Tell people a story, with your voice and in your voice, with you in the story.

Recently, there was a discussion on an email mailing list about how to best prepare for a conference talk. I shared my two cents, which I’ll reprint here.

Tell people a story, with your voice and in your voice, with you in the story.

What do I mean? Well...

I always want to tell a story with a consistent through-line. Things need to flow. So, I really like using outlines in a text file in Sublime or a simple text editor to help draft my story. I don’t use MS Word or other word processors because I might get tempted to fidget with formatting instead of focusing on the message. I need to be able to move things around quickly—cutting, pasting, deleting, etc.—so that the final story works. I need to see the whole story in one place. This is really hard to do with slides since you’re only seeing one page at a time, not the whole picture. This is how I build a story that I can tell naturally.

Be quick. Remember, people stop watching YouTube videos if the screen doesn’t change within 15 seconds. The screen needs to keep moving, or you’ll lose them. If you’re going to use slides, you need a lot of them, so that the audience is never staring at the same thing for longer than 15 seconds. The pace is another reason why you shouldn’t use bullet points. Have you ever tried to read something that requires focus while someone is talking to you? Imagine doing that for an hour. You’d come away irritated and not particularly well informed because it’s hard to keep everything straight. I suppose the most efficient way to convey knowledge with bullet points is to show the points and then stop talking, so that people can read them without distraction. But what kind of conference “talk” is that, where you don’t actually talk? If the audience needs to read, you’ll probably need to leave the bullet points on screen for more than 15 seconds, and they’d get bored. If it can be done with bullet points, it could be done as a blog.

I don’t do slides most of the time. But if I do use them, I try to remember that they are a visual medium, and I use them just for diagrams or visuals. The moment you start writing bullet points, the slide becomes unnecessary. Most of the time, the visuals I want to show are on the internet, so I just set them up as bookmarks in a browser. On rare occasions, I’ll use animations, and there alone, I grant you, slides can be handy. I convey the story with my voice, not with my slides.

Then, I practice the talk a few times until I can remember the items in the outline in the right order. Eventually, I don’t even need the outline — just the visuals. And since the visuals are bookmarked, no slides are needed for them either.

Avoid bullet points/slides. Talk, and use visuals. This way, people can engage both visually and aurally with your story.

Don’t discount how important it is that you’re you in the story. If you’re telling a story, be a part of it. Be the proxy for the audience as you walk through the narrative. You’re not just a voice narrating the scenes for them to experience; you’re in the story with them. They won’t engage with your code if they can’t engage with you. There are lots of reasons why they can’t engage with you—lizard brain stuff still applies here. If people sense that you’re not confident in what you’re saying—because you haven’t rehearsed or practiced—they won’t dive fully into the water with you. Stage fright is a real thing; it’s our lizard brain telling us to run away when we’re surrounded by unknown creatures. Fight or flight. You overcome this with practice, which breeds confidence. One of the easiest ways to gain confidence is to be sincere. Be yourself. You want people to engage with you. Be at the center of the story. You’re not just looking at new feature X, Y, or Z—you’re sharing your experience working with X, Y, or Z. If they like you, and they see you’re having fun, they’ll want to do what you’re doing to have fun too. Monkey see, monkey do.

As some examples: I could listen to Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, James Ward, or Trisha Gee read the phone book and still engage because I know them and I feel — and I’d bet! — that they have fun perspectives to inhabit. I’m excited to join them on another adventure. Be in the story.

Or, you could just write a blog.