 Thank you, Chris. That was really helpful. See, I've made notes and all So hi, um, this is an interesting setup I've never done a panel like this just standing so just sitting so low and just be like hello everybody Anyway, I'm way and then I have my panelists here with me Grace and Adrian Adrian and then Tim Oxley. So, um, you can see I'm super nervous I don't know why I think it's something to do with your talk. It's just it's like it's full of do's and don'ts So and then also I was like, oh my god, she's covering all the questions I'm gonna ask my panelists. What am I supposed to do? And then I was like you can do this and then I was like, okay So she's covering the do's and don'ts and maybe we can cover something like just do it It's like emotional aspect of public speaking and speaking on the conference. All right So let's get into it. Let's start by a round of introduction like who you are and then What what kind of public speaking have you done? Yeah Sure, go ahead Yeah, hi, I'm Grace. I'm a data scientist at Uber. So just next door I've done three tech talks since I joined the tech scene Yeah, so I'm here to offer the newbie perspective And I've done a number of panels mostly at our women in tech events like this Hi, I'm Adrian. Can you hear me? Actually, you don't realize when you're using the mic So I'm Adrian. I'm actually a transitions coach and also a speaker coach for Ted Ted Singapore as well as Ted X Pickering, which is why I'm here I've spoken at fucked up nights if anyone knows that sorry for the language That is what it's called And as well as a couple of other small events in door workshops. That's what I do the most stuff. Okay. Thank you Hello, I am Tim. I'm mainly here because I'm married to this lady And she's dragged me along. I've done a bunch of public speaking And most of them have been just absolutely terrible, but people keep sort of encouraging me to keep coming back so I've somehow keep doing talks I Ran a conference mainly because I wanted the benefits of You know being in front of people but without actually having to give talks so that's a little tip and I started Singapore JS with way a few years ago and we've been running like ongoing Singapore JS related events for the last four or five years So that's a little plug there if you want to learn more about JavaScript go to Singapore JS. I Don't know anything. I'm great. Cool. Thank you. So I'm a little bit about myself, so I've have been a software engineer for six years and then I recently quit Now I'm just doing full-time graduate studies And I've spoken at RubyConf China Taiwan right out RubyConf in Singapore and then JSConf Asia, I should not list all the conferences, but anyway, I've done a fair bit of speaking and then interestingly I Also organized a global diversity CFP day before Singapore and I run a similar panel there So today is kind of like a little get-together Ginny was on the panel anyways, so next question What is your first? conference speaking Experience or rather like meet-up speaking Experience and how did you get into it? What was like the biggest hurdle you have to like overcome to get into it? so actually my First conference speaking experience was not that long ago. I think it was like almost exactly two years ago at PyCon Singapore and Our mutual friend Martin who runs PyLadies Singapore encouraged me to to talk about you know something to do with Python and back then I was like I had been an engineer data scientist for like two years, so I was like Who am I to give a talk on on Python right? I'm a newbie myself So why would anyone want to listen to me? That was the definitely the biggest like hurdle for me at least But Martin he was like super encouraging, you know, he's he's like the basically the advocate for like all Women in tech women in Python in Singapore and he pushed me to submit a proposal. It got accepted and Yeah, that's how I got started cool, I Think every talk is almost the first Right, I see some people nodding their head even if you've practiced it 20 times with people, you know all your stuffed toys are like me my dog Which the who doesn't listen actually I swear It's always feels like the first time you will always be nervous I'm not gonna lie to you. You're always gonna feel butterflies in your stomach and you're always gonna ask the question of Why did I put myself up here again? I'll tell you this morning. I was still asking myself Why did I say yes to be up here again? Who am I to give you guys advice? Who wants to listen to me? All these things will keep coming on in your head The thing is you set yourself up to do it and you'll set yourself up for success So that's kind of how I go through every single one. Hope that helps So in 2012 I had some friends who were Fairly into peer-pressuring me into doing things. I didn't want to do I was going along to a JavaScript meet-up at the time I thought JavaScript was just a rubbish language who would use this professionally Which was good because it meant that if When one of the organizers there Suggested I should give a talk. I thought well, you know, how can you mess it up? The language is already terrible I Couldn't make it any worse. So I started giving talks and then I realized that I've been trapped They he was really just looking for somebody to take over the responsibilities of running the meet-up So I ended up organizing the meet-up and that's also how I ended up Doing all the other stuff like running doing the Singapore thing and running the conference Again, actually it was the same person who made me. He said why don't why don't we start a conference camp JS Which is a conference in Australia? And I said, yeah, sure great. I Didn't really know what I was signing up for turns out. I was signing up for all of it All he did was register the domain name and said off you go. So That's that's sort of how I got into doing Public speaking the main the main thing that got me into it was I Found that some of the content wasn't that I was seeing in the meet-ups wasn't content that I wanted to see so I sort of Saw it as my responsibility. It's like I can't ask other people to put to put that content together. So I Sort of I tried to create the community that I wanted to see myself and it's the same thing here in Singapore There was no JavaScript meet-up at the time. So I thought well, you know, all right, I'll do it And that's how I Got into the stuff right so it looks like just having like encouraging friends are having Friends who just peer pressure you into things or just like the pure sort of confidence in yourself and acknowledging that Okay, so this is this is something crazy. I'm doing and then I'm just gonna dive right into it I guess that that all helps Core so then I guess one thing that Chris didn't come cover in her talk is Regarding like, how do you come up with topics and talk ideas because I think this is a problem for a lot of people It's like like like what Grace just said like who am I to give a talk like it's just kind of like dots Like do I have a topic an interesting topic to let my audience might potentially be interested in so What are your thoughts how to come up with interesting ideas for talks? Yeah, usually I talk about things that I'm like dying to say anyway and If I talk about them around the dinner table everyone will fall asleep so instead I submit proposals to conferences with like-minded people and Those audiences are more likely to be interested in what I'm talking about Yeah, so Technical topics and stuff. I save it for like non-dinner conversations now and some of my proposals to conferences instead I think I'm gonna highlight what Chris said actually earlier, which is you have to talk about something you care about Okay, it's really not about the content you sense when Chris was speaking I'm sure that what she cares about when giving her presentation And if you don't care about the topic that you're talking about you yourself don't believe in it You're not gonna sound Anything more interesting than the person next to you who isn't so most of the speakers that I work with when we have trouble talking about Coming up with the topic first thing is what do you like talking about? That's really just all I ask Just tell me everything you like talking about. I mean really we've got things all the way from of course We live in Singapore food second thing Instagram Third thing bet, you know it goes in that order and then of course then you have to hot start guiding them Yeah, but you're supposed to be talking about something a little bit proper. How do we weave all these in that's your narrative, right? Going back to what Chris said so if you think about starting to write down and list everything You would love to talk about if you had the choice to talk about and then how you can weave that into the topic that you've been Assigned to talk about if you don't have a choice. I think that would be the best advice that I can give you to try It's always follow your heart. That's where it's gonna go Thank you I Briefly touched on this in previously If there's something that you want to learn about And you don't know anything about it the best way to Learn about something is to give a talk about it because you know You have to get up in front of a whole bunch of people who you're hoping like you And if you get up and just talk garbage in front of them You're gonna embarrass yourself and in order to avoid that because yeah, I mean this is a thing for me I you know I like procrastinating but the fear of embarrassing myself in front of people is somehow like it's more You know it's stronger than my desire to procrastinate. It's a very strong desire So it's like trying to sort of trick yourself into learning something and also You know you get yourself, you know get your face out there and all that stuff the the other thing that I found is if a lot of people feel like when they've Initially starting to learn something that they're going to be you know, why would they give a talk about it? You know, you sort of assume that the people who are speaking about stuff should be the experts But in fact, it's probably the opposite because often what happens is once somebody really understands a topic thoroughly they end up they lose sort of They have a different mental model to how you probably are looking at it coming out coming at a topic as a beginner So you've as a beginner you're in the best position to teach something to other beginners because You've just recently gone through those hurdles and you've probably Got a sort of a mental model which is similar to how other beginners are so often find the people who Best teaching you something are the people who are just you know one step ahead of you not ten steps People with ten steps ahead of you. I'll say stuff and you won't understand so cool So it sounds like just just to summarize Sounds like it's like gather sort of the boring topic that you wouldn't like maybe your like family won't understand But it's a technical topic that you think like people from this conference might be interested in It's a good idea and then starting from like something mundane like daily life What you like and then sort of work from there to To topics that's related to the conference or something that would be a way to go and then what Tim suggested is like Set yourself up for a target of learning something and then Just give a talk on what you've learned Those are all very good ideas on how to get started. So I want to go back to grace for a bit So like for me, right when I was working as a software engineer, I had this problem with like look at today I fixed like this styles of this like website and then Tomorrow I fixed this bug it seems like my daily life of working is very uninteresting So how can I find like interesting topics? I can potentially talk about from like sort of mundane and just like uninteresting daily work of mine No, actually, I think those are the most interesting Topics that you could possibly talk about to to me and other like people who do the same thing, right? so one of the Tips that Chris gave was to turn it into a story and I love Presentations where someone's like here's this bug that I encountered. This is like the journey we went through to like solve this But I love that kind of talk. So I think if you can transform You know the issues that you face every day into a compelling story. That's super engaging. That's a good point Yeah, I guess just like something that took you a long time to figure out I guess you can just like write it down and then try to make it exciting Yeah, and like these are the five things I tried. This is why the first one didn't work This is how the fifth one eventually like got us over that hurdle that eventually fix the bug. I think it's super interesting Yeah, do you have anything to add about that? Yeah Things that you think are boring about your job aren't necessarily boring to other people Unless they're probably also doing the same job, but most people aren't doing the same job. So look I always Find it interesting to if somebody's into their job Actually, that's the prerequisite if you're you're gonna sit there and talk for an hour about some horrible part of your job You don't find interesting. Nobody wants to hear that but if you can if you can talk about something That you're excited and interested in as a part of your job I think people even if you know that they're not gonna understand it people often will Just like a little bit of an insight a little bit of a glimpse into how somebody else's life is and That can also open up like You know when you're a kid and people are telling you about you know, what jobs are available. I thought that you know My options were fireman or policeman And that was it or or a night And It wasn't until and even in even in high school people don't really tell you what jobs are Are out there and what the contents of those jobs are and Yeah, you can you can offer a people a great service by you know Yeah, giving them insight into what you do and they you know, they might want to You know join you sort of just Just like that kind of like an option providing sort of talk There was your Just inside inside people like inside sure. Okay, cool. All right. So let's get into a bit on the content of the talk So Chris covered like, you know, you couldn't come up with a whole bunch of ideas and cut down from there Filtering but what if I have too little content? Do you have any advice on that? That is usually my problem. So I don't think having too little content is a bad thing necessarily because You know Usually people just fill the rest of the time that you're allotted with questions And you just go through the questions and if there are no questions then, you know Everyone has extra 10 minutes for coffee break, right? So yeah, I don't think it's a bad problem Okay, I Usually have the opposite problem, which is too much content Although I will say that when you do have to so much so-called too little content I think you remember when we've been told to write how much do I need to write? How many words does it need to be on the essay and you would have had at least one teacher who has come to you and go It's not about the number of words It's how you're telling me the story and giving me the content So you feel you've said everything you need to say and it's what you want everyone to take away with you You have the content that you need and that in itself will generate the engagement that you need to keep it going Such that time doesn't run over and ten minutes more of coffee break never a bad thing You said everything I was gonna say basically if A talk which covers a little bit of content world is a lot better than a talk Which just kind of quickly covers everything that person has ever thought about that topic Which is more often than not that's the type of talks that you get at meet-ups and I find them to be not very You don't learn a lot, but if somebody goes into a little bit of content well, and they know it well They deliver it well even if it's a short actually in fact I think ten minutes is enough for a talk You know you can deliver a good bit of content not that there's anything wrong with your talk If you can if you can't deliver Ten minutes is enough to deliver Good content and you know throwing a few jokes throwing a few personal stories. You've got 30 minutes easy Great cover you mentioned jokes. So what if what if I'm just not funny like what can I do about that? Look, I think you signed up to Speak at a conference to like deliver knowledge or like share Share knowledge or like spark a discussion. You didn't say you didn't sign up to be a stand-up comedian, right? So it's a nice bonus if you're funny. I don't think you have to be funny You're still you're still really funny Yeah, what I think it's just a nice bonus of your funny Yeah, I agree with that if you want to be a stand-up comedian, then that's what you're doing shouldn't be at a conference, but That's what you're at and being I think humor is another thing that if you do even if you think you're funny not everyone likes your jokes right or not everyone gets it and Personally, I find that a bit more awkward when I'm standing up there And I decide to crack a joke and I'm expecting everyone to laugh and I get this See Not everyone was born to be a humorist Take it easy. I think Enjoy enjoy the moment again going back to what we're seeing tonight If you care about what you're talking about you're enjoying what you're talking about You'll come up with some form of humor and the audience will give it back to you as well Rather than forcing yourself to create it and then no one laughs. It's a little bit more difficult to solve Yeah, nothing is worse than like forced jokes So I think I've read somewhere that like the first the the last thing you should do is Open your talk with a joke because these people don't know who you are and you're coming out as if you're like their best mate and telling some awful joke and It usually falls flat and then everybody's just like And and they don't want it sort of ruins the rest of the the talk for them and for you And in fact, I've had I had a thing in South Korea. I was giving a talk I gave a joke. I made a joke and then it was just dead silence And it completely ruined like the whole talk for me because I'm sitting there I was thinking about it the whole talk thinking. Oh my god that joke bombed and Yeah, it can completely run it. So if you if you don't feel like Unless you're confident that you can be funny try not to and It's true And also like canned jokes are bad as well. Just don't use canned jokes So if like something that you read in the book don't copy it down and tell it, you know That's just terrible it people people like people being like authentic and I think the the best jokes are things that people I find Things that people kind of come up with as they're going along that that's rather than sort of pre-rehearsed stale garbage Don't do that Right Yeah, I think like a lot of the times is just awkwardness of Yourself also makes it funny. I like there. I had experiences where I I Go on a meet-up stage and deliver a talk and then I didn't mean to tell a joke people were laughing at I was like, what are you laughing at? You're laughing at me fine. You're laughing That's fine. That means you're paying attention to what I'm saying. So I guess like sometimes it's just like Just go ahead deliver the talk I guess and then doesn't matter if you're not funny But then this question always come to mind. It's like, what if I lose my audience? Like how do I like I'm like jokes seems like a good way to kind of get people interested and keep them interested But if you know, I'm not gonna tell telling jokes and then how do I engage my audience instead? Ha hopefully I think it's the kind of the job of the organizer to match the talk to the audience So hopefully, you know, you've spoken to the organizer you've ran through the talk with them And it's something that they think will be interesting to the audience in the first place As for like losing your audience in the middle of a talk, I I don't know man like that that's like my worst nightmare to The only thing I think I can say about that is that I think time flows differently when you're in front of a lot of people And it may seem that they are there you're like losing them But yeah, when you're in front of a lot of people, I think Your perception of how the talk is being received is very different from what it's like on the ground So don't worry too much about like losing the audience. Just focus on what you came up here to deliver and pray Um, I agree with what Grace has just said as well when you're up here and you're giving the talk You really don't know if someone's disengaged unless they're sleeping or doing something else that obvious And I can assure you people sign up for the talk because they want to listen to what you have to say Someone will be listening just look for that one person for your vote of confidence And I mean right now even as I'm speaking I'm wondering who's already disengaged and I don't know Right, you just hope everyone's still here with you Don't lose heart and don't fixate. I think why we get nervous is we start fixating on the person who fell asleep What did I do to make that person fall asleep? Okay? This is boring You've got a whole room of a few hundred other people who are listening to you who want to be here Remember, you're there for a reason. So are they and hopefully it's the same reason So no one's gonna be disengaged or as badly as you think you are and when you're up here Time flies faster than you think it doesn't go that slowly. I'm telling you from me sitting up here right now So I'm gonna approach this slightly differently this is advice for you as listeners How you can help somebody who's having a problem as a speaker because it is it is terrifying when you look out and You see just glassy eyes and nobody's nobody's paying any attention And I think You know just two people know signee here. I think yeah She's I think she's one of my favorite people to have in an audience because she's always nodding really always into your talk and As long as you look at her you're like well at least I'm connecting with one person and so this is This is something that I think is Really, I try to give people when they're giving a talk and if I'm understanding the words Give them a nod because it makes sure that and you don't have to do it now It would be artificial but but if you if you can give people Just some feedback that you're listening because it really does make a difference When somebody speaking especially if they're nervous, especially if that's their first time You know or if you know that they're going completely off track and they're lost Just nod and just that little bit of confidence can swing them right back on track. So Yeah Look for your nodder as a speaker as well for your nodder. Okay, that's a good point Just look for your nodder. I think that always is like for me I always give me this confirmation that I just need to keep going, right? Cool. So Next question regarding rejection have you Proposed to give a talk at a conference, but got rejected. I don't know. Have you any of you? Well, my sample size is like two so I don't think that really counts Lucky again, I don't do much conference isn't big CFP talks that I have to submit one Yeah, I've been rejected And and so in fact, this isn't this isn't a very good way of dealing with it I then ended up setting myself up so that After that, I felt so bummed about that. I no longer go to conferences unless I'm invited. I never apply So I which also means that I I literally haven't been to a conference for two years Haven't spoken at a conference for a long time So yeah, so don't do that. It's stupid Yeah, Chris So none of them had a good answer to this. I get rejected all the damn time And I think people assume that if you speak often that you must just get invited to read no And and I was someone at a woman who put Sydney had a great phrase for about collecting nose But they're not rejecting me as a person. I just yeah, I didn't know them know to my collection like whoo That's a good thing. And so you just and so one of the things I often do now is I get rejected I share it on Twitter and I have other speaker friends who do that as well because I think a lot of people starting out They just don't realize that oh God my hit rate is like a lot lower than you would expect I was gonna ask that question Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's good because like if you don't apply you never get rejected And if you don't ever get rejected, you will never really speak at a conference I guess and as a conference organizer, you know, there are a zillion different reasons you might get rejected There might be another talk on the same topic It might be that they had too many times in that topic last year and they would do something else this year Like there are a million reasons that are not you're terrible and no one wants to hear from you Yeah, exactly. Don't take it personally. It's like it's your talk. It's not you I always as an organizer I You do get a lot of Talks that you have to reject and I When you get rejected from a job or something like that it usually sucks So they don't give you any feedback I Always try to sort of give people a little bit of feedback So if you're over in a position that you are accepting or rejecting talks I think that the people will very much appreciate getting some feedback as to why they were rejected, you know and Like people appreciate the honesty even if it's brutal And so long as the the reason you're rejected them isn't something stupid like you didn't like their hand card or something Okay Okay, all right, so Based on your experience going to conferences and delivering conferences and coaching speakers Just generally like this is a big question. What do you think make a good talk? Everything that Chris just said That's cheating Yeah, I think the point she made about stories again, it's like one of my favorite things like I love going to talks where I Sit down and people make it like super engaging. They present the problem They don't tell you exactly what the solution is and then you're like, whoa, what do they do? You know what you start thinking about possible solutions in your own head as well Okay Yeah, actually one of the you made me think of a good example of this Singapore's gov tech team, I think wrote a really good blog post on like how they Track down like the the source of like the MRT breakdowns Yeah, so it wasn't a conference It wasn't a conference talk, but They they wrote like a really cool story of like how they tried a bunch of different things and they walked through You know eventually the steps that led them to the solution That helped them find the source of the MRT breakdowns. It's really interesting Tell a good story. Yeah, tell a good story. Cool Yeah, I think Chris really covered everything Well, let me put it this way. I do workshops on presentation. So I really think giving a talk a conference It's really like giving a presentation. It's not that different story lines one thing And the second thing is you want people to be listening to you So if you want people to listen to you what's behind you cannot be distracting as Chris mentioned Right with the photos with the text But when you do want their attention on it, you want it to be readable as well So that fine balance of what you have behind you you yourself what you're saying How you presented across your body language? I think that's one very big one to look at These are all things that make a good talk Okay, even and this is really whether it's a presentation basically if you're telling something to a big audience That's what I say Okay, your the attention should be on you You want people to listen so what you want people to listen to that and sometimes recording yourself like what Chris said And listening would I listen to that if you can listen to your own talk 20 times? Trust me. You're not that boring If you will listen to it, you can find that everybody else is listening to it for the first time Okay, so that should that in itself will help people to be there and makes it a good topic I can't listen to myself Just cringe But uh What was the question what makes a good talk? What makes a good talk? Just be excited about what you're talking about that like that that's It almost doesn't matter what you're talking about. You can be talking about your shoelaces And you know, oh god. I got these new shoelaces. They're made out of you know Polyethylene and I bought them from this shop. They were 15 dollars, but I think it was worth it You know like see it's just total garbage, but you know, I sounded excited about it. So it was interesting Yeah, so Yeah, I think Chris copied that as well like it doesn't matter how knowledge knowledge Being knowledgeable about a subject, uh, isn't the prerequisite for giving a talk It's just and it's not even actually being excited about it. Just sound excited about it. That's that's all And you don't need to know anything either Just sound excited about something Cool. Cool. Awesome. Um All good points, uh, one thing that chris did not cover is Q&A sessions so A bit on do you have something to say? Okay cool, so um on Q&A sessions Do you Think is necessary to like pre-empt what kind of questions you're going to get from the audience during Q&A sessions or like like or like what if Audience asked me a super tough question. I don't have answers to Yeah, so I think it's definitely A good thing to prepare for questions if You're asked the question that you can't answer. There's like the standard smoke and mirrors techniques that you can employ Such as I will get back to you later Or let's top offline Yeah, or you can just be honest and say you don't know this you didn't promise to know everything Or you know, you don't even have to know anything about it. You just need sound excited, right? So yeah, yeah Yeah, you can just say you don't just be honest cool Look at how many things we have said that we don't exactly know right? I think we've put ourselves out there already for this one Yes, preparing yourself for a couple of questions helps and actually when you practice it with other people Ask them listening to this. What questions do you think would ask me? um, I Like tonight I actually asked someone and go if you were coming to a talk like this What would be the most challenging question you would ask me and literally had to ask somebody that question For lunch today. Um, and then when you get a question like that And I go, okay, I did I had this conversation really just a few hours ago and said So I can't answer that question. What am I going to do? And he said just be charming The answer I got was just be charming I agree. It's if you enjoy yourself Even if you really don't know some stuff as what tim has mentioned earlier We really are not here just because we assume we really are the assumed experts We might not be the experts. We might just be one step ahead of you or sometimes we're actually behind you We did our research because we were asked to put up here. Therefore we look like we're ahead of you But we might not be so it's okay to say I don't know or like me pass the mic on Yeah, questions are hard. I hate questions, especially after a talk like Usually when the talk ends like for me anyway, I'm just like I want to get the hell out of there You know, it's it's over that I've done my job And now somebody's going to start like throwing questions at me like my brain's just not in the in the right mode You know, I want to get behind the lectern and so the I yeah, I think just deflect just don't don't answer anything speak to my lawyer It's really like I don't I think a lot of good conferences these days don't do Q&A sessions because they realize that You know, sometimes they can be embarrassing not only for the For the the speaker but also the person who's asking a dumb question You know, and sometimes I'll ask you something which has nothing to do with anything and you don't want to be like You know, you don't want to make them feel bad, but you It's either it's like you or them. Who's the idiot? And you don't want to do that. It's bad. It's bad place to be so yeah, just deflect and get out of there go home You know, great. Um, I actually I have a point to make about this question. It's like I asked myself a question So here I am answering it Um, so sometimes when I was preparing for a talk, I have just too much content Like I can't fit everything in there. So I'll be like if I take out this one bit of Content and I wonder if the audience would ask me this question. It's kind of like a trap question You kind of like Like sometimes like a christen, you know, you see if you have a gap and you feel that gap But when you have too much content, you can kind of like artificially create some gaps and just like expect them as Questions later and then you'd be like when the question when the audience actually pick up the question You'd be like, oh, I'm glad you asked So you already knew the answer. So that's another good way Um, so with all that Thank you. Um, I'm gonna hand This to the floor. So do you have any questions for us? Yeah, just a quick thing. I actually have seen is this on I've actually seen you do do this way where you you give a talk and then you say does anybody have any questions Somebody asks the question and you're like, well, I'm glad you've said that and then you bring up the slide So then it looks very it looked very slick. Like you you knew exactly what people can ask. So yeah, that went well Yeah, definitely So um speaker notes help, um, there was this one time at picon I was like I went to the next slide and I was like, oh my god What was I supposed to say here? And I took a second, you know, take a deep breath Look down look at the power point. There's like speaker notes there And um, I just like straight up read off the speaker notes. Um, I thought like wow, I look so crappy Like I must look like an idiot now But when I looked at the video afterwards it looked like nothing I didn't even didn't even notice And that's where I learned actually that like time flows differently on stage. So, you know, it's It's okay if that happens You know Yeah, it happens to me all the time. Well, especially when I'm not well prepared enough. So I'll be like Silence, this is like the worst because you're like, Jesus. I'm not speaking And then but if you just pause and try to think and the audience don't really notice Yeah, you just like they thought you're just pausing for them to think about what you just said My secret weapon for that one is to take a drink of water It makes you look so classy like I'm just on my throat. So So have water Wow And then you've done so awkward. It's like just standing there. Yeah, that's good. Yeah That happened to me once when I didn't prepare for my presentation and I had a picture behind me Just one picture and I was like And I forgot if your speaker notes I didn't practice enough and I was like, oh, is that picture behind me? So you don't know what to say, right? So I decided I'll throw it out to the audience and go So based on what I said already, what do you guys think? Really and you know, you could do that with points you put up there I mean, I you can have a blank screen and go, what do you guys think is up next? And you know, actually if you've engaged your audience, you'd be surprised They will throw something up and we'll be like, you know, let's see and then you click and you're like, okay That's what I was going to say You're close almost maybe they'll come up later because you actually don't know what's going on, right? There was a time when mac I still did not know how to as you guys can tell I'm not telling you I'm technically handicapped I could not actually get my presenter, you know, your next slide thing So I only have the current slide and I'm like What's next? All right, let's see if your answer comes up next you click and eventually gets there go Sorry, better luck next slide You you kind of find a way to build smoke and mirrors I guess to deflect it through so that's mine Yeah, like when I when I get confused about things having it written down like the speaker notes like Just having them there knowing that you can fall back to the speaker notes and just read them is Maybe you don't actually need to read them But just knowing that you can if you if your brain just turns off suddenly and you're thinking about a joke that crashed Bond Yeah That that really helps and in fact one of the reasons why that that tokyo talk That's not the right country anyway Nobody would know nobody would know But one reason why that talk was bad because the same thing happened to me I couldn't I freaked out and my I couldn't figure out how to get my The the speaking notes to come up without it also showing on the screen Um, and I had I had not only that I also had um I had some language in my speaking notes, so it wasn't appropriate to be putting up on the screen so The yeah that so that that also threw me um, so make sure you I think that the three things are make sure you've prepared your talk way Make sure you've prepared your talk Practiced it a couple of times practice it with your husband a few times before you give it, please Uh, and uh, also make sure you've practiced like all the like the technical details make sure that you know how to switch your Switch to present a mode. Um, make sure you just just just practice it. Uh, because that that uh, Your brain can just go into autopilot if you've practiced it a few times. Uh, and that's really the best the best thing Cool. Yes So in your opinion, what is the best reason that we show you the talk? That's really Why shouldn't you You're just there to talk about what you enjoy You're just there to have fun if you take this attitude you can talk about shoelaces You could talk about your dog. You could talk about the day you've had anything that is a talk. What's a talk? A talk's a conversation You just have a conversation either with one person Or with a whole load of people who are actually happy to hear you talk And if you try to practice that and you actually do that every day, so To me, it's there's no reason to say no Well, career exposures. So then I go into conferences as an attendee versus a speaker Yeah, it puts you at a different sort of position when you talk to people They see you as an expert regardless of whether you are or not And then I picked up this one while giving a talk this one right here Yeah, so That's like that's like where we're we're met. So just go on and meet people of like likely minds and then That's what I can think of Also three conference tickets more often than not. Oh, yeah, totally Uh, I think that like the number one thing which uh was beneficial like the number one thing that Made me like have any kind of resemblance of success in my career was Giving me up talks and giving conference talks It again doesn't matter if you know what you're talking about. It doesn't matter about anything It just next time somebody has a problem with shoelaces They'll come and they'll talk to you because you know that you're at least one person that they know knows At least or is at least excited about shoelaces and uh The the exposure that you get As as a speaker, even if your talk is bad, even if you give a bad talk People you've suddenly put your face in front of uh, you know, how many people uh, who most of them aren't giving a talk So you're already like you already look amazing to them because you know You know the whole public speaking is the most you know feared thing in the world So even if you deliver a bad talk, uh, you're you're gonna look very good in the eyes of everybody in in the Most people in the audience You'll you'll be forced to learn something So every time I prepare a talk I end up learning a lot more stuff Which I can't even fit into the talk, you know, because you want to make sure that you know the stuff you know well over and above the minimum requirement And uh I think I think that Just that that thing that the thing that you mentioned the Perceived the perception of authority is so powerful. It is ridiculous. Uh, like This happened to me Early in my career I gave a talk about backbone backbone j s and then suddenly somebody was trying to hire me for backbone And I'm like dude. I learned it the day I gave the talk But this is what it's like, uh, and I mean And it can happen to anybody you just give a talk and then suddenly you are the expert It's amazing and you and you're not even yeah, it's good And I think can I just finish that off with I think after every talk you give you learn more about yourself That's the biggest takeaway you can other than learning about shoelaces learning about being the expert It's you learn more about yourself And you'll feel good about it. So yeah One one more thing is uh, the other speakers at conferences are also usually awesome people And and if you if you go to a conference, you're a speaker or an mc Or you're somehow involved with the community organization like michael, for example, it's a good example Yeah, he gets to go and schmooze with all of the the top people in the in You know all of all of the yeah, Singapore industries, but he doesn't even have to do anything It's other to show up for the camera. He doesn't have to give a talk and so So not only just giving talks but also just being involved in your community puts you in touch Allows you to network with All of the important people that can really pick up your pick up your career Like literally every single thing which has been positive in my career has happened through meetups every single thing I met way through through A conference and the reason I was even coming to the conference was because somebody peer pressured me at a meetup to come to Singapore they they said we're going to Singapore. You're coming. I'm like, oh, okay All right, I'm coming and the reason I the reason I applied to give a talk was because somebody Damon omen Peer pressured me into giving a talk in melbourne and the singapore thing was happening just before the melbourne thing I'm like, well, I'll go practice my melbourne talk in singapore So it was all it's all peer pressure on that's another point Peer fresh people even if you if you're not a speaker just peer pressure other people to be speakers No, it's awesome because you you because sometimes that's all you need somebody just needs somebody to say Go do the thing and then you're like, oh, well All right, I guess I'll do the thing because even if I screw it up Well, I can blame that person. They they told me to go do it it absolve. No, seriously. It means you you you can Uh absolve absolves some of your responsibility for doing something bad. You know, you can just blame them So all right grace. Are you gonna talk you have to talk now you have to answer this question What are the good things about giving a talk and just be a speaker Honestly, I was pure pressure in the most of them He has a receiving end of it All right. Also, I want more thing you can put it on your resume as a conference speaker, you know As critical to yourself Cool Yes Is anyone who can check quality of your talk? Meetups beforehand You mean when you're submitting it So the question is I was in start the conference. It was a big tech conference And from my side, it seems that some talks was the level of meetup. What was the conference? Because the question is is an organizer checks the quality of people at all. Is it good enough for the for the conference? Yeah, so I think more often than not the organizers will be happy to check if you ask them You know for strata, there was like a like a speaker Engagement person, right? You could like send the slides to the person and they will check it over Another thing that's really really good is meetups. So for picon, I practice with pie ladies beforehand and You know, not only not only helps in terms of getting feedback Also helps your confidence a lot because you know, you've delivered it once it didn't bomb and you know Yeah, they also give you a lot of like good feedback that helps improve the talk before the actual thing Anything to add? Okay Any other questions? Very good. Okay. Thank you Grace, Adrienne and Tim