Speaking at conferences can be very stressful, but it can also be a very important step in your career. Of course, speaking is not mandatory, but there are quite a few benefits. In this post I’ll try to explain why you should speak, and how to start if you want to but don’t know how.
Benefits
First, let’s start with the WHY. This is why I think it’s important to become a speaker:
- It’s fun – Okay, I agree that this is individual, but I think it is fun. And even if you have stage fright you can get used to liking it. If you’re not convinced, continue reading
- Knowing your stuff – when you present something, and even more if you do a live demo, only then can you say that you really understand it. When you build a presentation, you read about the topic, you learn it well and you realize things you didn’t before. After presenting and answering questions, you definitely know it better
- Learning new stuff – I have to admit that I tend not to do this. But I know quite a few people that use presentations as an incentive to learn new stuff. Is there a new feature you want to learn about? If you submit a paper and it gets accepted, well, you don’t have much choice but to actually learn it, do you?
- Networking – When you speak you get to know people. You get questions, you chat with people after the session, and in many cases this leads to really interesting conversations. But not only that, you get to meet other speakers and network with them as well. Some of them will be interested in your session, some are well known people that you’d love to chat with and as a speaker there are sometimes speaker’s dinners and other events that you can take advantage of
- Promote yourself – if you are working as a consultant (independent or within a company) it’s an incentive to promote yourself. But even if you’re not, speaking is a great promotion. It looks great on your CV and it makes you look more professional
How to Start?
Now that you are convinced you should speak, how should you start? Everyone knows the big prestigious conferences, but I think it’s a really bad idea to start there. These conferences are first, hard to get into, and second, can be quite stressful. You can end up with a full room which might freak out first timers. Sometimes well-known people will be in the crowd, which is stressful even for experienced speakers. After these big conferences you get a detailed feedback from the attendees. If you don’t do well, it can easily knock the wind out of you.
This is what I suggest instead:
- Start with local user group events. They are smaller and more forgiving usually
- Local user groups usually don’t fill out feedback, so don’t worry about it, but you can ask for some personal feedback later (read below)
- Connect with a speaker or a user group board member in your area and ask for assistance. As I’m both (speaker and board member) and know quite a few others, believe me, we are really happy to help:
- Show them the topic and the abstract and ask for feedback
- Ask them to help you with the process of building the presentation and give feedback on it
- If they are sitting in the session, ask for personal feedback
- It’s important to come open-minded, don’t be offended if they say you need to change many things, accept that (or some of it) as a way to improve
- Another option is to collaborate with a speaker and suggest a topic for co-presenting. You can build the presentation together and present it together. This is a great way to start with much less stress
In general, think about a few interesting topics and write abstracts in advance but don’t prepare the presentations just yet. Then you can reach out for feedback and offer these sessions for one of the future meetups/events of the group.
What to do When You Get Accepted?
Once you get accepted, this is the time to start working hard on the session:
- Prepare your presentation
- Be aware that it takes quite a long time to prepare your first presentation, so start as early as possible
- There are lots of things to consider when building a presentation. You can read about it in this guest post by Luiza Nowak.
- If this is your first talk, start reading and learning about how to present. In this post I won’t cover this topic
- Practice and practice some more. If you haven’t spoken to a class before or have stage fright, it can really help. If you learn your presentation almost by heart, you’ll find that it will be much easier even if you are under stress. Practicing also helps with making sure your timing is good. A too short or too long presentation would be a problem
After the Session
As I said above, I recommend approaching a trusted person and asking for honest feedback (and be open-minded, they want the best for you). Get their comments, edit the presentation if required, and think about your talk.
What’s Next?
After a few smaller events, now it’s time to go to the bigger conferences. Don’t try OOW right away (because they hardly accept sessions anyway). Try an annual OUG conference (there are a bunch of these), these are decent sized and usually a lot of fun. Use the same presentations you’ve presented already and you know are good.
After you’ve done some local events, then bigger conferences, you will feel comfortable with speaking and you’ll find your way to build an abstract and a session. Congratulations! You are a speaker!
Now it’s time to help turn around and help other people become speakers as well.