If you’re planning on attending this year and you’re deep in the tech side of things – please take a moment and consider presenting. This might be a stretch for a lot of people but consider this… You’ll get more people to talk to you after your topic then ever. And people may be coming to you for advice if they don’t already.
Speaking at BarCamp isn’t really public speaking. It’s talking. Put it this way, what subjects are you most passionate about in technology or new media? What subjects do you know so well that you can discuss them at length with others? It can be as straightforward as using UIAlertView or you can discuss API changes to Android 2.2 and how they’re affecting your app. Wherever your expertise takes you.
Here’s a quick process to get started…
- What are you passionate about?
- What do you know pretty well and can carry on a conversation about?
- Find a starting point – in the first 10 seconds tell people exactly why they should be listening.
- Craft an ending – summarize what you covered and why it’s important.
- Now fill in the middle.
The middle can get a little tricky. If you’re on an advanced subject you’ll have to assume that your audience has a good background in the overall area. If it’s introductory you’ll need to assume that people have ‘heard’ about what you’re discussing and work up from there. You’re going to need to pick which audience you want to attend. Once you’ve got the middle do a test walk through and time yourself. Shoot for thirty minutes – if you’ve got a subject you’re passionate about you’ll probably end up sixty minutes worth of material. Also keep in mind that if this is your first time talking in front of a group then you’ll speak twice as fast as usual. That’s normal, don’t worry about keeping yourself composed as you’ve got enough to focus on. Make your modifications and then walk through it again.
I’d recommend that you take brief notes for your talk, just a sequential list of topics you want to cover, nothing too detailed. Don’t try to memorize your talk, just put the topics on a piece of paper. If you want to use 3″ x 5″ cards to make notes on, make sure you number them, because if you ever drop them…
Do NOT say you’re nervous or a bad presenter, or that this is your first time speaking publicly. Just don’t do it. If any of these things are actually true the BarCamp audience will ignore it as long as you’ve stuck to bullet #1. As long as you’ve met that one requirement then the audience will be on YOUR side. And definitely don’t wait until the last two or three days to do this, you’ll know you’re not prepared and you’ll bail out.
If you want, you can reach me at @sean_davis, I’m more than willing to help you get started. The more presenters we’ve got with great information (not necessarily great presentations) the better the BarCamp experience is.
