Today’s post if from Michael Eaton and it is all about rehearsing your material.
The Past
I’m terrible at not fully preparing for talks and it has definitely shown. I’m not proud of my WPF talks at the recent Central Ohio Day of .NET, Stir Trek and the Indy Code Camp. I struggled with content at Central Ohio and with other problems coming up during the talks at the other events. I never gave any thought to what would happen if hardware failed or if I forgot some important piece of code. The ratings for those talks were justifiably low because I *did* run into hardware problems and I did forget important code. I was NOT prepared. Ugh.
At Central Ohio, I made a change to my WPF talk the night before the session, but never ran through it before actually giving it in front of an audience. HUGE mistake. At Stir Trek, I spent more time worrying about how to get the damn HP TouchSmart to display on the projector than I did on what I was actually going to say. HUGE MISTAKE. At the Indy Code Camp, I discovered DURING the presentation that I copied the WRONG virtual machines to my laptop so I didn’t have the correct code. HUGE MISTAKE. I ended up having to remote into my home development VM and demo from that. Ugh.
A Revelation
I gave two talks at the Indy Code Camp. One was very successful, one was a failure. During the day, I spent some time talking to Mike Wood. Mike is not only a friend, but a fantastic speaker, so I opened up to him on how poorly my WPF talk went versus how my Software Estimation talk went.
Because my Software Estimation talk was new, I spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks on it. In fact, I did something I have NEVER done with one of my talks before: I rehearsed it. Let’s be clear on what I’m talking about – I stood in my office, alone, and gave the Software Estimation talk to an empty room. I didn’t stop. If I ran into a slide with no notes (I was using Presentation View), I forced myself to say something. This was a HUGE WIN because I realized BEFORE the live presentation that I only had 45 minutes of material for a 75 minute session! It was also a HUGE WIN because once I was in front of the audience I *knew* what I was going to say!
During my conversation with Mike, he said he does that for every one of his talks! You know what? It shows. It shows when he’s in front of an audience and it shows in his speaker evaluations. I will admit though that standing up in my office felt strange. It felt strange talking to no one. It also felt very satisfying!
A Promise
I will NEVER do another presentation without first running through it out loud in the comfort of my home/office. I will do this multiple times if possible.
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Justin,
Being a techie and a frequent presenter I can relate with what you wrote in your post. I have often fallen into the trap of spending too much time making sure that the projector, mic etc. are working specially at new venues rather than doing a silent run of my slides and demos. But I must also say that you took it the right way by identifying and accepting and then turning the issue around. Many speakers I have come across have told me after a bad presentation that they just had the worst audience. It can be true but I don’t buy it. I personally judge the success of my talks by audience participation.
All the best to you for your future presentations.
Why doing it in front of empty room? What I prefer is callibg some of my colegues and friends and present it to them. Makes more sense + you get direct feedback
@Nikola: I work for myself and out of my home so I don’t have quick access to a group of people. 🙂 It does make sense, but given the circumstances, an empty room has to do.