Corey Quinn

This thread inspired by @mattstratton. I BET YOU'LL TAKE NOTES THIS TIME!

If you're giving a demo in a terminal, use a light background, dark text. The way projectors work often doesn't throw enough light for a dark theme to be visible.

Put your twitter handle on every slide. You want people to give you credit; nobody gives a conference talk without saying who they are...

If you call yourself "a public speaker," consider whether there's another way of framing what you do that's more engaging.

Never, ever, read the comments on videos of your talks.

The first 45 seconds of your talk are when I'm figuring out whether I'm going to listen to what you say or read Twitter instead. Are you sure you want to use those seconds to say "Hi, I'm X, I work at Y, and I'm going to talk about Z?"

"This is my first talk / I'm really nervous / I threw this talk together last minute / my demo is probably going to break" makes everything you're going to say next worse. Keep it to yourself.

Go read the comments section on a random YouTube video, then expect those people to ask questions during your Q&A section. Are you sure you want to do Q&A after all? Are you REALLY sure?

So you're doing Q&A. Brave of you. The "get me out of this question" escape hatch is "that's a great point--come talk to me afterwards." 90% of the time they don't show up; they just wanted to sound smart in front of a room full of people. They should give a talk!

Plan for failure. "Your laptop has to be at the projection booth" / "the projector isn't working" / "the power is out" have all happened.

Do a tech check an hour or two before you speak. There are no emergencies then; there are when your slot starts in three minutes.

People are going to try to decide whether they attend your talk, or the other talk that's at the same time. I like to win those competitions, usually by submitting my talk as @brendangregg.

Don't build a conference talk before it gets accepted somewhere. I have dozens of talk proposals that were never accepted. Save time and effort.

At most corporate events, if you don't charge a speaking fee you look like a rube. At most community events if you charge a speaking fee you look like an asshole.

The hardest working people at a conference are the event staff. Treat them well. Or they will kill you. Do you really want to fight someone who lifts heavy equipment for a living and knows where the dumpsters are?

Nobody in the audience hopes you fuck up. Everyone wants to see you succeed.

"Imagine everyone's naked" is problematic, as well as terrible advice.

Jokes that land super well in small groups fall flat in front of large audiences. This is why corporate keynote jokes are so corny. They work in front of the 5 people during rehearsal, fail in front of 15,000 people.

Always get a video of your talk if you can. Watch them, I know it's hard. It's your best chance to improve.

If you're serious about speaking, hire a speaking coach. Their job is to help you get better, not blow sunshine up your ass. Also hire a person to blow sunshine up your ass.

The key to giving a lot of great talks is to give a lot of shitty talks first. Try not to do those in front of huge audiences.

At some point "speaking" becomes your primary profession if you let it. Corollary: at some point you've gotta do something to speak about.

If you talk about specific speakers sucking, you're the worst kind of human. This shit is hard, yo.

When the event staff hooks you up to the microphone, and you can rattle off the make, model, and specs of the microphone setup, there's a terrific chance you've been doing this too long.

Most audiences represent well over $100K in "their time spent listening to your talk." Respect that. "I threw these slides together on the plane" or "this is a rough draft of my next talk" isn't respectful.

Some people would rather die than speak publicly. Other people SHOULD, but I'm told it's rude to say out loud.

Turn your fucking phone off before you go on stage unless you want your pants buzzing the whole time. I'm talking to you, future @quinnypig.

When you get off the stage, double-check the podium. Power cables, wireless presenters, adapters--all of those are expensive to replace. This tweet sponsored by my third Logitech Spotlight.

"Codes of Conduct are virtue signalling." I disagree, but consider what not having a CoC in 2020 is signalling. Further consider if you want to be associated with such an event.

We can wirelessly throw video around the planet seamlessly, but assume that the projector in the venue is from 1990. You're going to want a pouch of some sort for all of your dongles.