I got to read an early draft of Demystifying Public Speaking (Amazon) and it was exciting to revisit it and read the published version. It’s the perfect, to the point, read for those who are wondering how to get started public speaking, or facing their first talk unsure of how to prepare.
The chapter on feedback is particularly helpful, and applies way beyond feedback on public speaking. The “diamonds and spades” cards framework is a helpful framework for processing all kinds of feedback to pick out what is most helpful and what to do with it. I also got a lot out of the practical preparation and now know much more about microphones and AV!
Definitely worth reading if you are interested in public speaking. Or, if you aren’t – at least you’ll have a better idea of what you aren’t subjecting yourself to!
When I set my speaking goals for 2016, I set a limit of 6 talks. As someone asked, “did you just give them all in a two week period?” – actually I decided that 1 meet-up, 3 workshops, and MC-ing did not count (this is the thing about unclear goals).
When I set my goals I didn’t say anything about invitation vs CfP, and my plan had been to submit to some CfPs. In practise, I did not submit to any CfPs. I decided to eliminate this source of stress early in the year. But I never talked about this publicly for two reasons. One it seemed like bragging. And two, I was worried that it undermined Technically Speaking.
But I don’t think this is uncommon to move to a point of invitation only, and really I need fewer external commitments, not more. A CfP submission is like, Schrödinger’s commitment. It may or may not be happening. If I’m enthused enough about something to submit a CfP, that means keeping that uncertainty in my schedule in the form of space to fulfil it for weeks or months until I hear back. I decided this was a stress-vector that it was easier not to deal with.
And then Technically Speaking – part of being public about this meant accepting that maybe Chiu-Ki and I are not the right people to run Technically Speaking forever, and that’s OK.
What were the benefits?
Reduced stress.
Reduced uncertainty.
More time to decide what I was going to talk about.
Fewer surprises for Future-Cate.
What were the downsides?
Missing out on events that I would loved to have been part of.
I’m OK with the downside. It’s not that big in the scheme of things. It’s possible next year I get fewer invitations, and I either need to decide to start submitting again or I just give fewer talks.
The other benefit was that I was more comfortable asking for things. Straightforwardly, travel and accomodation. But less straightforwardly some things that I ended up asking for this year included things related to harassment. These were pretty horrible conversations to have to have, but that would have been even scarier to do as someone who was picked out of a CfP. Because people invited me because they knew me, they were also already generally aware that I was someone who experienced some level of harassment. I would have hated to be trying to explain that as I sold myself as a good speaker.
I was on Less Than or Equal in March, something that I’ve actually been engaging in self-promotion of, because I think it’s one of the better things I’ve done. Largely because Aleen (the host) asked such thoughtful questions, and made me feel so comfortable speaking to her.
I’ve also discovered that I just love podcasts as a format – as a way to practice extemporaneous speaking, and because it’s (hopefully) an interesting conversation, with another interesting human. I talked about some things that I’ve never written about in detail, and probably never will, like getting harassed at work, the HR experience, and that time I pulled out of a conference because they refused to implement a code of conduct (and the fall out). I also talked about finding a healthy work environment, and best of all, Shine Theory, and how my amazing friends lift me up and inspire me.
My favourite comment on this podcast was from my friend Camille, “This is basically what many behind closed doors conversations between women sound like, if you’ve ever wondered”.
This episode was the most downloaded ever, and people said really nice things about it. I loved recording it, I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and I’d love it if you listened to it too.
Preparing for Podcasts
This was the second podcast I recorded this year (although it was released first), and my strategy for preparing is:
Ask if there are any topics they want to cover with me, and go and read through any writing I’ve done on that subject.
Listen to at least one episode of that podcast, ideally a recommendation from someone for their favourite episode.
Prep anything I need to prep (the other podcast I did had some prepared questions). Make notes, don’t expect to remember anything.
Arrange space in my day for it, so that I can get into the right mind-set ~30 minutes before.
Get any software I need set up.
Try and get into a headspace of warmth (see: The Charisma Myth). This makes my voice sound warmer and me seem nicer.
It was a helpful collection of tips for preparing and giving presentations, including the why and how of psyching yourself up to do it! As someone who reads a lot about giving good presentations (hello have you seen the newsletter) this was one of the more thorough collections of presentation tips in one place.
My favourite chapter though was the one on running effective meetings! Super useful, and no doubt I’ll be referring back to it.
Especially if you’re in a phase of “oh maybe I should speak how do I begin”, this book will be a good starting point.
As part of the Technically Speaking Anniversary last week I did two mentoring calls. Both of them focused on writing abstracts. This is cool, because one of the things I discovered when Chiu-Ki and I ran our workshop is that Abstract Writing is something of a speciality for me and I actually quite enjoy writing them for other people.
General Comments About Abstracts
Your abstract is a pitch for your talk. It’s when you sell the topic.
Your bio is where you sell yourself as a good person to speak about the topic.
It doesn’t need to be long.
Be concrete, but not overly detailed. E.g. specific takeaways are good, the details of how you get to them are unnecessary.
Three Lists
Think about your topic and make three lists.
Why is this topic important.
What things do you want people to take away from it.
What points do you plan to cover.
List #3 is the easiest, but lists #1 and #2 are most useful for writing your abstract.
A Formula
[Strong statement about why this topic is important at a macro level]. [Specific points that tie your more narrow topic to this macro point].
This talk will cover [2-3 most important points], after which you will be able to [concrete audience takeaway].
A year in, 2000 subscribers is in sight, we started getting sponsors for each issue (we’re currently booked out a month in advance), which is great because it turns this from passion-project to sustainable. We’re starting to experiment with branding – our stickers were a hit, and we launched an anniversary tshirt (available until November 24).
I’m really proud of what we’ve done over the last year. The best thing is hearing from people – especially women – that it’s encouraged them to speak!
To celebrate, we asked our readers to join us in setting their public speaking goals for 2016. We won’t ask people to do anything we won’t do ourselves, so here are mine:
Six talks (currently 3 planned, 1 in negotiation).
Thanks to everyone who had me speak this year, and so much love to all the people who I got to hang out with again or meet for the first time. I’m really excited for what I’ll do as a speaker in 2016, and what Chiu-Ki and I will do together and with our community. I hope you’ll join us, if you haven’t already, and subscribe.
Speaker panels can be a bit overwhelming, because there end up being so many people on stage, which makes them a special problem. We did an interesting thing for the speaker panel at 360iDev which I think is worth talking about.
Any question was supposed to be taken by only one panelist, and then there was a separate section of three people (including me!) for strong opinions. One of us was supposed to weigh in after, only if we disagreed.
I thought this was an interesting strategy because it limited the number of people speaking (a problem on larger panels) and also eliminated the dull “I agree and here’s why I agree” answer. I’m not really into arguing for the sake of arguing but it was kinda fun to be expected to disagree!
I’m moderating my first panel soon so I’m thinking about how you make things more engaging and encourage differences of opinion. This wasn’t a perfect solution (pretty sure there isn’t one) but I think there was a lot more dissent than I usually see, and that made it one of the more entertaining panels I’ve been on.
When I decided to leave my corporate tech job, public speaking was part of The Plan. However I didn’t really know where to begin. I built a talk from some of my more popular blogposts and started submitting it to CfPs I happened across. Luckily, I met up with Chiu-Ki on a trip to the valley, and mentioned it. She talked about her journey into public speaking, encouraged me, and on a practical level – started sending me CfPs.
As a result, we met in Copenhagen en route to Øredev, where we were both speaking (a CfP she had sent me, and encouraged me to apply to). And we talked about building your identity after leaving an insular environment, about how we had approached it, mistakes we had made, wins, and how we could potentially help other people – especially other women – do the same.
We opted for a mailing list, because we weren’t keen on the idea of maintaining a static site and questioned the efficacy of a static site – people expect push notifications now, they rarely check, and because we liked the idea of a regular prompt in the inbox, reminding people that they have expertise to share, along with resources to make it seem more doable. Also I had finally noticed that newsletters were A Thing, everyone seemed to have one – except me.
For collaborative projects, I think there are two things that are important: a process, and your values.
We discussed and agreed on our values up front.
Whilst we had both done a lot of work to raise the profile of women, we didn’t see any need to brand what we were doing as a thing “for women”. We would brand it for everyone, and have a Secret Feminist Agenda.
Firstly, we would only share CfPs with a Code of Conduct. We believe that a Code of Conduct is necessary, but not sufficient. Not having one is a clear sign that the conference organisers are behind the times, don’t value the safety of marginalised people – or worse, don’t believe that is relevant.
Secondly, we would curate CfPs based on how they treat the speakers – we agreed that conferences should, at a minimum, cover travel.
Thirdly, at least half the content would be from women. This, to me, has been one of the most interesting aspects. Typically Chiu-Ki curates the CfPs and the inspiration, and I curate the link round up, so this falls more on me to check and balance. At first it was hard, but over time it has got much easier, to the point where sometimes I have to go looking for content from men to balance things out.
Note: whilst we actively look for content from other underrepresented groups we don’t measure or have targets for this – maybe we should.
The consequences of The Secret Feminist Agenda have been fascinating, heartening, and also sad.
Men have not seemed to notice. They say, “I love your newsletter”, comment on the need for such a thing.
Women notice. Some think it is a newsletter for women – it’s not. Is it because it’s written by two women? Because they are not used to something for everyone being relevant to them? Because they notice how much content by women is included? Because we talk about diversity?
I don’t know. But what I think that we have shown – 6 months on – is that content in tech that considers women as important consumers, can still be branded as for, and be relevant to everyone.
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I got to read an early draft of Demystifying Public Speaking (Amazon) and it was exciting to revisit it and read the published version. It’s the perfect, to the point, read for those who are wondering how to get started public speaking, or facing their first talk unsure of how to prepare..jpg)
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