1. do not show a slide full of code. The font will be too small to read. Nobody will read it
2. don't read your slides to the audience. The audience can read
3. don't talk with your back to the audience
4. make your font as big as practical
5. 3 bullet points is ideal
6. add a picture now and then
7. don't bother with a copyright notice on every slide. It gets really old. Besides, you want people to steal your presentation!
8. avoid typing in code as part of the presentation, most of the time it won't work and it's boring watching somebody type
9. render the presentation as a pdf file, so any device can display it
10. email a copy of your presentation to the conference coordinator beforehand, put a copy on your laptop, and phone, and on a usb stick in your pocket. Arriving at the show without your presentation can be very embarrassing!
11. the anxiety goes away
12. don't worry about it. You're not running for President! Just have some fun with it
It is genuinely shocking how true this is. Also, it's not a gradual thing. I used to be very nervous about public speaking. I did it a lot and one day it just stops. Very sudden, very unexpected.
13. Have a message you're actually enthusiastic to tell people.
The audience can quickly tell if someone is there because they want to talk about the topic they're presenting, and having a receptive audience makes it much easier to get on stage to talk about it. If the audience knows you're there because you want another line on your resume or because you're trying to sell them something the atmosphere can turn quite cold and that is a world of pain for a speaker.
Oh, one more thing. Keep on hand some of your previous presentations. Often, a speaker won't show up and the conference organizer is panicking and needs a replacement. Be first to volunteer your services! I've done that several times, and the results were always worthwhile.
One time, I didn't have an extra talk with me, but I volunteered anyway and asked for a whiteboard and markers. Frankly, it was the best talk I ever gave. Unfortunately, it wasn't recorded. But it sure was fun! (I simply asked the audience what they wanted me to talk about.)
I once got a panicked email from a conference organizer in Japan at about 3AM because a speaker was at another event and completely forgotten about this one. (Hey! Happens.) I was able to be like, no problem. Here's a presentation that works.
And, if need be, I could have just done something on the fly instead.
> Finally, watch out for events that put video of their sessions online. Having a couple of YouTube links of you doing your thing in front of a live, appreciate audience can make all the difference when a programme committee is looking at a handful of talks and can only accept one of them.
This, very much this.
I run a paid, one-day, mid-sized conference every year, and with only so many slots, we find it very, very difficult to risk choosing people who don't have videos of themselves speaking.
A short meetup talk or a lightning talk at a different conference could make all the difference towards being selected, because we need to know that you're vaguely capable of conveying what you want to share to the audience.
My professionally produced video is a bit old though I have others recorded on a webcam. I don't know how often they're looked at (and I know a lot of people on the conference committees) but it's certainly useful to have at least something.
I don't want videos of me online. Would an audio recording + slides suffice in your opinion? Or would you doubt it was really live in front of a sufficiently large audience? Idk how common fraud here would be
I feel like if you don't want videos (and I assume photos) of you online then speaking at a conference is probably not the aligned action to pursue that goal
This is just my personal opinion, but your expertise in your proposed topic would have to be really good (i.e. you've written a few blog posts about it) for a conference to overlook this.
Recorded videos act as a portfolio for both potential speakers and conferences alike. I think some first-time attendees rely on past videos to determine whether a conference is worth going for.
(That said, we've set videos as unlisted for people who think that they've bombed their talks before — think leaving the stage in tears because the Q&A was harsh — but that's just goodwill.)
I don't know how often recorded videos are viewed--conference committees have to wade through a lot of applications.
But conference presentations are basically public events and if that bothers you, you should probably reconsider doing one. (Yes, per parent, if there's a real disaster--and those happen--they may be deep-sixed but I wouldn't count on it.)
If you're the sort of private person who doesn't want a big online presence - why bother to speak at a software conference? Especially a conference big enough they're selective about who they allow to present?
About 90% of speakers at big events are there to promote their product, or to get their company's name out there for recruitment purposes, or to promote their consultancy, or to build their personal brand. If you don't give a shit about any of that stuff, maybe you don't need to bother?
I'd probably put it more diplomatically. But if you're speaking at a conference, there may be video, audio, and photographs which may be posted online and may be part of the terms you sign up for when you register. If any of that bothers you, you may not want to speak.
I imagine it'll go against your talk getting into the shortlist.
But there are some conferences that ask and respect your preference whether you'd like the video recording to have your face or just the audio. But I have yet to see a conference that go as far as asking the audience to not take photos of the presenter, so it's pretty much moot if you do not want your photos published at all.
Personally I would find a video that's slides with audio just as compelling as a video where the speaker was visible in terms of helping me understand if that person could give a competent presentation or not.
Speak at your local meetup, and record yourself doing so if the meetup doesn't record the talks!
Meetups often have trouble finding speakers (well, many of the non-AI ones here do), so it's a win-win for both the meetup organisers and the budding conference speaker.
Another way to get your name out there is to speak at free (/low-cost), multi-track conferences like FOSDEM. Free conferences tend to be more receptive of first-time speakers because attendees didn't pay hundreds of dollars for their tickets.
(If you are an up-and-coming speaker, please don't let my comment discourage you from submitting their proposals to larger conferences. Some conferences have the resources and willing alumni to run speaker mentorship programs.)
Local meetups are very easy to get selected into, and they often have two or three speakers lined up, with a balance of speakers they know and are experienced, and new speakers.
Most of the time, the organizers are squeezed to find a speaker, so you are pretty much guaranteed to be offered a slot if you just ask the host.
The conference typically does it anyway, and otherwise you can ask a friend in the audience, or make a new friend who's willing to, or put a tiny tripod somewhere with your phone in camera-from-lockscreen mode. The point is showing that you can present on stage, so audio is most important I'd assume. It doesn't have to be amazing quality/angle
Public speaking plus blog posts did more for my career than my advanced engineering degrees. They lead to my past three places of employment. I did a talk or wrote a blog post, posted it to LI and then the decision makers reached out to me. This got me employment at workplaces I loved. I only write/ talk about things I enjoy, and they needed people with skills in the topics I wrote/ talk about. Perfect fit. I highly recommend this approach.
He's pretty right on the "get bored" bits. I have few friends that are doing a lot of conferences every year after, say, year 6, and they are people whose circumstances lead them to not wanting to spend much time at home, for one reason or another. At that point it's like a job with 30% travel: You either have few attachments, or are trying to avoid the ones you have.
I had a coworker in Seattle who commuted from the far side of Steven’s pass every day. That was a 2 hour trip each way. I desperately wanted to know what was up with her home life.
Some introverts can use a long solo car trip to wind themselves up to deal with people or decompress afterward so they don’t take it out on their family. Others find it all too stressful and just makes it worse. But that’s like 20 minutes for me. I can’t imagine two hours. We didn’t drive that long to get to grandma’s house.
I had about a 90 minute commute (by train or car/subway) at one point--about half the time because I did a lot of traveling. But couldn't have handled that long-term. Latterly, I had about a 2 hour commute into a city office--but rarely.
> people whose circumstances lead them to not wanting to spend much time at home, for one reason or another. At that point it's like a job with 30% travel: You either have few attachments, or are trying to avoid the ones you have.
Or a couple loves to travel and conferences are a good excuse.
In semi-retirement, I very selectively pick a few conferences to travel to in locations I want to be, at appropriate times of year, in interesting venues. Definitely less than I used to do.
One minor tangent (aiming for helpfulness, not pedantry), "I have few" reads as "I don't have many" (emphasizes the low number), whereas "I have a few" emphasizes the fact there's more than one -- which from context was clearly your intent. HTH!
This year I spoke at HOPE - Hackers On Planet Earth. The topic was "Hacking ATMs: past and present". I really enjoyed it, it took a lot to prepare though. I haven't gotten any monetary benefit from it, but I would definitely do it again.
HOPE is one of the best hacker conferences, and it's somehow [subjectively] friendlier than other. Feels like home, so if you're on hacker news, I guess you wanna speak at hacker conference or contribute to 2600? ^_^
I’ve been doing public speaking for my entire adult life, but not for a living.
That said, it’s not my strong suit. Others are far better at it than I am.
This is one of those areas where folks can make money/satisfy ego, so there’s a ton of competition. I’m not competitive, and am not interested in making money doing this kind of thing, so I don’t really try.
I do appreciate folks that are good at it, though; especially when I want to learn. A skilled orator can make learning a lot more fun, and can be very motivating.
I have run a ColdFusion users group in East Lansing for the past twenty five years. I have helped many first time speakers and this is some outstanding advice.
Although I have never done it myself I can also recommend Toastmasters. Seen some speakers soar after attending this group for a year. You wouldn't even think that it was the same person presenting. Having that experience of public speaking can also greatly accelerate your career.
rmason- I love how supportive you are of tech groups in Michigan. I’m trying to organize an Anthropic meetup, and you helped provide some great advice. Your love of tech and community is evident.
The idea that East Lansing, Michigan, can support a regular gathering of ColdFusion users in 2025 is the most astonishing thing I've learned in quite some time. Consider me quite impressed.
If no one else is aware, Dylan is one of the best conference talkers in the industry. A rare combination of technical knowledge, experience and fantastic to watch if you ever get the chance.
>> Write a talk nobody else could do; tell a story nobody else can tell. Figure out what your audience is going to learn, and why you’re the best person to teach them that.
One of the best topics for new speakers is "here's what I learned when I built project X".
Nobody else in the world could give that talk, because they didn't build that project.
It doesn't matter if you're not presenting anything that's ground breaking and new - what's important is that your audience gets to benefit from the same lessons that you learned.
Even if some members of the audience already knew those lessons, hearing a new way of explaining them - with new supporting stories - is still valuable.
The bar is there, but it is lower than you expect. If you have a truly unique point of view to express, that brings some value to the table, slots will open up.
And I've spoken at plenty of conferences. :) Not always in the glamour rooms/slots. But... I did have one talk fill a room out the door. That was a talk on a difficult/controversial topic, and by then... I was probably about as expert as they came on the issue.
I didn't start with that though. I just started with a simple point of view talk. And I'd argue the second version of that talk is still one of the best I've given in my life.
That doesn't mean every talk has to be unique and special. An "introduction to XYZ" talk may have a bunch of equally valid speakers, which all naturally provide a slightly different angle and there is a bunch of factors going in the decision about who gets the slot.
Some talks are plain craftswork, not unique experiences and still very worthwhile.
It can. But I don't want to compete for my slot with others who can give the same talk, or a talk that is similar.
I want to make the conference committee choose between "Do we want ilc's talk on X." or "Do we want foo's talk on Y." If we are both discussing the same thing, if I'm unknown, I will lose. OTOH, if I have something interesting to talk about... I have 2 routes to "victory". "ilc gives great talks, he gets good grades and is working on his skills." and "Man that's a damn cool topic. We want that at our conference, even if ilc isn't the BEST speaker, the combo is better."
I didn't start out as the best presenter. I learned. But I always knew I had to have an interesting topic, something that made it worth them giving me a slot.
That's how I read it as well. I think it's wrong because I've learned the most from people one step ahead of me. Experts who are ten steps ahead have the curse of knowledge: it's extra hard to figure out what things make sense to a conference audience. Many presentations go too fast and then too slow two minutes later
Someone who just learned a thing is in the best position to give you the diff to learn it as well. At least, that was my experience running a blog as a teenager. I wrote about cool things I just learned or realised and people found that useful
Edited to add: Also, impostor syndrome. With this as the "first step" advise, you'll select people who are full of themselves and nobody else would give presentations unless their topic is super niche (not useful for most people) or they got lucky to see some big story up close (if you had a front seat during a Github outage, say). The latter is both interesting and fun but it's not the only type of talk I want to see
It's doable if you pick a very focused topic. In my first year of using Julia, I gave a talk on gradually adding Julia to a large Python codebase. Very few people could give a similar talk because (1) Julia is a fairly niche language, (2) most of the people who understood Julia <> Python interop knew it too well, and had forgotten all the common beginner challenges.
I don't think the author meant that you have to be the world leading expert at any topic. You can be pretty average, but you need to give it your personal twist. He is warning against very generic abstract talks that can be replaced by reading a man page.
I wouldn't expect that most people couldn't, with enough time and resources, tell a better story. Isn't the part of the point of giving a talk to convey the ideas so that other people can use them? If they've internalized the ideas and seen your presentation, can't they then improve it and give a better talk? Haven't you failed if they can't do that?
Does me being the best person to teach them matter? Doesn't it matter more that I am the person teaching them when no one else is?
There's room for personalization, making sure the talk compliments your style and gives insight into why you think it's important and how you solved it, but none of this really relies on the uniqueness of the person.
If Stallman got up and gave a talk on "what it's like to be me", I would find it much less interesting than a talk about "how to invent free software and build a movement around it".
It is an extremely high bar if you aim for super popular topics.
You might want to spend time on some niche topic and there might be people who don’t have time to dabble in that topic but would be happy if someone did it for them.
One tip I've found really useful over the past few years is to always try and include a "STAR moment" in a talk - where STAR stands for "Something They'll Always Remember".
Effectively it means try and have at least one memorable surprise or gimmick in your talk. If someone watches a dozen talks at a conference you want them to be able to say "Oh, I remember your talk, it was the one with ..." when they meet you in the corridor.
actually, the primary reason to go to conferences is networking. meeting people, make connections. you go to talks that interest you so you can meet people that share your interest.
same for giving presentations. you give presentations to promote an idea or work, to share something you have learned, to contribute to the community, and again, for networking.
fomo? not at all. personal development? that's a bonus, but not the motivation.
> Conferences have n00bs and PMs, not the experts, because they don't need to learn anything anymore.
The real experts never stop learning.
Some of them go to conferences because that's one of the few times in the year they can hang out with each other, and find out what their community is up to.
Some things I've learned over the years:
1. do not show a slide full of code. The font will be too small to read. Nobody will read it
2. don't read your slides to the audience. The audience can read
3. don't talk with your back to the audience
4. make your font as big as practical
5. 3 bullet points is ideal
6. add a picture now and then
7. don't bother with a copyright notice on every slide. It gets really old. Besides, you want people to steal your presentation!
8. avoid typing in code as part of the presentation, most of the time it won't work and it's boring watching somebody type
9. render the presentation as a pdf file, so any device can display it
10. email a copy of your presentation to the conference coordinator beforehand, put a copy on your laptop, and phone, and on a usb stick in your pocket. Arriving at the show without your presentation can be very embarrassing!
11. the anxiety goes away
12. don't worry about it. You're not running for President! Just have some fun with it
> 11. the anxiety goes away
It is genuinely shocking how true this is. Also, it's not a gradual thing. I used to be very nervous about public speaking. I did it a lot and one day it just stops. Very sudden, very unexpected.
I still have it, but it goes away as soon as I start the presentation. Then it just becomes fun!
A shot or two of liquid courage doesn’t hurt either. Though beyond that you risk exceeding the Balmer peak.
13. Have a message you're actually enthusiastic to tell people.
The audience can quickly tell if someone is there because they want to talk about the topic they're presenting, and having a receptive audience makes it much easier to get on stage to talk about it. If the audience knows you're there because you want another line on your resume or because you're trying to sell them something the atmosphere can turn quite cold and that is a world of pain for a speaker.
it's physically painful for me to stop talking about my topic
it's physically painful for everyone else to listen to you talking about your topic.. if you talk for too long that is. :)
LOL. I get writers' cramp every time I write a check.
8. depends on the nature of the presentation. if it is a coding workshop then live coding is actually quite a good idea.
Above all else, make it interesting and entertaining!
Which should go without saying…
Oh, one more thing. Keep on hand some of your previous presentations. Often, a speaker won't show up and the conference organizer is panicking and needs a replacement. Be first to volunteer your services! I've done that several times, and the results were always worthwhile.
One time, I didn't have an extra talk with me, but I volunteered anyway and asked for a whiteboard and markers. Frankly, it was the best talk I ever gave. Unfortunately, it wasn't recorded. But it sure was fun! (I simply asked the audience what they wanted me to talk about.)
I once got a panicked email from a conference organizer in Japan at about 3AM because a speaker was at another event and completely forgotten about this one. (Hey! Happens.) I was able to be like, no problem. Here's a presentation that works.
And, if need be, I could have just done something on the fly instead.
> Finally, watch out for events that put video of their sessions online. Having a couple of YouTube links of you doing your thing in front of a live, appreciate audience can make all the difference when a programme committee is looking at a handful of talks and can only accept one of them.
This, very much this.
I run a paid, one-day, mid-sized conference every year, and with only so many slots, we find it very, very difficult to risk choosing people who don't have videos of themselves speaking.
A short meetup talk or a lightning talk at a different conference could make all the difference towards being selected, because we need to know that you're vaguely capable of conveying what you want to share to the audience.
My professionally produced video is a bit old though I have others recorded on a webcam. I don't know how often they're looked at (and I know a lot of people on the conference committees) but it's certainly useful to have at least something.
I don't want videos of me online. Would an audio recording + slides suffice in your opinion? Or would you doubt it was really live in front of a sufficiently large audience? Idk how common fraud here would be
I feel like if you don't want videos (and I assume photos) of you online then speaking at a conference is probably not the aligned action to pursue that goal
> I don't want videos of me online.
This is just my personal opinion, but your expertise in your proposed topic would have to be really good (i.e. you've written a few blog posts about it) for a conference to overlook this.
Recorded videos act as a portfolio for both potential speakers and conferences alike. I think some first-time attendees rely on past videos to determine whether a conference is worth going for.
(That said, we've set videos as unlisted for people who think that they've bombed their talks before — think leaving the stage in tears because the Q&A was harsh — but that's just goodwill.)
I don't know how often recorded videos are viewed--conference committees have to wade through a lot of applications.
But conference presentations are basically public events and if that bothers you, you should probably reconsider doing one. (Yes, per parent, if there's a real disaster--and those happen--they may be deep-sixed but I wouldn't count on it.)
> I don't know how often recorded videos are viewed--conference committees have to wade through a lot of applications.
For most conferences that do blind-rating first, only in subsequent rounds when the programme is being put together.
If you're the sort of private person who doesn't want a big online presence - why bother to speak at a software conference? Especially a conference big enough they're selective about who they allow to present?
About 90% of speakers at big events are there to promote their product, or to get their company's name out there for recruitment purposes, or to promote their consultancy, or to build their personal brand. If you don't give a shit about any of that stuff, maybe you don't need to bother?
I'd probably put it more diplomatically. But if you're speaking at a conference, there may be video, audio, and photographs which may be posted online and may be part of the terms you sign up for when you register. If any of that bothers you, you may not want to speak.
I imagine it'll go against your talk getting into the shortlist.
But there are some conferences that ask and respect your preference whether you'd like the video recording to have your face or just the audio. But I have yet to see a conference that go as far as asking the audience to not take photos of the presenter, so it's pretty much moot if you do not want your photos published at all.
i have seen presenters directly ask the audience to not take pictures. i think it's reasonable request, so i don't think it's a moot point.
Personally I would find a video that's slides with audio just as compelling as a video where the speaker was visible in terms of helping me understand if that person could give a competent presentation or not.
Thank you for the thought you put into this. It's really frustrating when a speaker has an accent so strong it's unintelligible.
Okay, but what about the first time?
> Okay, but what about the first time?
Speak at your local meetup, and record yourself doing so if the meetup doesn't record the talks!
Meetups often have trouble finding speakers (well, many of the non-AI ones here do), so it's a win-win for both the meetup organisers and the budding conference speaker.
Another way to get your name out there is to speak at free (/low-cost), multi-track conferences like FOSDEM. Free conferences tend to be more receptive of first-time speakers because attendees didn't pay hundreds of dollars for their tickets.
(If you are an up-and-coming speaker, please don't let my comment discourage you from submitting their proposals to larger conferences. Some conferences have the resources and willing alumni to run speaker mentorship programs.)
You can record yourself speaking about some topic. The barrier to entry to making a video online these days is very very low.
Local meetups are very easy to get selected into, and they often have two or three speakers lined up, with a balance of speakers they know and are experienced, and new speakers.
Most of the time, the organizers are squeezed to find a speaker, so you are pretty much guaranteed to be offered a slot if you just ask the host.
do you record and post videos of your own?
The conference typically does it anyway, and otherwise you can ask a friend in the audience, or make a new friend who's willing to, or put a tiny tripod somewhere with your phone in camera-from-lockscreen mode. The point is showing that you can present on stage, so audio is most important I'd assume. It doesn't have to be amazing quality/angle
Public speaking plus blog posts did more for my career than my advanced engineering degrees. They lead to my past three places of employment. I did a talk or wrote a blog post, posted it to LI and then the decision makers reached out to me. This got me employment at workplaces I loved. I only write/ talk about things I enjoy, and they needed people with skills in the topics I wrote/ talk about. Perfect fit. I highly recommend this approach.
He's pretty right on the "get bored" bits. I have few friends that are doing a lot of conferences every year after, say, year 6, and they are people whose circumstances lead them to not wanting to spend much time at home, for one reason or another. At that point it's like a job with 30% travel: You either have few attachments, or are trying to avoid the ones you have.
I had a coworker in Seattle who commuted from the far side of Steven’s pass every day. That was a 2 hour trip each way. I desperately wanted to know what was up with her home life.
Some introverts can use a long solo car trip to wind themselves up to deal with people or decompress afterward so they don’t take it out on their family. Others find it all too stressful and just makes it worse. But that’s like 20 minutes for me. I can’t imagine two hours. We didn’t drive that long to get to grandma’s house.
I had about a 90 minute commute (by train or car/subway) at one point--about half the time because I did a lot of traveling. But couldn't have handled that long-term. Latterly, I had about a 2 hour commute into a city office--but rarely.
> people whose circumstances lead them to not wanting to spend much time at home, for one reason or another. At that point it's like a job with 30% travel: You either have few attachments, or are trying to avoid the ones you have.
Or a couple loves to travel and conferences are a good excuse.
In semi-retirement, I very selectively pick a few conferences to travel to in locations I want to be, at appropriate times of year, in interesting venues. Definitely less than I used to do.
Interesting take; thanks for sharing.
One minor tangent (aiming for helpfulness, not pedantry), "I have few" reads as "I don't have many" (emphasizes the low number), whereas "I have a few" emphasizes the fact there's more than one -- which from context was clearly your intent. HTH!
This year I spoke at HOPE - Hackers On Planet Earth. The topic was "Hacking ATMs: past and present". I really enjoyed it, it took a lot to prepare though. I haven't gotten any monetary benefit from it, but I would definitely do it again.
HOPE is one of the best hacker conferences, and it's somehow [subjectively] friendlier than other. Feels like home, so if you're on hacker news, I guess you wanna speak at hacker conference or contribute to 2600? ^_^
I’ve been doing public speaking for my entire adult life, but not for a living.
That said, it’s not my strong suit. Others are far better at it than I am.
This is one of those areas where folks can make money/satisfy ego, so there’s a ton of competition. I’m not competitive, and am not interested in making money doing this kind of thing, so I don’t really try.
I do appreciate folks that are good at it, though; especially when I want to learn. A skilled orator can make learning a lot more fun, and can be very motivating.
I haven't checked these links for a very long time, but some presentation resources I accumulated when I was frequently giving talks:
https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837
I have run a ColdFusion users group in East Lansing for the past twenty five years. I have helped many first time speakers and this is some outstanding advice.
Although I have never done it myself I can also recommend Toastmasters. Seen some speakers soar after attending this group for a year. You wouldn't even think that it was the same person presenting. Having that experience of public speaking can also greatly accelerate your career.
rmason- I love how supportive you are of tech groups in Michigan. I’m trying to organize an Anthropic meetup, and you helped provide some great advice. Your love of tech and community is evident.
The idea that East Lansing, Michigan, can support a regular gathering of ColdFusion users in 2025 is the most astonishing thing I've learned in quite some time. Consider me quite impressed.
>They have given up their time - and often a substantial amount of money - to hear what you have to say. They deserve your best shot, every time.
Oh wow, this, 1,000x this!
If no one else is aware, Dylan is one of the best conference talkers in the industry. A rare combination of technical knowledge, experience and fantastic to watch if you ever get the chance.
>> Write a talk nobody else could do; tell a story nobody else can tell. Figure out what your audience is going to learn, and why you’re the best person to teach them that.
That's an extremely high bar, no?
One of the best topics for new speakers is "here's what I learned when I built project X".
Nobody else in the world could give that talk, because they didn't build that project.
It doesn't matter if you're not presenting anything that's ground breaking and new - what's important is that your audience gets to benefit from the same lessons that you learned.
Even if some members of the audience already knew those lessons, hearing a new way of explaining them - with new supporting stories - is still valuable.
No, it means you have something unique to say.
The bar is there, but it is lower than you expect. If you have a truly unique point of view to express, that brings some value to the table, slots will open up.
And I've spoken at plenty of conferences. :) Not always in the glamour rooms/slots. But... I did have one talk fill a room out the door. That was a talk on a difficult/controversial topic, and by then... I was probably about as expert as they came on the issue.
I didn't start with that though. I just started with a simple point of view talk. And I'd argue the second version of that talk is still one of the best I've given in my life.
That doesn't mean every talk has to be unique and special. An "introduction to XYZ" talk may have a bunch of equally valid speakers, which all naturally provide a slightly different angle and there is a bunch of factors going in the decision about who gets the slot.
Some talks are plain craftswork, not unique experiences and still very worthwhile.
It can. But I don't want to compete for my slot with others who can give the same talk, or a talk that is similar.
I want to make the conference committee choose between "Do we want ilc's talk on X." or "Do we want foo's talk on Y." If we are both discussing the same thing, if I'm unknown, I will lose. OTOH, if I have something interesting to talk about... I have 2 routes to "victory". "ilc gives great talks, he gets good grades and is working on his skills." and "Man that's a damn cool topic. We want that at our conference, even if ilc isn't the BEST speaker, the combo is better."
I didn't start out as the best presenter. I learned. But I always knew I had to have an interesting topic, something that made it worth them giving me a slot.
That's how I read it as well. I think it's wrong because I've learned the most from people one step ahead of me. Experts who are ten steps ahead have the curse of knowledge: it's extra hard to figure out what things make sense to a conference audience. Many presentations go too fast and then too slow two minutes later
Someone who just learned a thing is in the best position to give you the diff to learn it as well. At least, that was my experience running a blog as a teenager. I wrote about cool things I just learned or realised and people found that useful
Edited to add: Also, impostor syndrome. With this as the "first step" advise, you'll select people who are full of themselves and nobody else would give presentations unless their topic is super niche (not useful for most people) or they got lucky to see some big story up close (if you had a front seat during a Github outage, say). The latter is both interesting and fun but it's not the only type of talk I want to see
It's doable if you pick a very focused topic. In my first year of using Julia, I gave a talk on gradually adding Julia to a large Python codebase. Very few people could give a similar talk because (1) Julia is a fairly niche language, (2) most of the people who understood Julia <> Python interop knew it too well, and had forgotten all the common beginner challenges.
I don't think the author meant that you have to be the world leading expert at any topic. You can be pretty average, but you need to give it your personal twist. He is warning against very generic abstract talks that can be replaced by reading a man page.
Yes, it's bullshit.
I wouldn't expect that most people couldn't, with enough time and resources, tell a better story. Isn't the part of the point of giving a talk to convey the ideas so that other people can use them? If they've internalized the ideas and seen your presentation, can't they then improve it and give a better talk? Haven't you failed if they can't do that?
Does me being the best person to teach them matter? Doesn't it matter more that I am the person teaching them when no one else is?
There's room for personalization, making sure the talk compliments your style and gives insight into why you think it's important and how you solved it, but none of this really relies on the uniqueness of the person.
If Stallman got up and gave a talk on "what it's like to be me", I would find it much less interesting than a talk about "how to invent free software and build a movement around it".
It is an extremely high bar if you aim for super popular topics.
You might want to spend time on some niche topic and there might be people who don’t have time to dabble in that topic but would be happy if someone did it for them.
I feel like while this is a great start for how to get practice giving talks, it could do with some expansion on how to make a great presentation.
One tip I've found really useful over the past few years is to always try and include a "STAR moment" in a talk - where STAR stands for "Something They'll Always Remember".
Effectively it means try and have at least one memorable surprise or gimmick in your talk. If someone watches a dozen talks at a conference you want them to be able to say "Oh, I remember your talk, it was the one with ..." when they meet you in the corridor.
I deployed my pelican on a bicycle benchmark as a STAR moment last year and it was really effective: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/6/six-months-in-llms/
At PyCon a couple of years ago I used a vibe-coded counter of the number of times I said "AI" out loud: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/14/pycon/#pycon-2024.043....
Yup. This. As long as people remember you for something positive, you'll get a second speaking slot.
Personally it rapping and wigs. They both go down surprisingly well at tech confs!
I wrote a bit about this in my blog post on the same topic: https://www.simeongriggs.dev/how-to-give-a-great-conference-...
FOMO is the only reason people attend conferences, which is why I visited a few to figure out whether I was missing out on anything.
Speaking at a conference? Same story. You do it, because it's for "personal development", until it's pointless.
Conferences have n00bs and PMs, not the experts, because they don't need to learn anything anymore.
actually, the primary reason to go to conferences is networking. meeting people, make connections. you go to talks that interest you so you can meet people that share your interest.
same for giving presentations. you give presentations to promote an idea or work, to share something you have learned, to contribute to the community, and again, for networking.
fomo? not at all. personal development? that's a bonus, but not the motivation.
> Conferences have n00bs and PMs, not the experts, because they don't need to learn anything anymore.
The real experts never stop learning.
Some of them go to conferences because that's one of the few times in the year they can hang out with each other, and find out what their community is up to.