 So, this is my name, my name is Michael Reichle, I'm German, apparently. The other funny thing is my nickname, and then there's my email, so if you want to ride me or something, go ahead. Right, let's start. First of all, motivation, why are we here? Because there's no uplink, and also because there's a talk. First of all, free software, as you can read here, is mainly traded by word of mouth. So there's not many people who like open a magazine and read something cool about Linux, and then you decide to use it. Most often it's a friend who runs it, or it runs in school, or they go to a Linux event and see a talk and kind of like feel interested and want to check it out. So, you have to be convincing to make them use Linux or BSD or Unix or whatever, and this is about how to be convincing, thank you, Herman. Also, if you look at the free software movement, it doesn't only consist of people who are incredibly good in coding and do not talk at all, actually the whole success of the free software movement depends in a large part not only on the good code, but also on charismatic figures who carry it and who give it the popularity that it needs in order to be successful. So I'm hoping that with this talk I'm going to make a few of you the next charismatic leader. Yeah, I'm going to face the camera now, I don't know if you are waving at me. Okay. Yeah. Actually, how many people from my speaker training are here? Yeah, there's a few like, are you noticing how it shifts from one neck to the other, and I told you all not to do this? You see how annoying it is now? Okay. Also, the free software movement is often hampered by the common misconception of the socially inept geek. So you quite often get the opinion that, yeah, they're not that bad and they really cannot put up nice systems, but you cannot talk to them at all. And if you have them talk in a meeting or explain something to a larger group of people, they fail miserably. So many people are hesitant to get geeks or free software people to speak to larger audiences and this is just wrong. And finally, well, that's how to is about everything. So I just thought that there should be a how to and how to give speeches as well. There is also the conference judo that I hope most of you know by now, it's been around for quite some time. And yeah, this is meant to be yet another how to. Right. Little disclaimer, giving speeches isn't an exact science. So there isn't like a set of rules. And if you follow it, you're good. And if you don't, you're bad. You just have to find your own way. So I found my own way and I'm trying to pass the knowledge that I gathered on to you. So most of this is based on my personal experience and it might be completely different for you, but I hope that everybody here can like take some useful information out of this. Right. First, we'll do this in a chronological order, so we'll first talk about preparation for a while. We'll go on to the actual delivery and then final there will be the aftermath. So preparation is key. Preparation is the most important part of the whole speech. If you're well prepared, almost nothing can happen to you. So do take time to have a proper preparation. Start weeks ago, when I mean weeks ago. So first of all, the topic. This is quite an obvious thing, really, because you need to make sure that you're like really competent on the topic because nothing happens to you more than if you actually feel uneasy and you feel unsafe and you have the feeling that you're actually not the right person to be talking about this. So also things like answering a call for papers and thinking, well, I've got four weeks left. I'm going to do some reading and I'll be competent by then does not work out ever. Even if you read up, you will still feel unsecure and this will show. So be sure that the topic is one that you're comfortable with, that you feel secure with and that you can actually provide enough interesting content to keep people interested for that very long time that a speech can take. Okay, so a few things that you should think about before actually applying or answering a call for papers. First of all, what type of event is it? Basically how many people will be there? What kind of people will be there? What audience, like are you talking to a class of students or to a school or to a board of directors or are you at Dubcon or Linux tag or whatever? So yeah, based on this, you have to consider how many knowledge you can actually assume. You have to consider this like an intermediate audience or are there all beginners? Have they actually ever heard about Linux at all or are they here like really quite professional people who want to hear something new and maybe there's not that much that is actually new to them? So yeah, do spend some time on this and also think about the speaker, which is yourself. Think about whether you are fit for this event and whether this is actually the type of topic that fits you like. For example, I do horribly in technical talks. This is why I don't give them. So you need to find your own special favorite topic and then just go with that because it should also be a topic you like because you can really see if a speaker is enjoying himself or not. And if he's not, he feels so uneasy that after some time the audience will feel uneasy just as well. Slides. I think everybody has read some stuff about like how to do proper slides or not and actually today it's also done in school mostly and if you study, you hear it there like 20 times. So I'm going to make this a bit short. First of all, do you need slides? Often you actually don't because often, I mean you need slides if you have to illustrate what you're saying. If you're giving like a purely inspirational speech or if you're actually just explaining the concept of free software, things like that, I don't think you really need slides. If you're a good speaker, people might just as well look at you and not at the slides because there's not really that much you have to illustrate. You need slides like for giving diagrams or for giving URLs, all that stuff. If you just speak freely, you can actually dare to go without slides and just have all the audience look at you instead. Next thing, papers. Do write papers please. Always write them and write them before you actually give the talk because they provide you with so much content that you didn't think of otherwise. Also do not try to turn your slides into a paper which basically means do not put any single thing that you're going to say on the slides because in that case people will either not read the slides because they don't have the time because they're also trying to listen to you or they will just read the slides and ignore you, which is even worse. So always have in mind that your audience needs to multitask. They need to read your slides but listen to you at the same moment and talk on IRC as well. So yeah, do try to have your slides and your talk complete each other, which basically means do not create redundancy. Don't put things on the slide that you're going to say and don't say things that are on the slide. Well, of course, it has to go along content-wise, but yeah, do not create too much redundancy because if there's too much redundancy, people will start ignoring one of the two media at some point. And of course, in order to be able to read and listen at the same moment, the slides should be easily readable, which means do not use funny colors, do not use funny fonts, do not use loads of fonts. I guess you all know these rules. If you use illustrative funny pictures, say like comic strips or funny stuff, do that but sparsely. Because it leads all the attention away from you and it doesn't actually transport much content. So just give the URL and have them look at the funny stuff later. Last but not least, proof readers. Possibly, if possible, native speakers as proof readers. Because the fun thing is you can have like ten proof readers and the 11th will still find funny stuff in your slides. I used to have, I used to hand out suites to people who gave me like ideas for making my slides better. Nowadays I don't anymore because I'm totally out of sweet spin now, but this is a thing that works pretty well. Because they don't give a fuck, they just give much. They just read it and they're like, stop their neighbors, say look, there's a spelling mistake there, and then they go on. But if you promise them something, they will actually remember and come approach you after the talk and actually tell you, which is very good. Because mostly you don't notice yourself. And finally, test your slides. This means actually do deliver the talk. Just to find out how long it takes, how much time you need for a slide. Whether the slide actually fits your way of speaking. And this also helps with their nervosity, stage right, anxiety and all that because you can actually practice. Yeah, I mean, you can either like get some friends and give the talk to them if you have enough and they're actually willing to listen or otherwise you can just like talk to the mirror or to a pet or something that doesn't really mind. What's important is that you actually speak like loudly and actually do deliver the talk. Because you will also notice that there's some words that you know in your own language if you give the talk, say in English, and this is not your native language. When you thought about the talk, everything seemed so really clear. But now that you're delivering it, there's lots of words missing. Because you always thought them in your own language. And now you're standing here and the word is gone. Or it has never been there. So do practice. The next stage is the morning before basically the very day that you're going to deliver your speech. Being the girl that I am, I'm gonna say a few sentences on how to look. And then I'll go on to the important stuff. No, it's really not that unimportant. Because many people think that they have to impress. And they think they have to impress by dressing fancy. And this does not work at all. Because if you feel dressed up, and if you feel funny, and if you think you look funny, and if it's just uneasy with what you're wearing, this will show. It will increase your adversity, it will just disturb you all the time. So dress comfortable. I mean, if they are all in ties, I guess you have to wear a tie as well. But you can also have a loose one. Yeah, try to be comfortable. Do not dress too impressive. Does not work out. You may sound, you may seem a little bit more professional, but then again, you're so hampered by this that the whole good impression is gone. Also, no toys. Which means if you're wearing a badge, you might wanna take it off. If you have keys or something in your pocket, you might wanna take them out. Because most people start to fiddle when they're nervous. Basically like doing this, or doing this, or doing this, something like that. And this is incredibly annoying if you watch it. You don't even notice it yourself most of the time because you do it purely subconsciously, but it's so annoying. So in order to prevent yourself from fiddling, discard of all possible toys. Also, this is for the long-haired people. Let them see your face, because this is what they want to see. Because if you listen to a person, you wanna see their face. Hi there, by the way. Because basically the mimic just transports as much information as the words do. So if you have long hair, tie it back. So let people see your face. It's so inconvenient to hide between a huge mass of hair. But you don't do yourself a favor with that. Second, once you're there, have a look at the venue. Get a feeling for the atmosphere. Like, how is mood today? Are people relaxed? Are they having fun? Are they enjoying themselves? Or are they being pissed off because the uplink is gone? Or because it's cold or hot, or they're hungry or something? Do talk with other speakers, ask them how their talks went, how attentive the audience is, whether they go along well, or whether they're doing loads of other stuff while listening to you. Look at the room that you're gonna be at, just to get a feeling. So it doesn't happen to you that the moment you enter it, it's like, here? Shit, this is like a 180 degree angle and there's no way that I'm gonna cover this. So do look at it in advance and be prepared. Also, of course, this goes for equipment, which should be quite obvious. Because it's so embarrassing if you actually go there and the laptop isn't working and you forgot the power adapter and you have that backup laptop but you don't have the graphics adapter and so on and so on. So try to avoid it. Third, talk to people. Because there's only one person who knows what the audience is expecting and this is the audience themselves. So probably you wrote some stuff like what are you gonna talk about and to whom this talk is meant to be. But still, it's a good idea to actually talk to people and try to find out what they're interested in. Because you can always do some last minute adjustments to your talk and tailor it to perfectly fit your audience. Okay, we're getting, as you are watching the banana, I hope, we're getting closer and closer to the actual delivery. We're eating bananas. Yeah, this is a banana just for you people. Usually I use something else. So the hour before, calm down. Most people suffer from their velocity or anxiety or stage fright at some point. It's either an hour before or the minute before or the minute they start talking. But everybody does at some point. So calm down. My speaker training people, what do you do to calm down? Exactly, you breathe with a belly. Don't breathe with your breast. Breathe with your belly because that eases and it relaxes and it's so good. And also, distract yourself. Like do not spend the last hour before your talk doing your slides or reviewing it. Yeah, you're all laughing now I know. And also, do not go over your talk again and again. Because if you don't know it by then, you're not going to know it in the last hour, it's just not going to work out. If you're unprepared, you're not going to prepare yourself within 60 minutes, most probably. So you stop laughing. So what I would advise you to do is that you distract yourself, that is do something completely different. Like play a silly game, talk to people, work on the computer, hack something, whatever is fun to you. Just don't think about your talk and just don't work yourself up until you're so nervous that you're going to fail. Do not make any last minute changes, please. Really, you're still laughing. Because the thing about last minute changes is really that hopefully by the last hour you have the talk that you want to give in your mind. And it's quite hard once that is in your mind to incorporate the last minute changes. So most likely this is a personal experience. You do make last changes like change slides or change the order. And then you talk and suddenly you realize that your slides do not actually fit your talk. So don't. Also avoid a full stomach because it makes you think slow and it makes you move slow. And you might even have digestion problems at some point. So if you're hungry like eat like a sugar bar or a chocolate bar or something like that, so that you do have sugar but do not put too much weight on you. Drink a little. Drink water or ice tea or something. Do not drink sugary stuff because it closes the throat. Do not drink milk by there because it gets in the vocal cords and just makes a bit of slimy. And you have to constantly do like which is not so nice. And yeah, don't drink too much because there's nothing worse than being like 10 minutes into your talk and realize that you have to use the bathroom so badly. It's also really bad for timing. So drink a little. And again, empty your pockets because there's many things that are more disturbing than a guy giving a talk constantly fiddling in his pocket. You don't want to see that. Even if it's just the keys, you never know. So avoid the whole thing by emptying your pockets before starting to give a talk. OK. Any questions so far? Are you getting along fine? Yeah, good. So speech, big topic as well. First rule, most speaker training people know this, breathe. Because most mistakes that you do when you speak wrongly are caused by wrong breathing. Basically, if you don't take enough breath at the start of the sentence, you're going to run out of air by the middle. And then you have to rush through it to actually get to the full stop. And there's not any air left. So you get quicker and quicker. And people cannot understand you anymore. So if you're out of air, take a break. Take a deep breath. Speak on. Nobody's going to mind. And it's going to make you sound so much nicer. The second thing, this is mostly for the native speakers because they usually don't have language problems. So they just rush through their talk like this. And all the non-native speakers have huge problems following them. So do try to slow down. I know hardly any speakers who speak too slow. But I know loads and loads who speak too fast. So here's a list of a few things that you can do to make yourself slow down. The first thing, again, is breathe. Because if you just take a breath every now and then, it's going to slow down. It's going to slow you down automatically. Don't think ahead. This basically means that while you're talking about slide N, you're actually already thinking about slide N plus 1. So try to keep your mind with the things you're actually saying. Do not think like, OK, this is now 10 to 5. And I have so many slides left. And I have really to hurry up. And your mouth just keeps talking. And you're actually not thinking about what you're saying. This isn't a good thing. Study the audience. If you're missing words and you don't know what to say, have a look. People like if you look at them. Because then they feel addressed. And it makes them feel like personally appreciated. So do look at them. They will enjoy it. And so will you, given that they look at you. Also, this is a funny thing. Listen to yourself. This is basically the same thing as don't think ahead. It's just phrased differently. What this means is that you should not rush ahead. But really listen to yourself. Am I making sense? Am I talking slow enough? Am I like pronunciating stuff right? So try to do that. It's a thing of practice. Doesn't work the first time. But eventually it will. And the non-native speakers, mind your accent. I'm listening. Yeah, because an accent can be quite disturbing. Not personally, but it really just makes it hard to properly listen to you. Especially if combined with a fast speaker. So if you're giving a talk in a language that is not your first language, try to speak slow and with lots of accentuation. So people can understand you without problems. And again, take breaks. I'm going to say this all over and all over again. Because it's so important. Yeah, it's just breaks are your best friends, basically. Because they allow you to breathe, to orientate yourself, to actually think like, OK, where am I? Am I still in order? Am I doing this all right? You have time to look at the audience. You do have time to have a sip of water, provided they don't give you such a microphone and you actually have your hands full. So do take breaks. And the other thing that's even more telling and even harder to control is body language. First of all, where to look? As you might notice, I'm constantly looking around. Because this is really an unfortunate setting for a talk. Because I really have an audience like this. But if you have one, you'll just have to deal with it. Because people want to be looked at. They want to feel addressed. They want to feel like you're talking to them and them alone. So do look at people. Personal history. If there's somebody in the audience who's looking like really grumpy and he's not enjoying your talk at all and actually thinks you're an absolute prick, ignore them. Do not focus on them. Because I once did that. I was just looking over the audience doing the whole usual thing. And then I discovered this one guy who looked at me as if he wanted to kill me, basically. And this makes you nervous. So you hurry up. And you get faster and faster. And I delivered a 60 minutes talk in 20 minutes flat. Fun thing, I approached him after the talk and he loved it. He just always looks like that. And he's here now. Ha, ha, ha. So yeah, if there's somebody troubling you or disturbing you or there's somebody like having breakfast while you're talking or obviously playing a very intriguing game on his computer, ignore them. And just look at somebody else. If you go over the audience, skip them and go on. Because yeah, they're going to distract you and you don't want to be distracted. Also, do not look too much at the ceiling. Don't look too much at the ground or at your feet or in your pocket or all those things. Look at people because you're talking to them. Gestures. Again, if you have free hands, please use gestures because they help you so much because they actually transport a lot of meaning that you maybe cannot express in words. Also, if you are missing a word, maybe you can help yourself with gestures. And they actually help your speech to just flow along. Because if you transport things with your hands, you don't have to push them out their mouth. So try to use gestures. Even if it feels silly, the funny thing about gestures is they start feeling silly much earlier than they start looking silly. So be brave. Use your hands. Actually use them like this. It's not a problem at all. You might feel silly, but mostly you don't look it. So don't be worried. Be brave. Actually use them. Same thing for posture. Do the sarge, which means basically be stable. This means don't shift. Don't stand on one leg all the time. Do try to maintain a stable stand. And why this is basically because if you have a stable stand, you can use gestures without falling down. Because if you stand on one leg and you're going like this, and then there's this incredibly important point that you want to really point this out, and you just lose balance. And of course, this is not going to happen to you because you subconsciously avoid gesturing because you're not having a stable stand. So have a stable stand. You can do loads of gestures. And you're not busy with shifting from one leg on the other, as I am. Walking is fine if you are an active person that likes to walk while talking. You can absolutely do so as long as you do not block the view for anybody in the audience. As you might notice, I'm not walking now because I can't really because there's the slides and then there's this table. So I'm just walking front and back because I have to be walking. Another thing about walking, if you do walk, I'm blocking this now, I know, face the audience. You can walk, no problem, but keep looking at the audience. Don't go like this and you turn. I'm sorry, and you turn and you look at there and then you look again and people start thinking whether they actually know they're here or not. So keep facing the audience, even if you walk and even if you turn around and change the direction, look at them. They like it. Another issue that luckily we don't have today because we have this incredibly long slot and I can just keep on going forever, but usually you can't, is managing time. This is again one of the things where it's actually quite handy if you practice the talk because then you know how long it's gonna take. Though do not rely on this 100% because if you give the talk, say, to your little sister and your grand-grandma or something, you're gonna be pretty relaxed and you're gonna take time and you're gonna go into details, speak slowly enough, but then you are in front of this incredible mess of people and they're all looking at you and they all have this thing in their face that you, they seem to wait for you to do something wrong and suddenly you speak up, you speed up and you rush along and suddenly you take only half the time that you took with your little sister. So if you practice it, at least 15%. Also do not overrun your time. It's actually not that bad to finish early if you didn't talk too fast because there's always discussion, there's always questions, there's always the bathroom, so people might actually appreciate it if you finish a bit earlier, but do not ever, ever overrun your time. First of all, it's not really fair to the speaker who's next to you or after you because they are waiting and they are getting nervous and they are looking at the clock like, oh my God, I only have 30 minutes left, I can never do that. And also the audience will make you feel it because they also look at their clocks and they also go like, you should have been finished five minutes ago and actually wanna go and I think I'll just start like closing my laptop and shifting around and grabbing from my jacket and just doing loads of noise and movement and this is gonna make her so nervous that she's gonna be finished in five minutes. So if they start feeling uneasy because they wanna leave, they make you feel it and then you pick it up and things get worse. So do plan enough time. How to do this? Well, I call these stretchers and crumple zones. I don't know whether that's actually the proper word to use but I was told it is. What this means is do not create a talk as a fixed thing that you just deliver from the start to the end and then you're finished. Do include extra things that you can like mention if you notice that okay, you're already half through your talk but there's just a third of your time gone. Do prepare like additional examples or interesting background information that you can give but you do not necessarily have to. Also, look at your talk and think about which parts can be left out if they have to. So if you notice that you're halfway through the talk but two thirds through your time, you have to be able to skip things without well, damaging the contents of your talk too much. I wouldn't advise you to put this stuff at the end of the talk because this shows clearly that you're taken by surprise. It's like, all right, I'm finished. We have 15 minutes left. So I think I'm just gonna talk about some random subject that is loosely connected to my topic. So put them inside your talk and then as you go along, decide whether you actually gonna skip them or not. Take some practice, but it works out real nice once you are used to doing that. Also, if you have 45 minutes, you don't have 45 minutes, you have 30 minutes because there's gonna be questions and there's possibly gonna be a discussion afterwards and we want them to happen so we reserve enough time for them. Basically, I always go for a third. Of course, that depends a bit on the topic. Like if it's really controversial, you might wanna give actually half of your time. If it's not controversial at all, you're just giving an introduction to some really technical topic. You might get along with less but as a general rule of thumb, I usually use a third of my time. This is so funny. Expect interjections and now the door opens. Just as practiced, thank you. Well actually, I'm not talking about this kind of interjections. What I mean mostly is there's always a guy in the audience that's funnier, who's funnier than you are and he wants people to know. So they will make like witty comments or like pull a joke or do some other funny stuff and you have to deal with that because you cannot flat out ignore them because that's just really rude and it doesn't work out because they keep going. So you have to respond to them in some way like throwing a witty comment back or actually laughing about the joke but then go on and not let them actually like take over your talk. So if you have such people in the audience and they're being so funny, let them be. But right after they're finished, give an answer or give a laugh and go on. Do not give them a pause to give yet another talk. If you're out of words, talk random stuff but do feel the pause that they need to give another joke because if you don't, there's always somebody and they just hijack your talk and then it's gone. So also if introductions tend to like get you out of the train of thoughts and you're like, where was I? I have to check my slides. Oh yeah, I was talking about interjections and all that. Do practice that because things can always happen. Just let somebody drop a glass or somebody walks in or somebody falls from the chair or something else and do be prepared for that and do be prepared to ignore it if necessary. Then there is the other big enemy and yet your best friend at the same time and that would be your audience. The good thing about an audience is it's a group of people. So most likely they will engage in group behavior. This means you don't have to convince every single person in the audience. Once you have the majority, you're pretty much settled. This works especially nice for jokes. Have you ever noticed like you watched, say a movie in the cinema and you were just laughing your head off and then you saw it again at home on TV and it wasn't funny at all. This is because all the people around you are laughing. So you're laughing too because they're laughing. It has to be funny. So same goes for jokes in speeches. If you can make, say, more than the majority love, it's okay, you won't. Also, if more than the majority shuts up, the rest will and if more than the majority starts shifting, feeling uneasy, talking and hacking away, the others will do the same. So groups are hard to control, but once you have them, they are yours. So try to consider the whole of your audience and not just like face a particular small part that is really receptive and really looking at you and listening carefully and the others are getting bored and at some point they're gonna distract your little special group as well. Talk hijacking is basically what I just mentioned. If you have a jester in the audience who just decides to kill your talk, ignore them. Especially if they're actually not your opinion and they try giving critique and all that. The thing is you cannot reject questions fall out because it might actually be that people don't understand what you're saying or they're really not getting the examples so they might actually wanna, would like to ask and say like, could you repeat this or give another example or rephrase this funny sentence you just said. So do answer questions, but if they do not concern content but they're actually like your whole, they concern your whole talk because this person is not of your opinion or he just wants to make what you comment that just came to him, point them to the end of your talk. Tell them, well, this is a good point and actually I like to pick up on this once we've reached the discussion. So if you just let me finish this real quickly, we can discuss this in full length once we're in the question and answer time because I reserved a third of my time for it. So there's loads of time for that and we can just go on with the talk now and take care of this later. And then you go to on talking of course so the person doesn't have another chance to disturb you. The next thing is the Q and A time. Once you're there, most people think like, oh my God, I made it. This is the end, this is the final slide that says the end and gives you email address and you're out, you're done. The whole question time, you know, just like there are questions and you answer it but it's actually not that important because you're done. It's not true. Question and answer time is just as important as the whole talk is because first of all, you do have to take care of that all the questions are answered. So if there's this again, the bad guy and he asks this one question and you answer it and he has another one and you answer that one but there's then this other question that you just thought of. He's gonna take all of your question time and all the other people will miss out so do take care to actually look at everybody and answer everybody's questions and also if a discussion comes up among the audience, you are the one who has to manage that. So you're the one who has to take care of that. Everybody gets a word and things don't get out of hand and they finish once they're supposed to finish so the next speaker can enter the podium. A good way to do this is pointing people to a appropriate place where they can finish their discussion. So do provide further media or mailing lists, IRC channels, websites, weekies, whatever. So you don't have to cut off discussion but that's because that's never good. A discussion usually ends with some kind of productive and so if you don't have time to finish the discussion, move it, move it to the mailing list or something else. Do make people feel that their opinion is appreciated and that you wanna know it and even if they can't tell you now because you're running out of time, there is a way for them to let you know and you will read it and you will respond. Right, talking about responding, we have reached the third phase that I'm gonna talk about that is the aftermath because you're not finished once you leave the room, not at all. A talk really is like a piece of software. It's never ever finished so you can constantly improve it and you should. You should deliver talks more than once first of all because it saves you this huge amount of work and also because you can constantly improve them and they're gonna be real good after some time. So first of all, once you have the question time, take notes or try to memorize what questions you got. Like think about, is this a question that actually should have been answered by my talk? So is there some information missing or is there ambiguities that makes people not understand stuff? So because basically try to answer all these questions that you had in your last talk, right in the talk so they don't have to be asked again because this is just redundancy. Improve your slides. I don't know how many typos you guys spotted already. Did you spot any? You're so bad. Yeah, but you can always improve them like. You can add some things that often while you're talking actually just thinking about this very good point that you should include and you include it and you include every single time you give the talk, but you never put it on the slides because once you lost the sources or you changed to open office too and now this thing doesn't open properly anymore or whatever, don't do this. As you improve the talk, improve the slides as well. Also did people keep up? Like I have the impression that you're actually still interested in what I'm saying even though I've already been talking for quite a while. This could just as well not be the point. It could be that by now everybody's doing something else and I had to ask myself once I finished why this happened and maybe you might ask yourself, okay, at what point of my talk did people stop listening and because maybe I was just like saying the same thing over and over again. I had so much redundancy in my talk that at some point I just got bored and started doing something else. This is especially applicable if you talk to geeks because they have this really short attention span and they so love to multitask. So as soon as they get slightly bored they will just open their computers or get their mobile phone out or start fiddling with a camera or with a water bottle or whatever. And if this disturbs you, you have to keep their attention the whole time. It's like get a glass, put water in it, put a goldfish in there and make it face you for 45 minutes and you know what it feels like. Also, stick around. Do not do like, okay, I'm finished, exit stage left, just go away because I don't actually want to know what they're gonna say now because I just made this huge fool of myself or whatever. Do stick around because there's always people who do not like feel comfortable with asking their questions in public or giving their opinion in public and they would much rather approach personally once the whole thing is over. So do give these people the chance to actually do so, stick around. Also, do not engage in a heated discussion with a single person, so all the others just stand around and would actually like to talk to you but there's no way to break into that discussion. Move the discussions to a later point and be receptive to everybody. And then once you're home, answer emails. Best case, you only got emails saying this talk was so wonderful, I feel so much better now when I just want to go out and do good things to everybody and I just want to thank you for doing the talk. Write back, say okay, thanks, great. I feel the same. And well, the more likely case if you get questions or if you get critique, answer the people and incorporate it in your next talk. Don't just file it away in the general feedback folder and like decide to look at it like the next time you're actually giving the talk but respond to it right now. Also, that whole stuff, do it right after the talk. Don't do it two weeks later because you'll have forgotten at least half of the feedback you got by then. This is unless you're taking notes, but who does? Last point, make your materials available. Put the slides online. The paper you wrote, of course. Put it online as well so that people who are interested in your talk and would like to read up on it or read it again or maybe steal your slides or I don't know, give them the opportunity. Okay, we have already reached the conclusion which is good because we have lots of time left. This is really just to sum up what I just said. First of all, as you noticed, hopefully I didn't give you any rules that say, well, move. And if you don't move, the talk will be bad or speak slow. And if you don't speak slow, the talk will be bad. Do whatever you like because everybody of you is an individual person and everybody has their own way to speak and you should incorporate this when you give a talk. It's you who's talking. Do not put on some stage persona that you try to keep up while giving your talk and because if you're not a trained actor, it's pretty much likely that's not gonna work. So remain yourself. If you're a relaxed person and you usually talk with your hands in your pocket, you can actually keep one hand in your pocket. It's okay. If you don't use that much gesture, that's okay too. Just remain yourself. Try not, don't try to be this hugely funny entertaining guy if you're not. And also if you are a hugely funny entertaining guy, do not try to restrict yourself. Be entertaining. Then again, choose the topic carefully. This is so important that I repeat this in the end because it pretty much decides on the success of your talk. If you're competent, if you feel good, if you feel self-sufficient and that, you're gonna give a good talk. Practice, practice, practice, practice. Practice with friends, give the talk, give the talk again, give the talk at another venue, give the talk at another conference. It's gonna be better every time. Actually, even if you deliver the talk and it's a total failure and you make such a fool of yourself, it's still gonna be better next time than it would have been if you hadn't. So use any opportunity. Like if you have a local look or something that meets once a month and they just have a beer with little, little talks within the bar, within the pub, this is a wonderful exercise opportunity, so use it. Don't think this is a small audience and this is just too much trouble for that small audience. Those small audiences make wonderful practicing audiences. So use them whenever possible and stay cool. Speaker training people? Breathe. Don't get nervous. Most of the people in your audience would feel the same if they were standing here and they would feel just as bad. They would feel just as nervous. They would just as you just forget what they were about to say and if you make them realize that, they will no longer laugh about you. So tell them. And last point, this may sound funny right now, but giving talks is actually supposed to be fun. Once you're presented with such a huge set of rules and guidelines and do the don'ts as I just give, you might feel a bit put back and just think, well, maybe I'm not gonna give talks at all because if it's such a complicate in science and there's so many things that I can do wrong, I'd rather just go without it and just let somebody else give all the talks. Don't, it's fun. Once you're like gotten over the nervosity and you're standing here just like I am realizing that all these people came to listen to what you have to say and they wanna see you and they wanna hear what you think and they're paying attention mostly and they're really appreciating you giving this talk. This is gonna make you feel so good. So don't miss out on this. Do give talks. Get better with every talk. Have huge fun doing it and enjoy the good feedback afterwards. It's so good. Right. We have now reached the end of my presentation. As you notice, the last slide is not saying thanks for your attention because I've just been told this is the worst thing you can do. So I readily incorporated this, incorporated that in my slides and it's now not there. Instead you find all my contact details. So if you wanna contact me, send me a mail, download my stuff. Go ahead. And this is the moment for questions or comments. I'd just be interested to know why you shouldn't put these things for your attention on the last slide. I don't know. Max, why is that? He told me. Yeah, I had this training by Abraham Consulting, whatever the company was and they said actually from the way you finish your talk, it should be clear to the audience that you are finished so you don't have to repeat it to tell them because you should get the attention enough so they know. I hope this answers your question. I hope so. Yeah, maybe just let's go from right to left so the microphone people don't have to run too much. The word in English for the person who keeps interjecting thing is a heckler. A heckler. Okay, I have to remember that. So some speakers like to have notes which complete slides but which are not seeable from the audience. Do you have an opinion on that? Well, personally, I don't use them because I would much rather face the audience than my notes because I am looking at my slides right now and this helps me a lot because I don't always remember what the next point's gonna be. So I would do that but if you have more notes than what is actually in your slides, you have to read them. And to read them, you have to ignore the audience and look at your screen for quite a while because you actually have to read while you're talking and this just takes forever. So I mean, in a perfect world, you don't need notes because you know what you're gonna say. If you do need notes, make them first short, like real, real short, like keywords only and print them on paper or if you put them on a screen, make them like real big so you can easily read them without actually shifting your attention to this little red bowl that's rolling on the table all the time. Without actually having to shift your attention from the audience on the screen and back because personally, I don't find this too good. I mean, if you need notes, yeah, keep them as short as possible so you just have to have a quick glance and know where you are and not have to really shift like this. Any other things? The people on the left. This is what I look like, by the way. Anything else? No? The shy people? This is the moment for the shy people? Not at all? Right. Oh, oh. The really shy people. Yes, I notice it seems like your answer to giving more or two technical talks is to give non-technical talks but would you have some advice if you're in a technical conference and your topic is technical and still you give a talk that is too technical? Well, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be giving technical talks. I'm just saying that I don't give them because I suck at it. I think about technical talks, the key is competence because if you really know what you're talking about, there's no danger that you get lost or just lose track or start constricting yourself or anything. So when it comes to technical things, my personal favorites are people who speak slow or actually explain stuff like to people who actually don't know because usually they come up with examples that are so clear to them because they know already. So come up with loads of examples and test those examples with people that do not know about the subject because yeah, I think the mistake that happens most often in technical talks is that people assume that you've seen their talk already. So they just go over stuff and it's also perfectly clear to them. So why isn't it to them? And they just go on and it doesn't work out. So I think with technical talks, the practice thing applies even more than with social or purely entertaining talks. So do give examples and if possible give demonstrations. I like those and I'm sure most people do. I can also just repeat the question if that is easier. Just wanted to talk about giving demonstrations. Needs careful preparation. Yes. Yes. Don't just sort of think it's all gonna work. Yeah. Yeah well, as you've seen with me failing handling this laptop correctly. Yeah, don't assume things to work out. Assume yourself to work out, but nothing else because you cannot rely on anybody but yourself. So yeah, prepare a demo but also prepare screenshots of said demo so in case it fails, you have something else to show to people because you can then say, well, this is obviously not working out right now but this is what it was supposed to look like. Yeah, so have a backup plan, have a plan B and possibly also plan C, anything else? So do you have any special suggestions when you do co-presentations together with someone else? I've never done that. Really, I guess if I had to make something up right now which I am, I'd say timing is most important because if you have two presenters, there's always gonna be who likes talking more than the other does. So I'd say do take care to not actually like outperform your partner and if you're the outperformed partner, try to step up and actually do get the time and attention that you deserve. But this is making this up right at the moment because I've never co-presented that far. Giving co-presentations, I think it's a really good idea for you to separate the topics that you're talking about so that you don't kind of switch too quickly between the presenters. So give each other a segment that lasts for a reasonable length of time. I mean, I actually know that you're saying this. I just remember that you actually constantly have that at uni where you have classes that are just too big. So work groups have like five people and they have to give a presentation. So everybody steps forth and says his wonderful sentence and then he steps back and it's the next one. So, and this is so disturbing. Personally, I can't stand it at all. So if you have to switch between speakers, try to do this as little as possible because people have to shift their attention and they have to adapt to the new speaker. They have to adapt to his or her accent, speed and everything else. And this takes away this hampers concentration. So you might actually not have them do that too often because it's not fun for the audience. And also it's not easy for yourself because you get like all hyped up and you're really concentrated and you give this nice talk and you sit down and relax for 10 minutes and then you have to get up again and get into the speaking thing again and just like gain speed and raise your voice to that level that you need to raise it to. And I don't think that is easy if you have to constantly keep doing that. Okay. One of the things I never know how to do is how to end the talk. Once you realize there are no more questions, like the last talk, yeah. I'm getting the hits. No, no, no, really. Because when I gave my talk and there was a nice discussion and well then there were no more questions and I had to say something and I said something like, I'm done. And then I felt so stupid but I don't know what to say to like put the final point of the talk. Okay, well, I have different solutions for that. Sometimes I just put a slide into my set of slides that comes after the questions one. So once I'm finished, I just push the button and there's this incredibly funny picture and everybody loves it, everybody gets up and everybody gets out. This works mostly well. If you haven't found such a funny picture such as I have now, you basically just have to do exactly that. You wait until the questions went out and I advise you to always wait like five seconds longer than you actually feel comfortable with because there's always somebody, there's always gonna be somebody who was just thinking, should I, shouldn't I, shouldn't I? And if you give them the extra five seconds, they will ask that question. So do take time. Don't rush ahead like, okay, any more questions? Okay, good. So that's a leaf. But do give them time and once they're finished and once there's really no questions left, I guess really all you can do is thank the audience for not creating a disturbance or distracting you and thank them for like being so receptive and just wrap it up. I guess you really have to do that. There's no way around that. Of course, the other thing that you can have is a moderator such as nice people here like Nadi, she's here, but she's not, who can help you out of this. So if you're obviously like trying to buy time and you're not feeling well, the audio, the moderator can just like step on and say, well, I would like to thank Mike here for this wonderful talk and it's now time to whatever, do something else, go have dinner or something and they can help you out of this. But if you rely on that, do tell them that they have to be here because otherwise they won't. Yeah. Yeah, just to reiterate on that, one of the things that I like to do when I end talks, it's traditional anyway in academia to always give acknowledgments to actually did the work, but besides that, one of the things that helps is if you conclude what the questions have asked and if you can tell them where they can go to get more information. So you've got it right here on the slide, but sometimes it just helps to reiterate to the people that if they have additional questions, thank them for their questions, they have additional questions, they can contact you, email you and to have a nice day or something. And then they know that you've concluded and you've also given them the information that they need if they didn't want to ask their question, they know what to do. Okay. Yeah, so actually one thing that I would like to mention though I mentioned it in the start is there's also a wonderful presentation and text online, it's called the conference judo. I appreciate so much for having actually forgotten the name of the guy who did it, but use Google and you'll find it easily and I try to not incorporate anything in here that's incorporated in the other talk. Possibly, I'm so sorry, I don't know. Yeah, thanks. It's the uplink bag actually. Okay, okay so yeah, so if you wanna read on, read the conference judo, it's such a good talk. I'm sure it's been given like 100 times at least because it looks so good. And of course it's so much better than I am because this person has done that so much more often than I have. So yeah, there's loads of extra information in there. I do disagree on some points, but we can go into this in a more private and private. Okay, so can you just say that into the microphone? Or? Matt, Jason Dominus is the, yeah. Okay, so now we have it for the record. Yeah, just one comment when you said he was so much better than you. You should never criticize yourself in front of the audience. I tell, where are the speakers running people? You remember how I told you never to excuse yourself in front of the audience? Because as long as you're on the podium, you're the best speaker there is. So no need for excuse, for like, yeah. So do as I say, not as I do. This is basically what I conclude with. So yeah, you've been noticing how like I've been shifting. Sometimes I've been fiddling. Sometimes I lost train like in the middle of my sentence. And I'm still feeling good. I'm not feeling sorry for that. And so should you. Yeah, so with this funny sentence, I think I'd like to conclude. This.