CHRIS’ Totally For Real Serious Pro-Tips for Talks

[CHRIS]

First-time speaker Stu did a good job with his talk. This is somewhat surprising because that’s not what usually happens. Realizing this, since I’m hyper-aware at the moment, I’m going to throw down some general notes for future people looking to give talks. Remember, LA2600 is a good place for you to shop your talks. If you are working on a talk for an upcoming event or conference we’ll be happy to talk your draft talk and give you feedback to help ensure its as good as it can be.

CHRIS’ Totally For Real Serious Pro-Tips for Talks

• A talk is a talk, not a Prezzo, blog post, or class. Discuss, read, respond to, and engage with your audience as much as possible.
• Respect and adapt the standard essay format you should have learned in school. There is a reason the 3-5 part/paragraph essay format was taught near universally.
• Attempt to make talks stand on their own without a heavy slide load. Figures and graphs are good. High content density slides are bad.
• If you are using slides and are going to do and “about me” slide, remember the purpose is to establish credibility with the audience. Who you are is nice, but why you are credible is important.
• If you are using slides ensure you have an endcap slide with your contact information, resources, and references.
• Slides ≠ Notes . Don’t just read your slides.
• Don’t just read your notes aloud either.
• Don’t title your talk “101”, “for fun and profit”, “exposed”, “pro tips” or any one of the other cliché talk title patterns. Its just not funny or interesting anymore.
• If you’re gonna meme, ensure they are the hottest, freshest memes that take the audience straight to Flavortown.