Helpful Talk Tips by Paul Ford

By no means do I consider myself a public speaker. However, in the limited experience I have speaking to groups, these tips seem relevant to public speaking.

First: do you ever wonder why most talks begin with a joke or story? Here’s why:

I’m finding that it’s very important to just get up there and talk a little bit, make some dumb jokes, let people get used to you existing.

Second: it’s generally a good idea to get rid of slides and notes and just have statements that you can respond to, then it feels conversational as opposed to dictated:

I've thrown away most of the slides with bullets, and I’ve thrown away all of my slide notes. Notes are terrible and half the time you can’t see them anyway. Then, what I try to do is make every slide a little statement, and respond to it...By throwing together statistics and pictures and quotes, it looks like I’m giving a talk, but what’s really happening is that I’m having a conversation with myself. The slides are saying things to me and I’m responding.