Presentations Tips and Tricks
We really love creating and delivering presentations. It’s part of our day job, and also something we’ve sought outside of our day jobs – hence the conferences we’ve talked about here. We sort of stumbled on to the fact that we have an absolute blast creating and delivering this kind of content together, but we’ve been going strong with it for almost 3 years.
We get asked sometimes about our pro tips for creating content, delivering content, getting talks accepted at conferences, speaking at conferences, etc. We’re still learning too, but we figured we’d put together what we’ve learned so far.
Preparation
Obviously, making content is work. Thinking about it, making it linear (#LainieProblems). Figuring out how to explain it, clearly (one hopes…). With presentations there’s a visual component as well – how do the visual aids actually help to tell the story? Should you use no visual aids and instead just…have a sort of facilitated conversation? One of our friends and favorite people, Arty Starr, does this sometimes – in fact, attending one of her talks that ended up more conversation than presentation is how we met her in the first place.
The best plan for how to prepare is…well, to figure out how YOU best prepare. That might be different depending on the topic – you might need more backup resources available if you’re talking about something highly technical, for example. The best plan we know of is to prepare until you’re less worried – but stop preparing once you’ve reached the point that more prep makes you more worried. More on why “worried” is the barometer in a minute, but this could run the full spectrum of no prep at all once the content exists to hours and hours of content prep and revision and more hours and hours of practice.
Reps
Reps as in, repetitions. Practice. Just…give talks. It doesn’t really matter who for, although it’s good to build your reputation as a speaker and Knower of Things in the circles you’ll want to speak in. Really, though, the point is mostly to get practice speaking in front of people. Start to understand how you affect other people and how they affect you in that context. If you can combine this practice with delivering your own content, that’s even better – get a feel for how people respond, and if it makes sense to them.
Note we didn’t say if they like your content. Everyone has their own opinions, and their own feels – which translates to, not everyone is going to like what you present or how you present it. That’s okay, take feedback or don’t as it makes sense to you – but definitely pay attention to the responses people have and then make your own decisions.
Fun fact – Laine did this via helping to explain a new piece of technology to approximately 1000 people over the course of about a month – in groups of 10-15 each. Zero stage fright feels about presenting after that…
On Getting Nervous
Nerves (the gigantic wall of feelings that hits right when you’re about to get onstage), they happen sometimes. That’s…actually the best advice we have on the subject – they happen. Don’t feel like nerves are a problem or a sign that you’re doing something wrong. Second best advice: let the nervousness and fear and excitement flow through you – and let the excitement stay and fill your heart – what you’re about to talk about is AWESOME! and you’re excited. That’s really good.
Nerves: the gigantic wall of feelings that hits right when you’re about to get on stage
Worry Zone: long-lasting jitters and fears about your talk – usually related to having to do it perfectly or something terrible will happen!
Also, watch out for the Worry Zone – a longer lasting set of jitters and fear about your talk – usually related to having to do it perfectly. This is a control-based fear. You want to be safe in some way by giving a great talk.
Bad news: giving a great talk won’t make you safe.
Good news: you can’t make yourself any safer than you already are. You were made to give this talk. Go give it. Our best advice is, you don’t have to do it perfectly, instead you should…
…Be You and Have Fun
We do not present quite how “normal” people present – if we assume that “normal” is very formal (…rhyme unintentional). This is sort of on purpose, and sort of not – if we were formal people, then presenting in a formal manner would make a ton of sense. But…we’re not. Being comfortable presenting (hence not prepping to the point of living in the Worry Zone) means that your soul will come through – and that can be scary, to allow a room full of people to see pieces of who you really are. It’s also very effective – this is especially true if you genuinely love the things you’re talking about.
Genuinely loving your content and allowing that to come through (whatever that looks like) means that some other things are also clear to the audience – that you’re sure about what you’re talking about, and that it’s a thing worth caring about and listening to. It also typically means that if someone throws a curveball from the audience, you won’t be as rattled. And it means that it gets to be fun. You get to talk about things you love to people! As we above said, that’s awesome! And if it’s not awesome, it’s entirely possible that presentations are not a great way for you to communicate – we’ve both had several conversations with people who think we’re completely nuts for loving to present. That’s cool too, being you and having fun can apply to literally anything you do – and it’s always good advice.
Being you and having fun can apply to literally anything you do – and it’s always good advice.
Some Extra Tips re: Pair Presentations
Creating and giving presentations is a lot of work. There are a few different patterns we’ve seen of how people sometimes split up that load by pair presenting:
- Just the content
- Content + presentation
- Just the presentation
There are a few people we’ve run into who work on just the generation of content together – discussing ideas, getting ideas onto “paper,” editing and connecting dots of ideas. There are also situations where people might need to present together on content that they didn’t create together – maybe only one of them created it, or maybe neither did. Marketing material is often like this. Then there’s our plan – we create content together and present together if at all possible (it isn’t sometimes for work stuff, most of the rest of the time it is, yay!).
None of it’s particularly easy if you don’t have a solid relationship with the other person/people. Collaboration on material is hard enough, but collaboration on an actual presentation is very tricky. We’ve picked up some tricks along the way, like using avatars to know when to switch who is driving the presentation – but mostly we know each other really well, we’ve discussed the things that we present at very great length, and we’ve long established things like, “yes please interrupt me when I forget to make a point.” So…tl;dr, if you want to present with a partner or a group, communication as part of your prep is extremely important. Also really liking the other person/people, and caring roughly the same amount about the topic.
We hope our experience and learned tips are useful to you. If you’re called to say words to a lot of people about something you’re passionate about, that’s awesome! Go do that thing!
If you have any other tips, email us or drop them in the comments, below!