves before entering a combat situation. To recap, here are the following steps:
1.
Breath in for four seconds so that air fills your lungs.
2.
Hold your breath for four seconds.
3.
Slowly exhale your breath for eight seconds.
4.
Without taking a break, go straight back to the first step and fill your lungs again.
I am not an expert in my field. Is it acceptable for me to be a public speaker?
Of course, it is. Presentations can be pitched at any level, from entry level to expert. Some of my favorite presentations have been made by novices in their fields. You get to hear about people’s experiences overcoming a particular struggle, and you also get to learn about new topics that you may be a novice at yourself.
The biggest piece of advice I can give is to make sure you pitch the talk at the correct level in your synopsis. If you are a novice in your field presenting an entry-level talk, make sure your synopsis reflects this fact. The last thing you want is for people to think it is an intermediate or advanced talk and to expect deep knowledge—they will leave disappointed. As long as you are open about the level of the subject you are presenting, you will be fine.
In my experience with speaking at professional conferences (mainly software development conferences), the organizers will book talks on a subject that covers different experience levels, so your presentation may fill the entry-level requirement, while one of your other speaker colleagues may fill the expert requirement; this is quite normal.
Should I pack as much information into my talk as possible for maximum impact?
There is a balance to be struck between offering lots of useful information and overloading the audience. If you are bombarding people with facts, they can easily be overwhelmed. However, if you present a few well-picked topics and spend time exploring those topics with examples and personal experiences, you are more likely to hold the audience’s attention for the whole session.
While you’re rehearsing your talk, try to perform it in front of a test audience—it could be family members or peers—but get their feedback on the level of information presented and how you delivered it. Ask them to be honest about whether they managed to stay engaged.
One final thing to mention is that people like stories. Try to weave stories and a narrative into your talk as best as you can, even if it is a talk about a particular service or piece of software. Think of examples that you can build stories around to demonstrate how someone may use the service. This will be instantly more engaging than simply reading facts and figures and showing a bullet-point list on the screen.
Should you memorize the entire presentation?
Memorizing an entire presentation word for word is difficult. Some people may be able to do this, but I could never do it. I only ended up becoming frustrated with myself, as I couldn’t recall everything word for word. Instead, what I do is memorize the introduction of the presentation and the beginning of each section. Then, for the rest of the talk, I talk as if I am talking to someone directly. This becomes easier to do if you are confident in the subject you are presenting.
As a contingency plan, I have a basic bullet-point list of notes in the speaker notes of my presentation software. If, for any reason, I get distracted or have a mental block, I can glance at this list for the slides and remember where I was. No one else will see the list, but it is handy to have around. Don’t make the mistake of putting too much information into your presenter notes, as it will be hard to read when you are presenting. Your notes are not a script, so don’t treat them like one.
Is it acceptable to call out people during a talk if they are chatting while you are presenting?
This is a tough situation to be in and needs to be handled carefully. Everyone’s tolerance of disruption is different. Here is how I handle it.
If I am speaking at a small user group in a small room—less than 30 people, for example—and people are having a conversation while I am presenting, I will politely ask them to stop. I have had to do this a few times in my speaking career. Typically, they will stop their disruptive conversation at that point.
If I am at a large conference where there is over 50 people, possibly hundreds of people, then I typically ignore the people having a side conversation, as it isn’t really disrupting me too much. In all honesty, however, I have never been disrupted like that at a large event. People have paid—or their companies have paid—to be there, and attendees are eager to learn.
If I am at a private event at which I am being paid to speak, I ignore any disruptions and complete the talk. If people are being disruptive, I would expect the company that has paid for me to be there to deal with the problem. Again, I have never had this issue.
When people have an option of which talk to attend, and they pick yours, they are usually very respectful of your time and your presentation. The only real rule here is that if you do have to intervene with someone who is disruptive, never lose your temper or raise your voice. By all means, ask someone politely to stop being disruptive, but remain calm and polite. You never know who is filming the talk, or if someone will post your outburst out of context on social media.
What should I do with my hands during a presentation?
This is a common question from people speaking publicly for the first time, and it was something I found hard when I first started out. When you are presenting, your mouth isn’t the only part communicating with the audience—your whole body is communicating. When some people talk to others, they instinctively know what to do with their hands. These people naturally use their hands and arms to emphasize what they are saying.
A lot of other people don’t find this natural, and their instinct is to put their hands down by their sides or put their hands in their pockets. While that may be fine for casual conversation, it makes you look a little static when standing in front of other people.
When you are rehearsing your presentation, put some thought into how you will use your hands. Practice moving them about to help with the emphasis on the point you are making. You don’t want to overdo it by waving your arms around like an octopus, but hand movement and gestures can really help emphasize the point you are making. When speaking, if you don’t need to use hand gestures at a particular moment, then you can rest them on the podium or put them down by your side. I don’t recommend putting your hands in your pocket as I think this looks a little too casual, but it’s up to you.
When I present, I like to use a Bluetooth slide clicker because I have something in my hand that I can fidget with, and I find that having a gadget in my hand makes me feel more comfortable.
How can I find out if my presentation is effective?
If you are speaking at a public event, it is helpful if you can get feedback on your talk so you can learn and improve. There are several ways you can do this. Many conferences have a feedback mechanism for speakers. For example, one conference company I have regularly spoken for—NDC Conferences in Norway—places a table outside each session room that has a bucket and a stack of colored cards.
As the audience leaves the session room, they pick a card and drop it into the bucket. If they like the talk, they select a green card. If they liked the talk but didn’t learn as much as they would have liked too—normally because the talk was pitched at the wrong level—they choose a yellow card. If they really didn’t like the talk at all, they drop in a red card. They are also invited to write comments on the cards if they wish, which are all anonymous.
The conference companies then tally up the card colors and record the scores. This is helpful for the conference company, as they can see what talks and speakers the audience really likes. This is a key factor for determining whether which speakers to invite back. For speakers, this is a simple way to gauge the audience’s sentiments about your talk. In my case, I commonly get green cards and a few yellow cards, and I have also received a few red cards. Sadly, getting reds every now and again is inevitable, but I can tell from this feedback that my talks are generally well regarded. While this is useful, it doesn’t give you good constructive feedback unless someone writes a comment on a card, but this doesn’t happen very often.
You can also be more active in your solicitation of feedback at the end of your talk and set up an anonymous Google form that the audience can use to give feedback. I have done this before, and I received a few pieces of useful feedback. Once someone has left your session and then attended other talks, they tend to forget to comment; there is, however, no harm in asking.
How many slides are appropriate for a presentation?
This is a hard question to answer because the answer is it depends. It is better to have a lot of slides that gradually reveal the information you want to convey, as opposed to a few slides that are too information dense. The reason for this is that if your slides contain too much text, the audience will spend too much time trying to read the slides as opposed to listening to you.
I favor using a lot of full-screen images that convey the message or emotion I am trying to evoke as opposed to resorting to text. But if I do use text, I like to do what is called text chunking, which breaks out the text into uniform boxes that I then reveal one box per slide (Figure
A-1). As I am speaking, I use my slide clicker to reveal another box as I speak so that the audience doesn’t have to process each box and its text in one go.
Figure A-1Example of using text chunking to reveal details on a slide
When it comes to how many slides are appropriate, use as many slides as you need to get the message across and no more. Nobody wants death by PowerPoint, and the more slides you show, the more the audience would try to process what is going on. Your slides are there to add to what you are saying, not to be a smoke screen for you to hide behind.
How can I make my voice not sound monotone or robotic?
When we are nervous and not confident in what we are saying, our voices can become a little robotic or monotone. Ideally, you want to ensure you include a range of expressions in your voice, as this helps to reinforce what you are saying and make it interesting. You can use volume and pitch to modulate your voice.
If you are telling a sad or poignant story, you may use a quieter and softer tone. If you are telling a story with an action-packed ending, you may raise your voice and become more animated. Audiences react well to speakers who modulate their voices to express emotions, but it does take practice. If you sound like a robot, your audience will disengage from what you are saying, and once you have lost the audience, you will struggle to get them back. Make sure you don’t overdo the modulation in your voice for the sake of it, as you will sound strange and, at worst, like an angry goat.
When you’re rehearsing your talk, pay special attention to how your voice sounds. The more confident you become with the material, the better you will be at controlling your voice. When you practice in front of a test audience, ask them to pay attention to your voice and whether the emotion and expression in your voice hold their attention.
Where can I find good examples of public speakers to learn from?
There are many recorded talks you can watch online—YouTube specifically. You can easily search for talks in your chosen area, but I also recommend watching talks in completely unrelated areas to your own field of expertise to introduce yourself to speakers in fields you might not otherwise venture.
When I attend conferences, I always go to see talks from people I have not seen before, even if the talk subject isn’t something I would normally be interested in. I am watching the talk to learn from the styles of those speakers. Some are brilliant—others not so good. But no matter what the quality is, I analyze what made the talk good or bad, so I can learn.
I also recommend looking up TED videos on YouTube or from the TED website and app. Their talks are brilliant, and the speakers go through a lot of training, so you can learn a lot from their delivery and how to write an engaging presentation.
What should I do if my mind goes blank in the middle of a presentation?
It doesn’t matter how well prepared and rehearsed you are; it is still possible for your mind to go blank while you are presenting. This can happen for several reasons: general fear and anxiety about being on stage or being interrupted by an audience member are two of the most common. You can easily prepare for your mind going blank.
To mitigate a blank mind partway through the talk, I use the presenter view of PowerPoint, or Apple’s Keynote, where I include a bullet-point list of the main points I need to cover for that slide. This acts as a queue card. If I get stuck or distracted, I glance at the presenter’s view and can easily see what I have covered or still have left.
Be careful not to put too much information into the presenter view. I have seen some speakers try to place a script there and read from it, and this always looks bad, as you are looking down at your screen and not making eye contact with the audience. Reading from a script in the presenter’s view makes you look unprofessional and unprepared, but having a few bullet-point notes is perfectly reasonable to help if you get stuck. It happens to us all, and I use this technique all the time.
Sometimes, a professional speaker does read from a script, and politicians are a good example of this, but they are usually using a teleprompter system that is set at eye level so they can still make eye contact with the audience.
I want to speak at professional conferences, but I’m not sure how to get started
The best route to speaking at professional conferences is to start with smaller meetup groups. This gives you an opportunity to practice with real audiences. Sometimes, these meetup groups will record the talks and post them on YouTube, which is great, as you can use them as proof of your public-speaking experience when applying to speak at a conference.
When you have built up some experience, you can then tackle a larger conference. In my experience, there are two ways into a conference. The first is being directly invited to speak by the organizers; this can become a common occurrence once you have a lot of experience and have built a name for yourself. The other, and most common, route is that you apply to speak at an event through what is called a “Call for Papers” (CFP). Before the event, the organizers will request that people submit talk suggestions. When submitting a talk, you need to write a great synopsis; that is why we spent so much time looking at synopsis writing in this book. Once the application deadline has passed, a committee will review the submitted talks and build their agenda. Many conferences want to book the experienced speakers, but they also set aside several places for new speakers to get their chance.
Most conferences are commercial entities, so they need to book famous speakers so they can sell tickets, but they usually allow new speakers to participate. Therefore, it is helpful if you can get some of your earlier talks recorded, as you can submit these videos along with your submissions. Showing an example of your talk can help the agenda committee make an informed choice, as your speaking evidence can help lower the risk for them.
I perform demos that require an internet connection. What should I do if the internet fails?
Internet failure is quite common at large events, as you have so many people competing to connect to the Wi-Fi. If you are doing a demo that relies on a working internet connection, then you can prepare by creating a second slide deck with all the demo steps placed as screenshots. If you are more ambitious, you can do a screen recording of the demo and narrate over that in the presentation.
By having a backup plan, you will be prepared for all demo failure possibilities. You will also feel more relaxed knowing you have a backup plan. The audience won’t mind if you must use a backup plan; in fact, they will respect you a lot more for being prepared.
The audience has come to your talk to hear what you have to say and hopefully learn something new. What’s important to them is the information they receive. If you must use a backup plan to give them that information, then that’s okay. The audience still gets what they came for.
What should I do if the projector fails?
I have had my fair share of projector woes when setting up for a talk, but they have always been resolved by trying a different HDMI or VGA adapter, or the audio/visual tech for that room has done some technical jiggery-pokery.
I have never had to deal with a complete projector failure; neither have I witnessed this in any talks that I have attended. It is rare, but it could happen. All you can do in this situation is carry on with the talk. You will have the slides on your laptop, so progress through them as you would with a working projector, but if you show any facts or figures that the audience needs to see, then you will have to explain what is on your screen.
It is a good idea to practice for this eventuality in your rehearsals, so you are used to explaining some of the more challenging slides. No harm in being prepared.
Never try to cancel the talk, since people have arrived in the room to see your presentation. You will just have to make do with the laptop in front of you and get through the talk as best you can.
How should I deal with people interrupting my talk with questions?
Some speakers are happy to be interrupted with questions partway through the talk. Other speakers don’t like it and would rather have questions at the end. Personally, I prefer questions at the end of the talk, and I don’t like being interrupted. How you tackle questions is up to you, but you should state your preferences at the beginning of the talk.
If you are happy to have people ask questions during the talk, tell them at the beginning. If you would rather wait until the end, make sure you tell them.
I am speaking at a large event. What should I do if only a few people show up for the talk?
There are no guarantees that you will have a full room just because you’re speaking at a large conference. Also, the time and day of your talk can affect how many people turn up. Let me use an example of one of my favorite events, which is NDC Oslo in Norway; the conference is a five-day event.
The first two days are workshops, and the next three days are conference days, where you watch the presentations. Attending a conference is very tiring. By Friday, audience numbers start to dwindle. We jokingly call Friday afternoon after lunch the graveyard shift, as people are leaving the event to travel home.
At one event, I was scheduled to talk in the very last Friday slot. I arrived at the room 15 minutes early to set up. I stood there waiting for my allocated time to start—the room was empty. As I got to the one-minute countdown before starting, the room was still empty. I was getting incredibly nervous that I would have an empty room. Just as I was about to start, four people walked in and sat down—at the back. I had an audience, so I started and completed the talk. Each of those four people gave me a green card at the end and asked a few questions. Four green cards mean a 100% approval rating. Not bad.
All joking aside, I very nearly faced the prospect of an empty room. In this case, the talk was being recorded regardless. If the room had been empty, I would have still done the talk because the recording was being put onto YouTube.
Thankfully, I have never been at an event where I had zero attendees. If the talk is not being recorded, then you need to find out from the organizers what they want you to do. I would say if the room were empty and there were no recordings being made, you wouldn’t need to do the talk, but you could still complete it just to say you spoke at the event.
I have been approached by an event to speak, but I must pay a speaker fee. Is that normal?
I have heard of events like this but never worked with one. You should not pay to speak at a commercial event. Smaller events could potentially ask you to contribute toward travel costs, but organizers of commercial events are expected to cover your travel and accommodations.
The reason is that these events are selling tickets and raising money from sponsors. Attendees buying the tickets are paying to see people like you speak at the event. Therefore, you, as the speaker, are the product. I don’t think you should pay to speak at an event.
The only exception occurs when you are sponsoring the event by contributing financially to the cost of running the conference. Then, the conference may offer your organization a few speaking slots, but that is the only exception I can see that is acceptable.
If you are approached by a conference that wants the speakers to pay a fee, you need to think carefully about what you will get out of the transaction. If you think the fee is reasonable and you will have a large audience to make the experience worth it, then go for it, but be careful and do your research. Remember, you—the speaker—are the product. People are paying to see you speak, not the other way around.
Should you be paid for public speaking?
The subject of being paid to speak can be a thorny one, and it really depends on your industry. In my experience, speaking at software development conferences, you are rarely paid unless you are the keynote speaker. I have never been paid for a commercial conference, apart from travel and accommodation expenses. I have been paid to teach two-day workshops, but they are different from conference presentations.
Although I haven’t been paid directly to speak at public events, these talks have helped lead to other opportunities where I have spoken at private events for different companies. I am paid for these talks, and I charge a lot, plus travel and accommodation expenses.
I always treat speaking at conferences as something that can lead to other opportunities. I also do it because it is fun. If you go in with that attitude, then you will have a great time. If you talk to a conference about speaking at their event, make sure you find out if they pay for your travel and hotel. As a speaker, you should rarely pay for them, unless it is a small community-based event that has no funding.
What was the most challenging talk you have delivered, when it seemed as though everything was going wrong?
Whenever I mentor a new or aspiring speaker, I’m always asked about my own horror talk stories. Somehow, it makes new speakers feel a little better to hear about the times I have struggled.
I have two examples: one from an in-person talk and the other from a virtual talk. I have already mentioned my in-person example earlier in the book, but it was so harrowing at the time that I will repeat it.
I was speaking at an event in Copenhagen. It was a conference with a two-day workshop and a single-day conference. At the single-day conference, I was due to speak just after lunch, and I was prepared and ready. In the morning, I was hanging out at the event, and one of the organizers told me that another speaker had pulled out at the last minute, as he was ill. The organizers, with whom I had worked for many years, knew I had a talk on a similar topic and asked if I could step in at the last minute. I said yes and asked when talk would be. The organizer replied, “In ten minutes!” I was quickly escorted to the stage to set up.
I set up my laptop and went to load up the slides. They were not on my laptop in my “Talks” folder. I had somehow deleted them, and I wasn’t sure when or how. My recycle bin on the computer was empty. Okay, I thought, I’ll load up Dropbox since I pay for their top tier, so I have unlimited history to recover the file. I couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi at all, and I had no phone reception. I quickly grabbed my laptop and went into the foyer to try again, but still no Wi-Fi or mobile reception. I was starting to panic at this point, as people were arriving in the room for the talk.
All I had on my laptop was an old version of the slides, which were more in note form. They didn’t look great, but they had the basic structure of the talk. I scanned through very quickly to remove any glaring problems, and that was what I had to go with. Thankfully, this was a talk I was familiar with and had delivered many times. It was my “Hacking Humans” talk, which I described in the synopsis section earlier in the book.
Even though the slides looked terrible, the talk went very well. At the beginning, I explained why I was there, as they were originally expecting the other speaker who was ill. I gave the audience an opportunity to go to a different talk if they wished, as this was not the scheduled talk. I would not have been upset if anyone had decided to go to another talk. I also explained and made a joke about my slide situation and then got on with it.
Even though I had messed up by not having a copy of the slides available on my laptop, I managed to get through the talk—to this day, I don’t know how or when I managed to delete the slide deck. Now, I always make sure I have copies of my slides on a separate USB thumb drive as a backup. I learned that the hard way.
My second example was a challenging virtual talk during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. I was booked to speak at a meetup group with a new talk I had written. For some reason, I find virtual talks more nerve-racking than in-person talks, but I was prepared and well rehearsed. I went to my office and connected to Zoom, and I had my slides loaded up and ready. The organizers did their usual group introductions and then introduced me. I got about 30 seconds into the talk, and my office internet connection dropped, kicking me off the call.
If Wi-Fi drops at an in-person event, you still have the audience there, so you can interact with them while you try to sort out the issue; but in this case, I was completely kicked off the call. I then tethered to my phone, which thankfully had a good signal. I rejoined the call, explained what had happened, and then tried to carry on. At that point, PowerPoint crashed; I got through about two slides, and it started locking up. I don’t know what happened, but it made my computer unstable, to the point where the machine was unresponsive. I had no choice but to reboot the computer. At that point, I noticed that the light on my internet router had come back on, so the internet was back. I quickly logged back in and reloaded PowerPoint, and, thankfully, everything worked from that point on. I made a little joke that I needed someone from IT to help me out (it was a software development talk, so everyone on the call was an IT professional). I lost nearly ten minutes of my allocated speaking time, but being a meetup group, they were flexible, so I was able to run overtime and complete the talk.
In the end, I received a big applause from the audience, and many people left nice comments on the meetup group web page, saying they were impressed that I had managed to stay calm under the pressure, which was nice of them, as I didn’t feel calm inside at the time.
When you hit technical hurdles during an online talk, it is harder than at an in-person event, as you have no one there to help, so you need to think fast. In my case, I had an internet backup that I could tether to my phone instantly. There wasn’t much I could do about PowerPoint crashing and making my computer unstable than to reboot and try to carry on.
