[silverbax88]

It's tougher to be a solid public speaker than it looks. I've given talks to big rooms, gyms and moderately sized conference rooms. I rarely get nervous but occasionally it hits us all. I do have some notes on watching great speakers in person and learning from my own mistakes.

1. Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience. Even some practiced speakers do this. They think that it engages the audience, but it is a crutch, an attempt to turn the focus away from the speaker onto the audience. It's always clumsy and delays the audience from hearing the content. Some speakers claim that they want to know more about the audience before they proceed. We all know that's not true. Are you really going to completely modify your speech, dropping that five minutes of solid material just because not enough hands were raised when you asked about it? Of course not.

2. Note cards are not 'bad'. I had to learn this one the hard way. If you are professional orator, you will eventually get to the point where you can pontificate the same speech verbatim without a single note. But for the rest of us, a note card of bullet-point topics can keep us on track. Just don't have a ream of pages and stare down at them, reading monotonously without looking up.

3. Everyone hits that middle 'death valley' at some point. It's the point of a talk where you are very aware of your own voice, and you aren't getting any perceived feedback from the audience. This is the hard slog where you have to know that while time has slowed to a crawl for you, it hasn't changed for the audience. Remember how you feel when the situation is reversed - how often have you ever seen a speaker so bad that you actually noticed it and remembered it? Not often, if ever. Boring speakers are forgotten - bad speakers are ignored - great speakers MIGHT be remembered. So just keep going, and the worst that could happen is that you are boring, which no one will remember anyway.

[crazygringo]

> Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience.

I completely disagree. If you ask people to raise their hands 10 times on inane questions, then of course it's useless. But correctly used, it:

1) Wakes people up and gets everyone in the room focused

2) Gets people aware of the rest of the audience, and "on the same page"

3) Ideally provides a natural segue into how the point of the lecture directly connects to you

I taught English for years, which was basically public speaking every single day, and getting my students to tie an aspect of the theme/question of the day into their lives, and respond, in the first couple minutes was always key in terms of getting them all on the same page and relating to the material in the rest of the class. It would only occasionally be a show of hands, there are hundreds of other techniques as well (shouting words, asking the nearest person a question, writing a word on a piece of paper, etc.), but these are all fantastic public-speaking techniques. Of course, you need to have the personality to pull them all off, so the audience trusts you and wants to go along, but you can develop that.

Indeed, I think it's a real shame most public speakers don't interact more with the audience through these kinds of things. They boost attention levels and retention levels so much more.

[scott_s]

While I defended the practice below, I consider teaching to be a special case of public speaking. I have "presentation mode" and "lecture mode." There is a lot of overlap, but they're not exactly the same. In presentation mode, I will not stop everything and wait for someone to answer a question. When I'm presenting, I don't expect people to understand everything that I'm saying to the point that they can apply this new knowledge. I would like that, sure, but I think it's presumptuous to assume they would like it as well. Presentations are also often made to peers, and I don't like quizzing my peers in such a way.

In lecture mode, that's the entire purpose of my presentation, so I do it. I have no problem quizzing students in such a way - because if they can't answer the question, then I should change the focus of the lecture to make sure that everyone can before I move on.

Note that I am differentiating between quizzing and polling. I'll poll in both lecture and presentation mode.

[silverbax88]

I accept that you disagree, but this is the exact case I'm talking about. It does not create interaction with the audience. That is a myth. I breezed through college lectures because I knew how to fool the professor into thinking I was engaged. One of those ways is to ask questions or respond to 'the hand-raise maneuver'. It works because the speaker wants to turn attention over to someone else and I'd happily bail them out.

[ebiester]

+1 on the 'death valley.'

I think it's when you realize that this is the piece of the talk that is more interesting to the audience than myself. However, in my head, the doubting self-talk of "I'm boring everyone!" comes up.

The beginning is fun - that's the point you're trying to hook the audience. The end is fun - that's the point you're trying to give the audience a final take away. That middle point? That's what they've come for, even though it's the most boring part of the speech.

To that end, try to build in little peaks to your presentations. If you give yourself little "endings" and "beginnings" to work toward, it breaks things up into more managable chunks for your audience, helping their attention, but it also helps you avoid the self-talk and worry and "I hate the sound of my voice"-ness.

[groby_b]

Even better, keep in mind that ideally, your presentation has a story arc that ties things together. It should flow naturally. If you have a death valley, ask yourself if you really have a coherent and interesting story.

[groby_b]

#1: Yes, yes I am going to modify my speech. Or use the reply to weave in an anecdote, or do something with that info. Otherwise, you would be right, and it would be an exercise in futility.

#2: Absolutely. It's better if you can do without, but it's also a matter of how much time you have to prepare, and how dense the material is. If I'm giving a hard-core technical talk for 45 minutes, I'll sure as heck have a few notes handy. I prefer to go without, but that requires a lot of rehearsals. (45 minutes without notes is probably ~8-10 days of solid work. With notes, 4-5 days)

#3 That just means you've got to get better at reading your audience :) Seriously, if you feel a disconnect, shake things up. Do something unexpected. Have a joke ready. You do not want to lose your audience, ever. It's very hard to get them back.

[silverbax88]

Okay, what if you were speaking to an audience on a live national broadcast? Would you ask for a show of hands? What if you were talking to an arena of 20,000 people? Would you ask for a show of hands?

[groby_b]

Neither you nor the original article refer to any audience to even close of that size. I also wouldn't ask for a show of hands if I gave the President a national security briefing, or if I made first contact with aliens.

Can we agree that those situations are uncommon for most people on HN and focus on the kinds of talks we usually give around here?

[scott_s]

I have asked for a "show of hands" before, and given the context, I would do it again. I really had no idea going into the talk who my audience was - I didn't know if I was going to be talking to programmers or theoreticians, engineers or researchers, or even technical people versus management. And I did modify what I said based on the feedback.

[saraid216]

Re: #2. Note cards are fine; the issue isn't "does the speaker have notes?" which no one minds but "is the speaker just reading his notes?"

A lot of great speakers will casually glance down at their notes and go, "Uhh.... oh yeah!" It's perfectly okay, because the point of a speech is not to look perfect, but to say something worth hearing.