what-not-to-do-notes.md

What not to do during a presentation

• good speakers come from persistence.
  • use bad presentations as learning experiences
• there is always another country or conf
• don't feel discouraged
• if you really want to be a better speaker, be open to any and all feedback
• watch your own talks, you can really improve
• speaking will open the world up to you
  • you get to meet lots of people that open other opportunities

Don't have too many points

• what is too much?
  • The audience can only retain so much.
  • Your goal is not to give them everything.
  • Packing too much into your presentation can overshadow your story.
• Think about framing points
  • 3-5 things you want to get across.
  • you may be covering different concepts, but they are in relation to your main points.
  • resist the urge to share everything
  • think in terms of writing a resume
    • give them enough to gain interest but don't overwhelm them with details.

Don't spend so much time on your slides, you forget to work on you talk

• Don't let a clever slide deck idea consume all your prep time.
  • Don't forget to practice, work on flow.
• Don't start by building slides.
• Start in a text editor.
  • Simple text editor lets you avoid dealing with silly formatting issues
  • Classic Advice: break talk into 3 parts
    • Tell them what you are going to tell them (state the problem)
    • Tell them (solve the problem)
    • Tell them what you told them (recap)
• Create placeholders in your slide deck
• starting with the outline allows you to holistically see the story
• a talk is telling a story, slides and demos are supporters
• make sure you have a good story

Don't spend so much time on your demo, you forget to work on your talk

• Don't copresent without doing a dry run of the talk

Make sure things that are going to get in the way are disabled

• Don't let an unexpected pop up derail your presentation
• Make sure your fonts are big enough for the audience, bump it up to 18-24 point
• Think about colors in your IDE
  • Scott Hanselman has great posts on this (look them up)
• Hide windows you don't need.

Don't rewrite your demo right before the big presentation

• this is a recipe for failure on stage
• you have already put in a lot of practice on your current demo, don't throw that away
• major demo failure will derail your presentation
• don't upgrade tools prior to your presentation, if you will be showing or using that tool.
• the night before your talk is the time to GO TO SLEEP
• don't do all night preps
• it is better to go to bed at 11 and get up at 5 am, than stay up all night tweaking
• it is better to be refreshed the day of your presentation

Don't skip the tech check

• don't want to be in a situation where you show up and nothing works.
• user groups usually have a lot more leeway, conferences not so much.
• you really want to step it up for a paid conference, people are paying to see you speak, the bar of expectation is set high.
• make sure ahead of time they have a connector for your laptop.
• check gives you a sense of what the room is like as well.

Don't arrive late to your own talk

• If you don't care enough to show up on time, why even do the talk?
• Consider travel time to ensure you arrive early
• No excuse for being late.
• Make sure you have at least an hour to get to your talk
• find out where your room is before your talk

If you give a demo, have a backup

• Have a completed version of your demo backed up
• Have a start point backed up
• Live coding is ok but prepare for the live code to not work.
• don't get into a situation where you are debugging your demo code in front of an audience.
• if you are not comfortable with live coding, it is a mistake to have live coding in your presentation.
  • if you can practice live coding and get comfortable with it, do it
  • don't feel like you have to live code for a talk to be successful
  • build some real code and walk through it
  • have the different version of the code to walk through
• lots of demo failures come from live coding
• you can derail a talk live coding, people are just sitting there watching you type twiddling thumbs
• you can have snippets to drop in
• don't let a demo failure derail your entire talk
• have a plan for when the demo fails
  • move to a backup
  • move to completed product
• cloud failures, internet going down
  • record a video of the demo to avoid these issues
• if you decide to debug a problem on stage, you MUST talk through it
• TIP FROM PROS: You need to make a decision when a failure happens within 10 seconds
  • are you going to debug or move on?
  • fixing it live on stage can work out really well
  • decide if you can really fix it quickly
  • make sure you are speaking and telling the audience what you are doing and thinking while debugging.
  • need to be able to think on your feet
  • engage with the audience
  • leverage the audience, they can point out syntax errors

think about the portions of your talk that you can cut out

• think of places you can jump ahead cleanly to make up time
• the problem is rarely that you have too little to say
• be in the moment, be aware of the talk.
• think of where you are and where you thought you would be
• consider being set up to give an advanced talk on a topic and when you show up nobody in the room is familiar with the topic.
  • what do you do?
  • say 4 people showed up for the advanced talk, but the rest of the room did not.
    • delivering the advanced talk will make the 4 happy but the rest unhappy
    • rearranging the talk for the rest will make the 4 unhappy
  • hit the most people in the room deal with the moment
  • some people will acknowledge the gap and set the expectation that the talk was for advanced users and continue anyway.
    • this call is up to you
  • definitely set the expectation
  • communicate changes in plans
  • bring in some of the expert content at the end for the folks who stayed around
  • see yourself as an educator responsibility to educate
  • possible people came just based on the title and didn't read the abstract
    • the title maybe didn't convey the message that it was an advanced talk
  • every speaker will fall into the situation of a mismatch between who they expected to be there and who showed up.
  • Glenn's way is to optimize the talk for the audience that shows up
    • even if this might upset the people who came for the original talk

Don't send something offensive to the audience

• be careful of things that you say on the fly that you really have not thought through
• mentioning other products in a negative way, could irritate fans of that thing
  • you might be offending the creators of that thing
• be careful to not make subtle political statements that might offend
  • an example comparing being open to being like san fancisco
    • subtly you are saying that san franciso is an open accepting city
    • what are you implying about other cities with that statement?
    • some people could even take that as a sexual innuendo
    • you may not mean it in that way, but the issue is how the audience might take it.
  • when you are ad-hoc talking think for a second
  • be cautious of things that just pop in your head
  • better to have your story planned out and ad-hoc on that topic

Don't have too much information on your slides

• people are coming to see you
• you don't want people trying to read your slides and not paying attention to you
• no more than a couple of points
• really limit bullets

Don't go too far with a metaphor

• have a metaphor
• don't get so caught up in it that you lose the message you are trying to send
• you don't want people sitting there trying to figure out how the metaphor fits in with the slide or what you are saying
• they can be a big distraction
• people are spinning cycles trying to connect things
• keep your eyes on the audience to see if your message is getting through

Do dry runs

• They can really help you craft the message
• use Zoom and the ambassador program to do your dry run to a friendly audience

Comment

• filler words "uhh"

  • slow down
  • Nonnative speakers in the audience slow down
  • they bridge concepts
  • filler words are an indication you are trying to go fast

• tips where things went better than expected

  • have a good story, connect with people
  • an example where it was bad
    • keynote speaker had amazing slides
    • no demos
    • the story was not there no timing
    • to much time was spent on one section
    • the speaker came off arrogant
    • going through whole life story not really supporting the talk
  • don't let demo get in the way
  • spend more time on the story over everything else.
    • amazing demo/slides will not save a bad story