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How I prep for talks
Tomorrow Selectel is hosting the Admin meetup! This time I'll be the host) We'll look at how virtual machine images appear in the cloud, how to apply IaC to automate infrastructure testing, and discuss the development of devops/sysadmins) So join us online or offline!
While our speakers are getting ready, I figured I'd tell you about my own speaking experience and share the observations and sources I've studied) maybe something here will be useful to you)
1. The most important thing, oddly enough, is the story. Slides are secondary, they only visualize your words. Always start by preparing the story for your topic. I usually either record it on my webcam split into blocks (but that's tedious). Or I take sticky notes and write down topics. Break it into blocks. Then run through the story 2. After that you can sit down for the slides. I always sketch them out empty first, just the titles. Sort them into chapters (usually 3-4 chapters per talk) 3. Then comes the meat: filling the slides with visuals. That can be simple bullet points, like what I'm saying. Or diagrams, or code. But all of it supplements the story, so there's no point reading the slides out loud, people will read them themselves. You're just voicing your thoughts 4. Try to go through each slide and understand what you want to convey. Literally in 3-4 sentences. The goal of each slide. Say it out loud to yourself. That way you'll figure out how to shorten the story. Even better if someone else just asks you what you're trying to say here? Mom/colleague/cat: tell someone the main idea and goal only 5. Watch the connections: your story should be sequential, the slides should be linked to each other somehow. So the sequence of the story is preserved 6. Use analogies. Analogies always help make complex things simple. Your goal is to convey your thoughts in simple words. Good is the one who can explain something complex in plain language 7. Storytelling and your personal experience. It's always great to hear about you, about your experience. Because only you know best what happened to you and which problems you solved. If there's a real story behind it, it's always interesting to listen to
Also, some books I've read recently
- Ted Talks: Everyone knows the TED format. The book talks about various performances in this format, real people's cases. Tricks for making your talk interesting. For example, the story of how Bill Gates talked about malaria and released ordinary mosquitoes into the audience from a jar. That performance is exactly what helped people remember his main point
- Good, Bad, Selling (Horoshaya, Plohaya, Prodayuschaya): A fairly simple but interesting book on the basics. What kinds of audiences exist (say, hobbits, goblins, wizards and elves, like straight out of Lord of the Rings), how to prepare a story for each audience, and whether you should drink alcohol before a talk)
- Presentation Lab (Laboratoriya Prezentatsiy): A book with more advanced basics, but with interesting design. How to make presentations, how to come up with a story. Though the design didn't really land for me, it distracted quite a bit from the substance)
Useful exercises that helped me train my speaking skills (it can't get worse than the exercises, so that's exactly why you need them before a talk)
- Talk for 10 minutes about something you know well. If your listener loses the thread, they'll throw paper balls at you. This way you'll understand whether you have contact with the audience and get used to "distractions"
- Explain your profession to a child. Analogies are everything: remember, good is the one who explains complex things in simple words
- Pecha Kucha: 20 slides, 20 random pictures, 20 seconds per slide. Practice talking on the fly, tying random pictures together into one theme) Especially useful for salespeople