Simon Willison’s Weblog

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117 posts tagged “speaking”

2012

How can I practice giving presentations / public speaking?

Look out for opportunities to practice in front of a friendly audience. There are two event formats that are particularly good for this.

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Public Speaking: Where can I find someone to represent me as a speaker?

There are speaker agencies that specialise in this kind of thing, but they’re mainly targeted at larger events which expect to pay $5,000-$50,000 or even higher for speaker. They might not be as well suited to setting you up with gigs at startup events, which are less likely to pay enough money to make it worthwhile for an agent (most agents take a cut of the speaker fee).

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What are some creative programs to use for presentations?

Here’s a trick I’ve used with success in the past: set up your Mac to have 9 virtual desktops, then arrange your “slides” on each desktop using a combination of applications. I’ve done this with a title slide in keynote on the first desktop, a text editor with some sample code on the second, a terminal prompt set up for live coding on the third, a browser showing a demo on the fourth and so on. Learn the keyboard commands to switch between desktops and off you go.

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Events (leisure): How can I get into presentations, mixers and meetups without paying the entry fee?

Speak to the organisers and volunteer to help out at the event. This works for all different sizes of events and is a very effective way of getting in to an event for free. As a volunteer you also get a great excuse to interact more with the attendees and speakers.

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What are some tips for giving a lightning talk at a conference?

Tips for general public speaking still hold for lightning talks. Here are some tips that might help:

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Does PowerPoint has a mode, where I can show slides on projector and see the slide notes on my laptop screen?

Yes. It’s called Presenter View. http://office.microsoft.com/en-u...

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What’s the best app to present animations and/or interactions for a UI/UX project?

I’ve seen designers use both Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote for this purpose to great effect.

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Product Demonstrations: What’s the best way to view/demo a website offline at an event?

If this is a static website (just HTML, images, CSS and a bit of JavaScript) you might be able to get it running on your laptop using a web server. OS X prior to Mountain Lion had a built in Apache which could be turned on using the “Web Sharing” option in the Sharing preference page, but it looks like they’ve now removed that option—a way of turning it back on again is described here: http://clickontyler.com/blog/201...

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Is there a feed or otherwise centralized list of calls for proposals for technical conferences?

We have a crowdsourced index of calls for proposals from (mostly technical) conferences here: http://lanyrd.com/calls/—you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for individual topics, e.g. if you want to hear about PHP conference CFPs you can subscribe to the feed linked to from this page: http://lanyrd.com/topics/php/calls/

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Who is the best conference panel moderator?

Two of the best moderators I’ve seen are Jeffrey Veen and Jeremy Keith, both of whom are regular contributors at SXSW.

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What are the ideal laser pointers for conference presentations?

I’ll swear by the Logitech Cordless Presenter: http://www.gadgetgrid.com/2008/1...—it’s very popular amongst friends of mine who speak frequently as well.

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2011

Public Speaking: How can I control my stress during my presentations?

Make sure you have run through your talk, in full, out loud in the privacy of your home or hotel room at least twice.

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Why are TED talks 18 minutes long (or less)?

I imagine it’s because enforcing a shorter talk time results in consistently higher quality presentations, by forcing speakers to carefully structure their talk and strip out any unnecessary details.

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Does Google (company) have their own Audio Visual department for their large conferences, or do they contract another company?

I believe it’s their own in-house team—when we ran the first DjangoCon at Google’s Mountain View HQ a few years ago I understood that the video team were their own (the same team that records their internal Google Tech Talks). It might be an external company that they contract in, but it felt like they were permanent staff.

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Public Speaking: Where is a good place to get started as a speaker?

Start small. There are plenty of small local events around that accept (and even encourage) first-time speakers. The single most valuable thing you can do to improve as a speaker is to get as much experience as possible.

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Who are the best female speakers on the topic of social media who are equal parts knowledgeable and engaging?

Meg Pickard from the Guardian
Suw Charman-Anderson

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2010

What are some tips for moderating a panel?

It’s a very hard thing to do well.

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How To Be A Good Participant On A Panel: Disagree. When I’m on a panel, I always try to have lunch or dinner with the other panelists beforehand to figure out in advance what points we disagree on.

# 5th March 2010, 9 am / panels, speaking

2009

What’s coming in Django 1.2 (presentation notes). I wrote up some background notes for the talk on Django 1.2 I gave at DJUGL last week.

# 5th December 2009, 5:10 pm / django, djugl, python, speaking, my-talks

Exploring Python (via) Notes from the introduction to Python presentation I gave today at Stack Overflow DevDays Amsterdam.

# 2nd November 2009, 3:35 pm / devdays, python, speaking, stackoverflow, my-talks

2008

Zeppelin 101 in 5 mins (via) Ribot videoed my five minute lightning talk on Zeppelins at last night’s Skillswap Brighton.

# 30th October 2008, 5:05 pm / lightning-talks, ribot, skillswap, speaking, my-talks, video, vimeo, zeppelins

When Ajax Attacks! Web application security fundamentals. Slides and notes from my talk on web application security at @media Ajax last Tuesday.

# 20th September 2008, 4:16 pm / ajax, atmediaajax, atmediaajax2008, csrf, javascript, security, slides, speaking, my-talks, xss

When Ajax Attacks! Web application security fundamentals. Slides and (other people’s) notes from my presentation at @media Ajax on Tuesday.

# 17th September 2008, 11:18 pm / ajax, atmediaajax, atmediaajax08, csrf, javascript, security, speaking, my-talks, xss, recovered

DjangoCon and PyCon UK

September is a big month for conferences. DjangoCon was a weekend ago in Mountain View (forcing me to miss both d.Construct and BarCamp Brighton), PyCon UK was this weekend in Birmingham, I’m writing this from @media Ajax and BarCamp London 5 is coming up over another weekend at the end of this month. As always, I’ve been posting details of upcoming talks and notes and materials from previous ones on my talks page.

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I love Zeppelins, and you should too (via) Slides from my PyCon UK lightning talk on Zeppelins. I’ve annotated them using SlideShare comments.

# 13th September 2008, 6:38 pm / airships, lightning-talks, pyconuk, pyconuk2008, slides, speaking, my-talks, zeppelins

Debugging Django, a slidecast. I used SlideShare’s slidecast tool for the first time to synchronize audio of my Django London User Group talk with the slides. The talk included several live demos which aren’t represented in the slides so it’s a bit piecemeal in places.

# 25th May 2008, 2:47 pm / debugging, django, djugl, slidecast, slideshare, speaking, my-talks

2007

Comet works, and it’s easier than you think

Visit Comet works, and it's easier than you think

I gave a talk this morning at the Yahoo! Web Developer Summit on Comet, cometd and Bayeux.

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How to make Ajax work for you. Slides from my three hour Ajax tutorial, presented at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin on Monday.

# 7th November 2007, 10:35 am / ajax, javascript, speaking, my-talks, tutorial, web2expoberlin

SlideShare Groups: Future Of Web Apps. Some of the presentations from the Future of Web Apps conference.

# 5th October 2007, 11:58 pm / fowa, fowa2007, future-of-web-apps, slideshare, speaking