Advent speaker tips

Advent day 14: A strong start to your talk is easier if you know how you will be introduced to the audience. Take control over the first time the audience meets you with this tip.

Advent day 13: Events with multiple speakers on the line-up can be a buzz of activity. With different presenters needing to set up, tech check and get mic’d up, there’s a lot going on. The last thing you need as you approach the stage to get set up is to find that the previous person is still in the way.

Advent day 12: For many speakers, speaking means a lot of travel. I possibly travel more than most, being on the road for half of the year. In this article I’m going to round up some of the ways in which I make this amount of travel work reasonably smoothly, most of the time!

Advent day 11: There’s no one thing that has helped the way I deliver a presentation more than the simple act of practising. It sounds so obvious, but I’ve been surprised to hear from speakers who don’t really do this so much.

Advent day 10: Standing up and presenting to a room of people can be intimidating, especially when starting out. It feels weird and unnatural to suddenly have dozens, maybe hundreds, of pairs of eyes all looking right back at you.

Advent day 9: With all the preparation that goes into create a new presentation, usually the last thing you think about is what you might wear to deliver it. Clothing is so personal, and you should always wear what you’re comfortable with and gives the impression that you personally want to put across. However, within the scope of that there are some practical considerations you might want to take into account.

Advent day 8: Like it or loath it, presenting is an increasingly technical exercise. Having one person be able to communicate to a big crowd is something that has always benefitted from a degree of technology. The Ancient Romans built entire buildings just for the purpose. Jesus went up the mount. Today we have computers, projectors and PA systems.

Advent day 7: With so many things to think about up on stage, it can be easy to get lost in the words you’re saying and not think about how to present yourself as well as your content.

Advent day 6: I am very keen on reducing the number of decisions I have to make when preparing to give a talk. Presenting can be a highly stressful event, and the fewer things that you need to worry about, and potentially forget while under stress, the better. In order to remove the need to worry about what I need for my talk I always bring the same things with me to the stage.

Advent day 5: One common reason to even give a presentation in the first place is to pitch new ideas to the audience. Hopefully what you’ll be saying offers a new concept or approach that they were previously unfamiliar with. If all goes well, the audience will take the idea away and adopt it themselves.