Dos & Don'ts Delivering a Tech Conference Talk
... and learning that I may well be Brian Armstrong's doppelgänger!
The CTO Craft Conference
I had the incredible privilege to be invited to speak at CTO Craft Con on November 8th, where I delivered a talk on what sounds like a rather unexciting topic “Building a solid foundation for scalable structures, processes and values”. Bland as the subject may seem, the organiser’s feedback was surprisingly positive:
I thought your session was one of the best at the event. Your delivery was very professional and slick - well polished but conversational and natural. Even more impressive considering the depth and breadth that you went into. I think it was a great session to bring together a number of themes from earlier in the day.
-CTO Craft Con Organiser
Likewise, the public of ~100-150 senior engineering leaders from across the industry seems to have enjoyed my presentation:
Feedback so far has been fantastic in general but many attendees have cited the strength of the content from start to finish.
-CTO Craft Con Audience
Personally, I found the experience to be extremely rewarding, thanks in no small part to how professional the organisation was, with massive kudos and eternal gratitude going to Adam and Rachel for their solid work coupled with a lovely, cheerful attitude.
Giving a fairly successful talk can be a somewhat tortuous journey for most of us. In this post I’d like to share some practical tips that you may find useful if the idea of appearing on the stage of a public event has crossed your mind. Anyone can do it, let’s see how.
The Psychology of Public Speaking
I’m an introvert and my mental picture of Hell on Earth would be a boozing and schmoozing networking event full of lively tech socialites, closely followed by delivering a talk at a crypto conference during the heydays of the industry in 2021 prior to the nuclear winter that mercifully ended that bubble in 2022.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with crowds. Being cajoled or compelled to cheerfully sell to people or attend a large gathering merely to enjoy myself, triggers fight or flight instincts in me. On the other hand, I’m naturally inclined to mentor others, regardless of the setting.
This is an important distinction. The why of speaking in public completely transforms my relationship with the audience. An oft repeated and misguided recommendation is to picture your audience naked. Rather than that, I prefer to see myself as “the” world leading expert in the frightfully narrow and unique scope of my talk - which gives me the confidence to speak without fear.
On the subject of fear, public speaking is akin to high altitude mountaineering: it is an undertaking that requires knowing your limits and embracing calculated risks - though the price to pay for bungling your presentation is low compared to falling into a crevasse. (fear of embarrassing yourself? your audience will have forgotten about whatever you did in days if not hours!)
Let me share a weakness that can backfire spectacularly without some advance planning:
Problem: I have absolutely terrible memory for texts. Rote learning has never worked well for me. My worst ever experience as a speaker was back in 2007 when the startup I co-founded, Peerant (a peer-to-peer contact center platform) was selected as a finalist of the O’Reilly ETel Launchpad event in Silicon Valley. I was asked to demo a complex on-screen interaction with a carefully crafted text to be recited in sync with a video recording. As I stepped on the podium, I instantly forgot every single word I had to say! I must have looked like a reindeer caught in the headlights of a Volvo truck and I fumbled horribly all my delivery.
Solution: these days, I carefully prepare my content doing extensive research over a long period of time, letting knowledge slowly get embedded into my brain. I use visual cues in my slides as a memory palace of sorts that never fails to trigger an immediate recall of the information I need to share verbally. Additionally, I rehearse my delivery aloud, to plot a seamless arc for my story. The more naturally the words flow, the less likely I am to forget an important part of my narrative.
Dos
What worked well for me? Let’s review a few important practices:
Smart: as opposed to my Astricon 2008 presentation which I wrote reclusively in my hotel room while the conference was taking place, I started researching my CTO Craft Con talk 2 months ahead of time. I published the first part of the content “A lifetime in software and nothing to say?” on Sep. 17th and followed with “Beating the Odds and Succeeding as a Startup” on Oct. 29th. Smarter: it was still too little too late - I had to cancel my trip to Scotland over the school break to complete my investigation and put together the first few slides. Ideally, I should have wrapped up my research 2 weeks prior to the event, setting up an arbitrary deadline to motivate myself to get things done.
Smart: I played with Dall-E 3 and Google Slides to produce some visual content to spruce up my Substack posts. Doing this, I realised that my slides looked quite amateurish… and that was being charitable! The post from Shruti Kapoor “How to Deliver Powerful Tech Conference Talks” saved the day. In particular, her recommendation to use Envato for digital assets like photos and icons was a game changer. In the end, only a handful of visuals were produced with Dall-E 3.
Smart: if you don’t go to many tech conferences, you’re probably accustomed to the uninspiring slide decks of your company all hands meetings, or worse, what vendors and consultants show you. Acknowledging my ignorance of “what good looks like” in that arena, I went on a Google quest for remarkable decks. My main lesson learned was the use of all caps text and big fonts as in the talks of Zach Holman and Addy Osmani. Smarter: a LinkedIn post from Jurgen Appelo sharing the outstanding audience feedback from a recent keynote session encouraged me to keep the bar high, despite the considerable content generation effort involved.
Don’ts
Not everything went smoothly. Here’s a recap of anti-patterns to avoid:
Problem: I stupidly put pressure on myself by organically creating a narrative requiring 42 slides that had to be covered in less than 30 minutes. Such an Everest of content left no room for any delays and forced me to rehearse half a dozen times until I found the right pace and voiceover script. Solution: next time I will use a more methodical, top down approach, lining up no more than one slide per minute and ruthlessly prioritising essential content for those slides.
Problem: I dedicated the first half of my slide deck to establish the theoretical foundation for the causal factors of success and failure of startups. As far as narratives go, a benefit was that the audience would be familiar and care “why” a framework is needed to improve the odds of success for startups. The downside was a slow start and less time spent on the framework (core content) itself in the second half of the deck. Solution: in retrospect, I should have followed a three-act structure and spent no more than 25% of my time setting up the scene.
Problem: unbelievably I realised 1 week prior to the conference that its main theme was “Culture and the CTO” - yet less than 15% of my content was devoted to matters related to company culture! Luckily the audience didn’t seem to mind. Solution: this is a lesson for future talks - I need to expand my horizon and consider the focus of the entire event to ensure I meet the expectations of the audience with my content.
Aftermath
Considering the massive effort involving more than 100 hours of work that went into creating the content of my talk, the impact while positive feels a little on the meagre side:
Ten more subscribers to my blog, the Naked Manager, which I promoted on the last slide of my talk.
Less than 100 views and zero stars for my deck that I uploaded to SpeakerDeck.
One job application, albeit for quite a strategic position at Sylvera.
Frankly, I had no preconceived idea or measurable goal when I pursued the organisers of CTO Craft Con to give me a chance to speak. I have learned a lot in the process, made some wonderful memories and hopefully planted a few valuable seeds in the minds of the audience. I would most definitely enjoy going back on stage in the future.
For now, I’m left with the hilarious comment made at the end of my talk, suggesting that I may be Brian Armstrong’s (Coinbase CEO), doppelgänger! Is there some truth to it? You’ll be the judge…
