Introduction

Public speaking is not about you

Let’s start with the essential concept of this book. Repeat after me:

“Public speaking is not about me, the speaker! Public speaking is about the value that I want to transmit to the public.”

Most speakers—beginners and experienced ones—think people are there to listen to them, but they are just messengers of the value. If a presentation or a talk doesn’t have any value, the speaker can do their best to entertain people, but in the end, the audience will feel that something is missing.

Always remember that your audience is investing its time listening to you—don’t waste it! It doesn’t matter if it’s a five-day course, a long or a short presentation, a meeting with colleagues or customers, an elevator pitch, or a water cooler talk.

A necessary premise

This book will help you present your ideas without falling into the typical pitfalls of public speaking, but all the suggestions that you can find here are ineffective if you cannot define and describe the value of your presentation. You need to know the subject that you’re presenting very well, too. We’ll also talk about the presentation for when there are no slides, or when the context is informal.

How do you find and define value?

When people have to prepare a presentation, they’ll open PowerPoint (or Keynote, or whatever tool they like) and start creating slides, spending a lot of time defining styles, animations, and a lot of details that are important for a curated presentation.

Note: We’ll use PowerPoint for the rest of the book. Appendix B is dedicated to Keynote.

People should do those things after having identified the value of the presentation, followed by the structure that shows the value with a story (or more than one if the value is complex), some examples, and all the necessary details. We’ll see the process in Chapter 2, and we’ll see how slides can complement a presentation in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

So if public speaking is not about you, why are you afraid of it?

One of the most common clichès about public speaking is this one: “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death.” (cit. Jerry Seinfeld). Do you really think people would choose death over public speaking?

The truth is that people fear public speaking more frequently than many other things[1]. In Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, we’ll see what to do before and during the talk. But remember: people are not there for you; they’re there for the value you will give them.

Have you defined your standard?

Standards are essential in the technology field, but having a personal standard for our presentations is important, too!

It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a presentation for yourself or for the company you work for—it’s your face that people are seeing, and it’s your personal brand and reputation that are affected by every presentation that you do, every talk, and every meeting.

If you decide to talk about a topic that you don’t know very well, people will remember. Perhaps, years after its delivery, you’ll regret having done a session, because people will find it on the Internet.

Are your slides okay or perfect? Is your dress code appropriate for the event? What about your demos? Is your body language in line with your message? Everything counts for a memorable presentation!

Note: There are many quotes about reputation, but this one sums them up: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” –Warren Buffet

It’s important that you check if your current level is in line with your standard, and that you define a path to reach your desired level.

Sometimes it’s better to refuse to deliver a talk, especially if you aren’t ready yet. I’m not saying that you should wait indefinitely, but don’t trade in your reputation too early! When I became a Cloud Solutions Architect, I was asked to deliver a session about serverless computing in a community meetup where there was also a session about a real use case of a competing technology. It was too early for me, so I declined the invitation and suggested a more experienced colleague. Some months later, with real-world experience on the topic, I called back to see if there were other opportunities, and we agreed to do a new session.

The talk doesn’t end with the final applause

Of course, you have to earn your applause—you shouldn’t just expect it!

Do yourself a favor and don’t close your presentation by asking the audience if they have questions, leaving the stage to random people. Go for the questions after stating your final message, and let people know that you’ve finished your talk. You could wait some seconds to see if people start applauding. If there is an awkward silence, go on immediately with the Q&A.

Questions are an important part of your talk—you shouldn’t underestimate them. You should think about problematic questions in advance, and you should anticipate them in the talk, or you can have some materials in an appendix to back your answers.

After the talk, you need to understand what you could improve, both in the content and in the delivery. Sometimes obtaining the right feedback is not so easy, but you could ask specific questions to gather desired information.

Finally, don’t forget to nurture all the useful connections that you’ve created with your presentation. In Chapter 7 we’ll see how to do all of these things and how to prepare for the next round!