Yet another speaker’s guide. But proofed by 100+?talks

I have been working with corporate speakers, both internal and external, for over 8 years, in addition to the dozens I have assisted as an independent consultant. The work process is pretty generic: defining a topic, preparing a CFP application, dry runs, and helping with pre-performance jitters.

Whenever I start working with new speakers, we discuss the basics. Over the years, these basics have evolved and crystallized into a guide that I have developed and now use for Wrike speakers. I hope it can be helpful for your work, whether you’re giving a presentation or helping others to do so.

Goal

1. Determine the main idea of your presentation by coming up with 1–2 sentences before you start working on the content. Keep this idea in mind throughout your presentation.
2. Consider the target audience of your talk. Avoid using the phrase “for everyone,” as it often means “for nobody.” Identify the relevant group that will be interested in your talk. If possible, describe your audience using keywords. It’s helpful if the conference organizers can provide information on the audience demographic. (Check my post "5 Questions to IT Conference Organizers")
3. Ask yourself what problems you want to solve with your presentation and why you’re doing it. Once you have a clear answer, proceed to create the outline.

Structure and composition

Introduction. Introduce yourself by providing a brief overview of who you are, your position, and how long you have been working at your company. Keep in mind that the audience may not be familiar with you, so stick to a few quick facts.

To provide context for your talk, you can share information about your company and show screenshots to explain what your company is. It’s also helpful to provide details about your team, tasks, and organizational structure to engage the audience and make them feel your pain as if it were their own. The goal here is to create a connection with the audience and get them interested in what you have to say.

Structure. How do the different parts of your presentation relate to each other? They should be connected logically and visually.

The basic structure: the formulation of the problem, the steps taken, the conclusions.

Name the problem → define why it is important (context and explanation) → show the process of solving (tell about options you had) → give examples → come up with conclusions.

Usually, the main challenge for the listener is the lack of an introduction to the problem. He can draw his own conclusions, but it is difficult to engage with the problem without a well-described context. Another issue is?—?a very narrow, corporate-specific problem that doesn’t resonate with the audience.

Navigation. Think about navigation for the audience. You need to guide listeners and remind them what are you talking about in every part of your talk. You can use navigation slides for that.

Examples. Include bright examples (screenshots, code snippets, diagrams, before-and-after comparisons) to demonstrate the practicality of your ideas.

Lessons learned. Consider showing lessons learned instead of just achievements. Fails and conclusions from those failures can be very effective.

Wrap-up. Conclude your presentation with a wrap-up. Check that your slides lead to the answer to the main topic question.

Slides

1. Keep slides simple, with no distracting gifs or too much text. Use diagrams, and infographics to explain complex ideas and small screenshots with code.
2. If you have bullet lists, add animation so that items appear one by one. Or create separate slides for each bullet point so it will have the same effect as animation but will definitely work 100%. The worst thing is to use complex animations?—?with things popping or jumping on the screen?—?it is very distracting.
3. Some hints on how to present code.
4. Ensure that all images used have proper copyright. Use images or photo banks that provide free license photos.
5. When making a slide, stand 4 meters away from the laptop screen and 8 meters away from the monitor. If you can’t see the details, something is wrong with the slide.
6. Live coding is a very risky trick (unpredictable timing or possible technical issues) so it’s better to record screencasts with the coding process in advance even if you’re still going to code live.
7. Download your deck even if you’re using it online, e.g. via Google Slides (it’s better to export a pdf file).

Speaking

Plan the dry-runs. It is better to have two types of reviews: 1) a peer review and a review by your manager to check the content, and 2) a review with the Employer Branding team/PR. If your company requires a legal check, allocate time for this as well. You can also practice in front of a mirror or record yourself, which is a good (but sometimes painful ??) exercise. This will also help you estimate the duration of your speech.

If you have jokes in your speech?—?try them beforehand.

Collect feedback after the dry runs and allocate enough time to work with it. This will help you avoid the need for last-minute fixes.

Interaction. Presentations should be accompanied by dialog with the audience. Elicit laughter and sighs, ask rhetorical and very specific questions, and don’t be afraid to get silence in response?—?confusion is a response, too. This way your talk will stick better in people’s minds, and you’ll get a much bigger buzz out of it.

Eye contact. The presenter should always face the audience. To view the screen, a glance and nod of the head is sufficient. To avoid eye contact difficulties, pick a person in the middle of the back row and focus on their forehead. Why in the back row?—?so they will not realize that you are looking at them, the same eye position will be for the whole middle of the back of the audience. Why in the forehead?—?there will be no eye contact, and you won’t confuse anyone, and you will be looking into the audience, not at the wall/ceiling.

Avoid reading from the screen. This disconnects you from the audience and makes the presentation impersonal.

Speaking skills. One of the main goals of public speaking is to deliver a smooth, coherent, and beautiful speech (along with showing off, of course). Although everyone starts off with different skills, they can improve quickly at the beginning with a bit of effort. If you’re not confident in your ability to speak without “oohs,” “aahs,” and 16-second pauses for word choice, it’s okay to write a script for your talk on a piece of paper. In fact, most people deliver better speeches when they have a script to follow. Try to learn the script by heart to deliver a more polished presentation. But better try to tell a story.

Learn more on this resource.

And Practice!