So....This is your 1st Tech Conference : #SpeakerEdition

To close out this series, after covering the attendee and volunteer editions, we land on the one that gets people the most nervous reactions to emails as technologist( developer, engineer, product manager, etc): speaking as in to teach.

(insert a “why did I sign up for this” GIF here)

So my take is kinda biased as I was blackmailed into speaking by a bunch delinquents. Getting that CFP acceptance email is a rush — right up until you remember it means a room full of people is going to look at you and expect you to know things out loud. First time speaking at a tech conference is exciting and nerve-wracking in roughly equal measure, and there’s a lot more to “success” than just getting through your slides. Here’s what I’d tell a first-time speaker to think about, before you ever step on stage.

Know Your Audience

Before you write a single slide, find out who’s actually going to be in the room. Is this a beginner-heavy crowd, or a room full of people who’ve been writing code longer than you’ve been alive? Look at the conference’s past programming, the track your talk is in, and the kind of company that usually sponsors it — all of that tells you something about who shows up. A talk that resonates isn’t the one with the most information crammed in, it’s the one that meets people where they actually are.

Practice Your Presentation

Not “read through it in your head on the drive over” practice. Actual, out-loud, in-front-of-a-mirror-or-a-very-patient-friend practice. Run it enough times that you know where the natural pauses are, where you tend to ramble, and where the timing gets tight. Rehearsing isn’t about memorizing every word — it’s about finding the rough edges before an audience finds them for you.

Use Visual Aids

Slides, demos, videos — whatever fits your content — should be doing work, not just sitting there looking pretty. Good visuals reinforce what you’re saying instead of repeating it word-for-word (nobody wants a slide read to them). If you’re going to demo live code, have a recorded backup ready. Conference wifi has ended more talks than bad jokes have.

Engage Your Audience

A presentation is not a monologue you happen to be delivering in the same room as other humans. Ask questions, even rhetorical ones. Leave room for a show of hands. Tell the story of the bug that ruined your Tuesday. People remember how a talk made them feel a lot longer than they remember the bullet points, so give them something to feel — recognition, curiosity, the occasional laugh.

Be Prepared For Q&A

Sit down beforehand and actually write out the questions you’re dreading. Then answer them. Chances are good someone in the audience is going to ask exactly that thing, and you’ll be glad you already know what you’re going to say. It’s fine not to have every answer — “I don’t know, but here’s how I’d find out” is a completely respectable response and a much better look than freezing.

Network With Other Speakers

The speaker room (or speaker dinner, or that one hallway everyone somehow ends up in) is one of the highest-value spaces at the whole event. Other speakers are often further along the path you’re just starting, and most of them are happy to talk shop, swap conference notes, or just commiserate about AV setups. Don’t spend the whole event holed up prepping — some of the best career conversations happen over a bad cup of conference coffee.

Promote Your Session

Nobody is going to discover your talk by accident. Post about it, tag the conference, share your abstract, and give people a reason to pick your room over the other four happening at the same time. This isn’t about ego — it’s about making sure the people who’d actually benefit from your talk know it exists in the first place.

Know The Logistics

Find out the room setup, the AV situation, whether you need to bring your own adapter (bring your own adapter), and how long you actually have once you account for Q&A. Show up early enough to test your slides on the actual screen you’ll be using — colors, fonts, and clicker behavior all have a way of surprising you at the worst possible moment. Reducing the number of unknowns on the day of is the cheapest confidence boost available to you.

Manage Your Nerves

It’s normal for your heart rate to have opinions about what you’re doing. Breathing exercises, a walk beforehand, a playlist that gets you in the right headspace — whatever works, use it. Get sleep the night before if you can. Eat something. The nerves don’t fully go away (mine haven’t), but you can absolutely get to a place where they’re fuel instead of friction.

Collect Feedback

However it comes in — a survey, a Slack DM, someone catching you in the hallway to tell you what landed and what didn’t — take it seriously. Every talk you give makes the next one better, but only if you actually go back and look at what people told you. Feedback isn’t a performance review, it’s raw material for revision two.

General Takeaways

Know your audience, rehearse until it’s second nature, let your visuals earn their spot on screen, talk with your audience instead of at them, prepare for the questions you’re dreading, network with the other speakers, promote the session nobody knows about yet, nail down the logistics ahead of time, manage the nerves instead of pretending they’re not there, and actually use the feedback you collect. Put all of that together and you’ve got a talk worth remembering — for you and for the room.

That closes out the “So…This Is Your 1st Tech Conference” series — attendee, volunteer, and now speaker. Whichever seat you’re in next time, I hope it helps.

(insert closing GIF here — something that says “you got this”)

Who Am I (Currently)

Nerando is a Frontend Software Engineer at Hygiena, a life sciences SaaS company, and the founder of TechTile LLC, a boutique development studio. When he’s not deep in Vue and TypeScript, he’s speaking at conferences like DevNexus, Connect.Tech, and Nebraska.Code(), or writing about the process at developingdvlpr.com. Progress over perfection.