I once gave a short talk at Harvard. Nearly didn't because I was so intimidated by the crowd. Got through it, hardly able to read the room because of my internal dialogue of focusing on the content, and also convinced I was a fraud. Then I realized I went over my time limit by almost 50%. When it was over, my emotions were such a mess I logically thought I should try to cry or scream to let off the overwhelming negative energy I had built up. It was one unreal bucket of feelings after another. As I collected my clip board and bag, I walked to the side of the hall where I was sure I had seen an exit, someone dodged in front of me and put their hand out and introduced themselves and started asking questions about the talk. Took her card and suddenly there was another. It wasn't until maybe the fourth person when I realized there was a line of at least twenty people. Yeah, stop and say hi. Even with critical questions, complaints. Making a connection with other people is one of the most important things we can do.

On the flip of this. For those getting started at their first speaking things, don't freak out when you look over the audience and feel like zero people are registering that you are even using real words :) . I've been on stage a lot: speaking, improv, plays, stuff. And there are countless times you'll actually be able to make some eye contact with the audiecnce if there aren't too bright of a stage light, and you will just see stone cold expressions staring back at you. And you will wonder if words are still coming out of your mouth. :) It happens. The human connection you get with a one on one encounter that your body kind of expects when you talk. Them nodding, or any expression whatsoever often goes completely absent in a speakers setting.

That's why "open with a joke" is so useful. It's not really for them! It's for you!. If you can hear a laugh from your audience, YOU start to chill out. Your body is like "ah. the mic is actually on, and I'm not having a stroke".

Another useful tip, if the scenario allows, try to hang out by the front row before your talk and chat someone up. That's who you want to then make eye contact with often during your talk. Their expression will be or at least seem to be warmer to you. And you'll feel some more calm looking at them than the random heads everywhere else.

Tell the speakers why you liked their talks! And ask them about things you didn't understand.

Same with bands. "Loved your set" is one thing, "loved your set" because "it reminded me of…"/"made me feel…" is another.

The other week I said to a singer/songwriter that I had enjoyed her full band set the day before and that her guitarist had a really surprisingly dirty guitar sound, and she said "I know! and from such a clean-looking gentleman! I'll tell him that, he'll love it". We then chatted about how her music was (for philosophical reasons) not "guitar solo" territory but how inventive and supportive his playing was in that context and I said how well I thought she'd woven it all together.

The energy you bring to putting yourself in front of a crowd really in any context, whether professional or entertainment, formal/informal, planned/improvised, you take in part from the feedback from previous attempts; it's difficult to do it otherwise.

For awhile I did the public speaking circuit - my focus was on infrastructure engineering, governance and supportability.

So - I would pepper my talks with real-life scenarios and anecdotes - and alot of humour - because my audiences where in the "same trenches" as me.

Then, I gave a talk to an audience of ALL corporate developers (Windows world, so .NET) - it was such a weird vibe, I have never had such a stony-faced, unresponsive crowd of attendees. (But their written feedback/reviews were great, so...)

(It also didn't start well, because the venue hosts attempted to eject an attendee because of the way he was dressed (motorcycle leathers, jeans - honestly nothing offensive) - and "didn't look like he was supposed to be there" - I intervened - it turned out that he was a tech user-group leader in the local community, and was just "different/quirky".)

I am absolutely terrified of public speaking, and IMO not very good at it. I never apply to give talks, but I always seem to get invited to give talks or be on panels or podcasts a few times a year anyway.

Every time it is days of anxiety trying to figure out how I am going to communicate the security ideas I want people to adopt in a way that may land this time, because I am convinced it could reduce a lot of harm if I am successful.

I never say no though because for whatever reason someone respected my work enough to invite me, and maybe this time I can convince even one org to make the changes to their security posture that are going to prevent the data or assets of the users that trusted them from being stolen.

After each event is days of kicking myself for all the things I should not have said, or should have said but failed to. All the ways I could have been more effective.

When zero people have any questions or feedback after, my brain tells me in a loop that nothing I said landed, and it is devastating. Did I get in a plane and go through so much effort only to confuse people and scare them further away from doing things that actually are pretty easy?

One time after a security panel at a big conference a single person came up to me after who told me what they agreed with, what they want to learn more about, and why. That person is my co-founder now.

Talk to speakers if you connected with what they said or reach out to them after. You may be the source of validation they need to keep trying.

People always will talk to you about anything they know a lot about.

You can approach any human, of any standing, anywhere on Earth, and if you ask a question that hits them right in their knowledge center, especially if it is something they don't commonly get to talk about, they will positively engage with you.

I know speaking with absolutes on the internet is a borderline crime, but this is so reliable I think it warrants it.

Very true! It’s a funny dynamic where audience members are sometimes intimidated to approach speakers, while the speaker themselves really wishes people would approach them (and is worried about what it means if nobody does).

Beyond speakers, this is great advice for anyone whose public work you appreciate that isn't a major celebrity. I've sent questions and compliments to creators of all kinds of work I enjoy and more often than not gotten a genuinely thoughtful and appreciative response back. It could be a small website creator, a researcher in a field outside my own, an author, or an open source project maintainer.

My sense is that not many people do this and anyone who is not mega-famous rarely hears from strangers who like their work.

I'm giving my first conference talk in a few weeks.

I'm hoping it makes people want to talk to me so I don't end up sitting alone during breaks! I have not managed to experience the mythical hallway track that everyone raves about...

(Another speaker said they're bringing stickers to bribe people - shit why didn't I think of that)

I end up having the chance to speak on my current research a couple of times a year.

Occasionally I'll realize that the audience is some of the most well known names in my field and panic too much to do a good job. Having people ask to talk about my work afterwards always helps a lot with the subsequent spiraling thoughts. To be fair, I'd be happy even with criticism; that gives me something specific to improve rather than trying to figure it out on my own.

Been getting better at handling it as I gain more experience, but even then, being asked questions one-on-one really helps with knowing that the audience was genuinely paying attention.

Unfortunately I'm not the best at coming up with questions on the spot, I need time to digest the material. I admire people that can sit through a broad range of presentations and quickly have insightful questions for each one.

Anyone else remember Lanyrd [1]? I seem to remember that had a kind of Kudos mechanism for speakers?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyrd

I'm a remote employee and the absolute zero feedback you get from presenting in an empty room to a laptop webcam is real

Someone echoed a similar sentiment but in general I think people get great satisfaction and pride out of being told their work is good. When I worked in the food service industry nothing made me happier than hearing someone genuinely enjoyed the meal. It’s left such a lasting impression that anytime I enjoy a coffee, meal, etc I try to look the person in the eyes an earnestly say “hey this was really good.” If you don’t do this a lot you may be surprised to see just how happy this makes the person working. It doesn’t matter if they made the food or served it or even just worked the register.

I realized recently, of the thousands of blog posts I've read, videos I've watched, books I've read, I only reached out to the creators a handful of times.

And my friends are often surprised by me reaching out to strangers, so I seem to be unusually extroverted in this regard.

Which implies that there could be thousands of people out there whose lives I've affected (for better or worse!), and I'll never know. If only a fraction of a percent of them get back to me. Then that's just how it works.

Contrarian opinion, but being open here.

While there are exceptions, there's usually very little you'd get from in-person talks. And quite often, the people who are giving these talks are serial presenters - as a lifestyle, or sometimes career building.

But then like I said, there are exceptions. Especially when it's about something interesting being demoed for the first time, or a deeply technical conversation. Those are not the norm.

I haven't been to big talks. Only more like local engineer meetups.

A few times, I approached speakers for saying I liked it but turned down, as they had to talk to people from bigger companies, and few even expressed unpleasantness to me.

Those are rare cases, so I still give props to speakers whenever I can.

My lesson was that there are shitty speakers for sure, but don't let it stop you from continuing to appreciate speakers.

I can start by saying thank you! The name looked familiar. I remember stumbling upon her css presentation[0] And I was surprised to see one of my articles as a resource.

[0]: https://noti.st/anarodrigues/abfj0M/refactoring-css

Take a picture of the Speaker while they talk. So many times they forget to get pictures. Then send it to them on LinkedIn and you will forever be in their messages feed as that "nice person who took my picture."

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Questions are great, the more common 'nice talk' barely makes anything. Also sometimes it feels over-engineered trying to make a smart or memorable comment.

Agree with the general concept

Disclaimer: Ana is a very dear friend of mine and may well be the Best Person™. Ana, if you’re reading this, the live-coded karaoke talk you gave at State of the Browser was the best I’d seen in years.

After doing a talk, my second favorite thing is to get feedback.

My favorite thing (mostly works with internal talks) is to hear people using the ideas I shared or doing some of the action items I talked about.

I’ve given talks at meetups and it’s incredibly frustrating when you get zero feedback from people attending. If you liked it or didn’t, give me something!

This has been a pleasant surprise! thank you all for sharing your experiences <3

Yes, it makes a big positive difference. Even if the talks aren't good.

I wrote a post a while ago about how to be a good audience member at a tech conference: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3522

tl;dr: even if you don't tell a speaker you like their talk, definitely pay attention. Or leave. People work hard on this stuff!

But what if I liked the talk but not the speaker?

In general: Everyone could use some appreciation for whatever good shit they do, even if it's their job or "responsibility"

Your folks, your taxi driver, the guys who get the garbage, your parrot.. Throw them a compliment now and then (even better palm them a fiver too)

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I hope with AI the talks get better, the past few years were so bad