Learnings from first public talk

Public speaking is great. It gives you a stage to present your views and an audience to share your learnings with. A discussion with like minded people, who work in similiar field as you is enlightening. I presented my first talk at ReactBangalore on 8th February, 2020. The topic was Current State of JavaScript.

Do take care of following if you are going to present a talk for first time.

Be prepared

Do I even need to mention it? Your audience is smart. Perhaps smarter than you. You will be perceived as someone who is sound with the domain. Be ready for questions. Plus you will be more confident if you prepare well.

Things obvious for you, may not be for others

I really struggled to come up with a topic. Whenever I narrowed down to a topic, I used to feel everyone would be aware of this. This is soo easy. This is soo obvious. However reality is different. Your audience will be a varied. If you are presenting a talk on Frontend Development, perhaps there will be folks who are backend developers. Make sure after your topic people learn something new, in the process you would too.

Be entertaining

Try to be engaging. People do get bored off, no matter how informative your talk is. Make sure to be interactive, ask regular questions and be funny. Include GIFs, emojis to express. A picture is of thousand words, a GIF is million. That giggle and soft claps from your audience would defintely bind you to the talk and to the audience.

Short slides

I have never been a fan of slides myself. Have 3-4 points per slide. If one is reading points from the slides, you ll never be able to engage and maintain eye contact with your audience. Avoid reading from slides. Have speaker notes, that too for reference.

Give your best

It is actually very overwhelming to have an audience gazing you and listening. Make the best of the time. Enjoy!