[ohdrat]

You can do a lot of preparation and perfection, over years, and finally get up there and suddenly realize that you are not an entertainer, or even a teacher, and don't want to be either of those, even though the assumption was that this was a good idea, or the main idea. Then what, you're the guy from the Advanced Bashing The Shell talk, or a like guitar player who does not want to play for an audience, what do you do?

[jwildeboer]

Not everybody can become a good speaker, granted. Training and experience helps a lot, though. But if you don't feel comfortable on stage then by all means, don't force yourself to.

There are loads of other ways to share your knowledge. Maybe you want to try podcasting, blogging, vlogging, writing articles for relevant magazines/web sites?

Heck, you could even make funny songs to get your message out :-) As a speaker though, I feel at home on stage and the feedback has been positive over all the years, so I feel comfortable with being a speaker.

As always, do what you makes you feel good, don't force yourself into something you don't like. The audience will notice immediately and some audiences can be very hostile. Most of the time though they are very forgiving in my experience.

[hynek]

Kind of depends on how you define a “good speaker”, right? Your style and mine style are obviously very different (lots of it is also due to English being my third language of course) but people still have expressed that they consider me a good speaker.

It’s like with everything: talent or grind. Or both if you want to be an amazing speaker. :)

[jwildeboer]

The different approaches and results of speakers is what makes a conference interesting, when the mix is right IMHO :-)