How do you pace yourself when speaking online?

Preliminary research on the audience, a common denominator between the participants and their relationship to the lecture. Arriving early at the hall and conducting short conversations - acquaintances, names, what interests them? During the lecture refer to those people, mention their names and answer their question. It always succeeds, like a ray of light that illuminates that person, and illuminates those around him.

Using Mentimeter to ask questions like: How much experience do you have with the subject matter? Or measuring the mood of the room...this can be very useful.

Whenever I was tasked to speak to a crowd (presentation, conveying message to students, explaining my answers), I would always make sure that everything I say follows the previous argument in a logical manner. I've been in situations where winging it led to a high amount of confusion and in-cohesion. That completely stops my pace because now I have to play catch up, which inevitably stops my next points. Learn to have everything in order. If you are explaining a complex point, start from the fundamentals and work your way up, because a lack of structure will cause confusion.

From my perspective, I try to watch my breathing when I notice I am feeling short of breath it's likely because I have sped up my pacing and I am not taking a moment to let the information soak in and allow people to hear my message. One of the ways I try to force myself to slow down is to stop and ask if anyone has any questions or if there is further elaboration needed. Then I can regather my thoughts for a moment and get myself back on pace.

I tend to speak very quickly. Speaking too quickly was the biggest challenge I faced when I started speaking publicly. I try to stay away from intentionally changing my speed and tone because that usually causes me to speed up my speech pattern. I found a tone and pace that works for me, and I stick with it

One thing I've found helpful is using a MIRO board for the workshop, where I can post some visuals and structure the lecture or workshop. The link to Miro needs to be shared beforehand and if participants are not familiar with it, an explainer video link is helpful to share as well. On the MIRO board participants can engage by adding emojis and stickies, yellow stickies, questions etc

Recording the lecture/workshop beforehand is helpful for sure. But it is also important to stay flexible and present enough to engage with spontaneous questions from the audience, technical problems or unforeseen topics.

Find opportunities within your talk to engage the audience, whether its a poll or a question they can answer in chat. This will help you slow down your pace and give you a moment to re-engage your audience.

There have been great ideas shared already. From preparation and practise, to audience engagement. One of my favourite is timers. They could be silent alarms or timers on your digital device (phone or watch) to help you with your pacing. In professional events it would be a timer at floor level in bright red, usually counting down to zero. My favourite is having someone at the back of the room that holds up a 10 minute and 5 minute sign so I can start wrapping up my story telling and end on time regardless if I told all the stories to demonstrate insights that I wanted to or not. The audience should never know you are running against a timer.