Speaker Prep Day

Welcome to ATD’s Speaker Prep Day!

Use our workshop to help you deliver your best talk here at ATD2018. You don’t need to be a speaker to join in – perhaps you’ll plan for something at ATD2019!

We’ll do drop-in sesssions in the morning, and more-strcutured sessions in the afternoon.

Click on any title below to reveal details.

Schedule

9:00-10:30 drop-in sessions

10:30-11:00 roundtable: share your disasters (over the 30 minute break)

11:00-12:30 drop-in sessions

12:30-13:30 browse galleries and play group games (over the 60 minute lunch break)

13:30-14:10 40 min workshop on making memorable content

14:15-15:00 40 min group exercise to summarise your talk and get / give feedback

15:00-15:30 challenge session: Q&A Bastard (over the 30 minute break)

15:30-17:00 40 min workshop to visualise your talk structure

15:30-17:00 40 min workshop to polish your presentation

Morning – drop in

Getting to a Great Abstract

A 30 minute exercise ending up in a worthwhile short abstract for your idea.

Process

Have a chat about your idea and existing abstract

Prime your mind with a couple of checklists or our gallery of fantasy abstracts

Write something down!

Ask for review, comments, advice

(optional) Add your abstract to the gallery and ask for public comments

Set milestones for next steps

Great abstract

catchy title

idea that has potential

indicates that thought and work has gone into communicating the message

/brief/ problem statement

real examples

demonstrates experience

clear takeaways

relevant to event

easy to read, draws you onwards

non-trivial

has substance – more than a tease, less than a paper

more than just the bright side – pitfalls, failures, antipatterns, pathologies

within word limit (and more than a couple of sentences)

offers interaction or demonstration

Poor abstract

claims expertise / authority

problem excludes content

poorly written, poorly proofread

unstructured or incoherent

buzzwords

single tool

happy paths only

One true mthod / “I’m right”

Emotionless

Tired topic

What makes a 'great talk'?

You can use this exercise to share your principles, to share your insprations, or to analyse some fine talks.

Whose talk has inspired you

How did it inspire you?

Share your example, and we’ll add it to our list.

Analyse a talk

Watch a great talk (we have a list).

What are you watching for?

How does it manifest?

How can you help yourself, and others, to be brilliant in a similar way?

Add your principles to the gallery.

Principles

What, for you, makes a great talk?

Consider your princiuples by finding specific examples of actions you take.

Consider your princiuples by remembering specific examples of things someone did while speaking that inspired you.

Put down the principles, and add them to our gallery.

Share your preparation checklist

What do you do to prepare?

Build your own checklist to share – or have a look at our gallery, and change it.

We’ll put checklists and sources on github at the end of the day.

Dealing with Q&A

Workshop your nightmare questions with us. We’ll help you to find great answers!

Add some principles to our list.

Here’s a list of horrible generic questions

Why didn’t you use *technique / tool *

Whoever says this is a terible idea

Isn’t that whoever’s idea

What’s the purpose - what’s it good for?

Have you actually done this?

Why would I believe you – what qualifies your opinion?

Where’s the data?

Here are some reasons to take a question later

off-topic

repeated

not a question

failure to understand each other’s context

very long question

can’t be answered in the available time

needed long dialogue to understand necessary context

exposes the questioner to ridicule

You might feel that, as the person on stage, one of your jobs is to honour the crowd – and these kinds of questions prioritise the interest of an individual.

Greatest fails

A roundtable discussion, sharing stories of how your own talk went wrong.

Probably over a break.

Perhaps aiming for a list of “Simple ways to avoid the pit”.

Improvisation Exercise

Presents

Stand in a cirle. Imagine you could give anything to one person in this group. Who would you give it it? What would you give?

One person – decide on a present for someone else. Silently, give that person your present.

That person – receive the present with delight. Say what it is. Then, give a diffetent present to someone else.

Purpose – to delight and surprise with misinterpretations. To get the group to play togther. To enjoy the random.

Line by line story

Take turns

Use (at least some) of the information in the previous line.

Make your partner look good.

Stuck? Refer to shared history. Be specific. Raise the stakes. Continue the plan. Agree and expand.

Hint: Avoid questions, unless rhetorical.

Hint: No need to think of anything before the most recent line. No need to aim for the future.

Purpose – to listen and to respond.

Ask a testing question

Write a generic question that involves a story (not an opinion or a plan). Examples: How did you get started in testing? Tell me about a bug that got fixed. What have you done today? How was your journey to Potsdam? Tell me about your first conference.

Exchange questions (JL and BK to introduce ringers). Exchange again. If you don’t like your question, exchange with James or Bart.

Get into 2s or 3s.

Each of you, answer your question in 20s. Beforehand, pick a mood for your story – “You’ll never believe it”, suspenseful, “There was nothing I could do”, “Which was great!”, suspicious, lucky, doomed. Try to tell your story with that mood.

Try to tell someone else’s story back to them, with a different mood.

Purpose – practice storytelling with differnt emotions

References:

Impro for Storytellers

Do Improv

Tasty Cupcakes

Practicing and Rehearsing

A chat with James and / or Bart about how you are preparing to perform.

We’ll talk about strategies, tricks, and you can use us to help you commit to the actions you need.

Speaking across cultures

Come have a chat – we’ll schedule a round table if there’s lots of interest.

What to Follow Up after a Talk

Browse our list of things that you might do to follow up. Add your own!

Take contact details of anyone who talks to you after the talk.

Offer materials for emails

Invite people to meet you in the pub / expo / wherever to talk further

Offer stickers with your catchy slogan, talk to people wearing your stickers

Put your twitter handle on each slide, invite new followers, interact with any new followers over the conference.

Initiate contact with anyone who tweets your talk.

Invite feedback and comments.

Make an interactive exercise and invite people to use them.

Put materials on GitHub and invite contributions

Set up a Slack / WhatsApp / regular Skype to take your talk further

Give participants something they can use, offer your help as they put it into practice

Offer to give the talk as a webinar for people’s workplaces

Review how the delivery went

Make a note of ideas about how it might go next time – what you’d change

Consider how your material might work for a different audience

Build something to invite contact in one or mare ways.

Afternoon – scheduled groups

Making your key content even more memorable

Scheduled workshop. During the workshop, we will work together to:

Individually identify our key content – then do a 30-second pitch to the group. Will you primarily inform, inspire, entertain, persuade, give an experience – or something else?

Consider all the ways we’re putting that message across. Consider when in our talks we’re setting out that message, what suport for each occasion.

Consider your audience – who will use your message, and what emotional reaction do you hope they might.

Consider different media – statement, picture, story, slogan, joke, example, counter-example, logical argument, sincere appeal, warning, vision.

Sloganise one core message - short phrase using alliteration and rhymes.

Exchange slogans

Hear My Talk

Process

This exercise gives you instant, real feedback on your delivery and content

We’ll need 2-4 speakers who are prepared to do very condensed talks and to get feedback. If you’re up for it, you’ll do the same very short talk, 3 times. We will record your talk on your own phone.

First time – 3 minutes. You go away, watch the talk, make changes.

Second time – 3 minutes. You ask the audience for feedback.

Third time – 2 minutes Lots of applause

At the end, we have a swift go-round talking about what was great about the talks, and perhaps what became great.

Audience rules

This is not a PowerPoint karaoke bearpit. Please: * Be observant * Be fair * Be lovely

Cool & Cruel Q&A

From a selection of abstracts – some of the people in the room, some fantasy abstracts. Looking at examples of horrible Qs from morning session.

What are some horrible questions

Individually, taking a selection of abstracts each

- What is the question you’d dread, if this was your abstract?

- What is the question you’d ask, if you were a bastard

Collectively, abstract by abstract

- What’s the best way you might answer?

- What’s the worst?

Polish your presentation

45 minute workshop

reflection: why doe you want to polish your talk?

reflection: what needs polish – suggestions: rhythm and structure, humour, slides, supporting material, demos, flow / transitions between topics, start, conclusion, exercises

consider the purpose of your polish for your audience

talk round – what are you going to polish, and do you want to pair up

work

round the table on the poish that has been acheived

Visualising your talk structure

45 minute group session.

Brief introduction to circle map, storyboard, (proportional) timeline

Roundtable: how have you structured your talk

Summarise some structures: Story / Problem – Solution / 10 points / points and expansion / exercises

Sketch your talk. What text. What timings? What connections

Map your talk over time. Perhaps intense – relaxed, theory – practice, problem – solution, different stories, where the light bits are. How does your structure serve your message?