The Shy Presenter: braindumping an introvert’s guide to public speaking

Posted on February 26th, 2010 by Sacha Chua

Why speak

You’ll learn even more about your topic
You’ll meet lots of people without having to start the conversation
You can make a bigger difference

Challenges

Don’t know what to share
Don’t know how to share it
Don’t know whom to share it with
Anxious about reception

Typical approach (scary!)

Practice with friend or mirror
Join Toastmasters and other speaking groups to work on confidence and delivery
Typical advice doesn’t help you figure out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and how to get up there

Here’s another way

Write (journal or blog) until you figure out what other people ask you for help about or something that can save other people time
Test your material by writing a blog post.
Share a lot of blog posts so that there are plenty of opportunities.
When you see that there’s interest, test your topic again by making a short slide deck. Share this on Slideshare or some other presentation site. Keep your presentation short and simple. Less to remember, less to forget.
Share lots of those and see which take off.
Based on interest, decide which ones you want to turn into a webinar. Webinars are a good way to start because you can refer to your notes and not worry too much about body language.
Propose your webinar to a virtual conference or webinar series organizer.
If accepted, revise your slides, rehearse your ideas, and go for it!

Why this works

You’ve already done the hard work of thinking through your topic, checking for interest / sense, and preparing your slides.

You don’t have to worry about people not being interested or people not finding value in your work because you’ve tested the topics beforehand.

You can connect with a friendly audience before and after your talk.

Next steps

Make a list of things you know that other people might benefit from.

Write a journal entry or blog post that explains one of those things. Repeat.

More posts about: braindump, introvert, presentation, speaking // 1 Comment »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/7064

Pingback: The Shy Presenter: Why conventional advice on learning public speaking sucks, and how to really get started » sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek

On This Day...

2013: Lists and actions: Learning how to hack my way around the impostor syndrome — Since even highly successful women can struggle with the impostor syndrome (research), it’s worth figuring out how to hack your [...]
2011: Get More Value from Blogging, part III: Sharing Makes the Blog Go ‘Round — Paul Gillin invited me to do a tweetchat on the professional and personal value of blogging on March 3, 2011 [...]
2011: Weekly review: Week ending February 25, 2011 — From last week’s plans Work [X] Sketch ITSC keynote by David Zach [X] Give ITSC keynote on [...]
2009: Your subconscious is your friend — What do you dream about? I often have vivid dreams about upcoming important events. If I have a presentation the next [...]
2008: Headless chicken impression — Today is not my day. As it turns out, my presentation on “Blogging Your Way Out of a Job… and Into [...]
2008: You have received a painting from Sacha —
2007: Nightmares — I’m still a little sore from krav maga last Sunday. I don’t think it’s just the strain, although I’ll stretch more [...]
2007: Walking science museum — Wayne’s daughter was with him last week, and I enjoyed spending time with both of them. It was a great way [...]
2007: Krav maga — One of the things my mom occasionally reminds me about is the need for self-defense classes. Yes, even in Toronto. Not [...]
2007: Adhesion — I either can’t or don’t want to move. I’m not inclined to figure out which right now. I think chores will [...]
2007: Tango — I haven’t danced tango in a year. Hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until today, when I decided to [...]
2006: Three hours delay and that’s okay — The US Airways commuter flight to Toronto is over three hours delayed. That’s okay, because you can just _hear_ the smile [...]
2006: Happy birthday to Clair! — I owe my exciting research opportunities to many people, not the least of whom is a librarian friend of mine [...]
2005: Also saw Diane today! — Yay yay yay yay! Missed her greatly. She beat Dominique at thumb-wrestling, so he still doesn’t have her complete approval… On Technorati: [...]
2005: Tons of fun — Clair Ching‘s birthday party was tons of fun. The scavenger hunt in UP was more of a leisurely stroll around famous UP [...]
2004: Umbrella.net: Ad hoc social networks — http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/02/24/umbrellanet_ad_hoc_social_networks.php E-Mail from Jason Banico
2004: Brilliant idea! — Global planner IDs should be hyperlinks in their own right. They are of the form plan://id-number or plan://id-number/page,page,page,page But then how do we [...]
2004: Thoughts on planner-notes — Actually, subcategories are already handled by separate plan pages, so I don’t need subtopics any more. I would, however, like to [...]
2004: Nifty ideas for PlannerMode — - A list of all the notes related to a BBDB contact. I’d have to parse out all the bbdb links, [...]
2004: Oooh, Emacs ubercoder status — sachac: want to take over emacs-wiki? sachac: damien handed it off to somebody else, but I think you would [...]
2004: ERC bot enhancements — I should add a hook that parses channel messages, extracts keywords, runs them through my database and populates a circular queue [...]
2004: Linux Installfest at Mapua IT Center — When: March 4 to 5 (9 am to 6 pm) Where: Ground floor, East Wing Hallway, Mapua IT Center Building333 Sen. Gil Puyat [...]
2004: Linked list lecture postponed to Tuesday, March 2 — I have CS161 finals for seniors from 1:30 to 3:30 today, so please use class time to work on milestone 2. This [...]
2003: http://www.visibleworkings.com/archeology/ — OOPSLA 2001 Workshop Software Archeology: Understanding Large Systems How do you come to grips with 1,000,000 lines of code right away? Programmers are [...]
2003: sir olpoc — “I prefer the slow torture method of project defense.” “I deserve this! I don’t care if students see me.”
2003: th151 theses — Thesis statements for Theology exam: A complete, mature faith grows out of and depends on doctrine, morals and worship, drawing from [...]
2003: fr. david 3381 —
2003: http://www.purl.org/net/sacha —
2003: polsci finals — I really, really hope I passed. flashcard.el is nice. Turns out I missed one handout (oops!) and some of those questions [...]

sacha chua living an awesome life