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During my time curating the UX London and Leading Design events, I used to watch a few hundred presentations each year. I’d be looking at a range of things, including the speaker’s domain experience and credibility, their stage presence and ability to tell a good story, and whether their topic resonated with the current industry zeitgeist. When you watch that many a presentation, you start to notice patterns that can either contribute to an absolutely amazing talk or leave an audience feeling restless and disengaged. But before you even start worrying about a delivery, you need to secure yourself a spot on the stage. How? Follow me along, and let’s find out!
Choosing What To Speak About
I think one of the biggest misunderstandings people have about public speaking is the belief that you need to come up with a totally new and unique concept — one that nobody has spoken about before. As such, potentially amazing speakers will self-limit because they don’t have “something new to share.” While discovering a brand new concept at a conference is always great, I can literally count the number of times this has happened to me on the one hand. This isn’t because people aren’t constantly exploring new approaches.