A problem like public speaking

Are you scared of public speaking? Think you don’t have anything interesting to say? Think you’re not good enough? You’re not alone!

In this talk Maria will take you through her journey from being terrified of public speaking to wanting to do more. Learn how to overcome your fears, prepare for your talk and be confident.

Transcript

1. A PROBLEM LIKE PUBLIC SPEAKING Maria Neumayer - @marianeum It’s very normal to be scared! More people are scared of public speaking than death
2. Why is it so scary? - It’s an unnatural environment - standing in front of a big group, everybody’s looking at you and listening - Most people don’t like to be in the centre of attention - You don’t want to make mistakes - makes you even more nervous - But: Nobody wants you to fail - everybody’s here to learn and wants you to succeed
3. In school every talk I had to give was horrible But mostly: I didn’t care about the topic and didn’t want to research it and that showed in the result
4. When I did enjoy the topic I would spend a lot of time researching and wanted people to hear about the stuff I learnt. That showed in the result!
5. Pick a topic you care about Picking a topic you care about will make you more likely to wanting to take the effort it takes to research, prepare and share
6. If you work on something every day it might seem trivial, but often it’s not! Talk to somebody about what you’re working on - you might be surprised how interesting it is!
7. Check what you’re working on If somebody else talked about that topic too - it’s fine. Everybody has a different angle on it. The fact that the topic was chosen for a talk means there’s interest.
8. If you think you’re not good enough: Every great speaker was a bad speaker at some point. They just had a lot of practise!
9. Nobody is born an expert If you don’t start - you won’t get better, so give it a try.
10. Corey was bad at public speaking in me, just like me. But now she’s keynoting conferences and speaking all over the world. You CAN do it! My first talk wasn’t great, but that’s fine. So what went wrong?
11. I just didn’t prepare enough. Seasoned speakers mentioned starting on slides the week before. I didn’t realise there’s a lot of work before even starting on slides! I also didn’t practise in front of others, so when I had to give the talk I was very nervous and din’t remember what I wanted to say or lost track of the order.
12. Prepare. A lot. You will need a lot of preparation - about 1 hour for each minute of your talk. For my second talk I participated in small public speaking sessions at work. Lots of topics around public speaking (e.g. proposal, slides, delivering a speech). Speaking in front of others - just for a few minutes - gave me some confidence.
13. Try a course Joined a two day public speaking training by skills matter I’ve realised: Everybody else had the same problems - everybody was scared and thought they weren’t good enough. It wasn’t just me! Everybody improved a lot over the two days - there was a huge difference between the talk at the end of day one and day two. It can be learned! We also had a support group at Droidcon because most of us were speaking there
14. Started with slides for my first talk - meant I would build the content around the slides, which restricted me a lot. Also meant I would change slides around a lot - changing the order, taking slides apart, joining them again etc.
15. Structure your talk First come up with a structure for your talk. Think about the messages you want to bring across. You can use the rule of threes: What’s that? It’s used everywhere (e.g. stories - three little pigs, sayings - veni vidi vici, giving three examples in a sentence) For structure: find three main messages + three main points for each of them
16. Then write your talk!
17. Write a script Writing a script helps you to figure out what exactly to say - I’m not good with coming up with words on the spot, especially when I’m nervous. Helps you to - Bring your talk together, - Find connections between topics - Find out how much you have to write (a bit more than 100 words per minute) BUT - it’s a preference. Amal (my co-speaker) didn’t enjoy it as much as he’d try to remember the exact words and get stuck.
18. Work on slides! We had to swear to never use bullet points again in the public speaking training Why?
19. People will read your slides. If there’s a lot of content they’ll stop listening to you. Bullet points make it tempting to put lots of content or even sentences on slides.
20. Keep it simple Just focus on the important messages. If you wrote a script before it’ll be very easy - just extract some messages you want to bring across.
21. And then the most important part: practise!
22. Practise. A lot. I need a lot of practise: - Reading the script out loud - Go through slides, refer to script when I get stuck and add notes to my speaker notes - Repeat a few times until I don’t have to add anything else - Go through script or slides on commute (without speaking out loud) - Go through slides only - without any notes. If I can do it without notes I should be able to do it with notes when I’m nervous - Do a test run - practise in front of your team This means you know you’ll be able to do it and gives you confidence. Practise the beginning most: You’ll most likely be the most nervous. Ask a question as a start to get a break and breath. Don’t forget about the end! I didn’t know how to end and thought I’d come up with something on the spot. Obviously didn’t. Try and bring your beginning and end together or repeat the main take away or call to action.
23. Have a supportive team in the front row to have some friendly faces to look at
24. …. even if they might not look supportive…
25. The talk went well - we were exited and wanted to do it again!
26. After the talk - questions. Something people are most scared of. I tried to avoid them by filling my talk to the last minute, but was nervous and spoke too fast. But actually… they’re not scary! You’ve done the talk - you’re proud and on a high.
27. You ARE prepared You’re researched the topic a lot - you’ll know most answers! Not knowing answers is fine - you also don’t have to answer questions on the spot. Questions are good! That means people were interested. Plus being able to answer them is a great feeling.
28. Like a roller coaster Public speaking is a lot like being on a roller coaster: First you’re excited to go Then you freak out and want to back out Then - once you’ve done it - it was great and want to do it again And next time: it’s less scary
29. Be yourself Everybody has their own way of working - find your own style and do what works for you. If you do it’ll feel natural.
30. YOU WILL BE AWESOME
31. BECAUSE YOU ARE AWESOME
32. THANK YOU Maria Neumayer - @marianeum