Daniel Schniepp

Preparing Talks

For a couple of years now, I have been thinking about giving talks in public. I've already spoken at company internal events, meetups and smaller events. Finally, last week I had the chance to speak for the first time at a big public conference. After the talk, someone asked me how I prepare a talk. I never really though about it before.

The most important aspect for me when speaking in front of others is to feel comfortable about the topic and way of presenting. Therefore, the following approach might only work for me.

Choosing a subject

First, I think about a topic that bothers me at the time. The topic is usually something I wrote at least a draft blog post or talked a lot to other people. When I have found a topic, I keep it in my mind, draft a title and take some more notes. I am collecting key messages over a couple of days. After that, I write the refine headline and create a summary, which is anyhow required when you submit your talk to a conference. Formats for presenting

People listen to presentations for entertainment and to learn something. Especially at conferences, the first aspect is critical and gets underestimated. You all have seen good and bad talks. For me, mostly the entertaining talks are the ones where I get inspired and take something with me. I have two formats that are working good for me, story-based and slide-based presentations.

Story-based

For story-based presentation, I craft a story which carries me through the presentation. The easiest and best working stories, are the ones I experience myself, or I can relate to in another way. If not, I feel uncomfortable, and it would require a lot of practice. Otherwise, it will not be seen as authentic. In this format, the slides are rather minimalistic and only empathize the major points. As I do not want to shift the attention of the audience to the slides. They should focus on the story. I even try to have rather empty slides for the story parts, to get back the attention.

First I create a skeleton of the messages, and then I am brainstorming for a metaphor or situation which becomes my story. Usually, the story guides and inspires me to shape additional aspects about the topic I want to talk about. Second, I structure the story into different scenes. First Introduction, second main, and last call-to-action/ take-away. Then I fill the respective scenes with content. In the main section I try to have three to four main messages, not more.

Slide-based

Another format I feel comfortable with are slide-based presentations, where I entertain the audience mainly with the slides and the story they are telling. I enjoy drawing cartoonish slides, though that takes time and is quite some effort on the presentation crafting side. I use the slides to tell a story and illustrate the messages I want to share.

The approach is very similar to the story-based approach. Though, the messages can be a bit more loose, and it feels more like a combination of short stories which drive the individual scenes. In this format, I have more slides compared to the other approach. I aim to have the peoples' attention on the slides. In the first iteration, the slides for the scenes are word clouds without a cartoon, as I will draw them sometimes even after the pruning step.

Pruning the presentation

After choosing the format and creating the content, the presentation is not ready. In the first dry runs, I mostly remove and sometimes adjust the one or other aspect to get a condensed message to the audience. It's important to not over do it, as you still want to tell a story. In general, I learned to remove the boring intro, jump right into the topic. Remove the “Hi”, “Hello”, “How are you doing?”, and get right to the story. Ideally, you skip even your personal introduction. Use the time to catch the audience attention. You can still put some contact details on the “Thank you” slide.

Practice, practice, practice

I don't enjoy it, though practice makes perfect and helps to sharpen the story line and the presentation flow. I enjoy improvisation, it's part of my style; therefore I do not write down every sentence. But I try to create a skeleton out of key messages. That allows me to improvise a bit. Hence, improvisation and training are not mutual exclusive. Mostly I train the presentation in my mind. As soon as I feel comfortable, I practice in an empty room, in front of the mirror or in front of my wife. Walking and talking loud helps me to get in the flow. In this step, I am doing additional adjustments based on the feedback.

Presenting

Mostly I am a bit nervous right before and at the beginning of a talk, enough to have a bit of adrenaline, which helps me to kickstart the presentation and get into the flow. Then the nodding, smiles and laughter of people in the audience are driving me through the presentation. Therefore, the hardest formats are remote talks or sessions which are only recorded, as I do not get immediate feedback and it feels like talking into the void.

Here is some material that I found helpful and inspiring.

talks