TWHS#070: Conference Speaking: 3 Good, 3 Bad, 3 Gotchas
Mar 18, 2025
Speaking at conferences is a great way to help people, build your reputation and push yourself out of your comfort zone.
I spent 2 days at Tech Show London last week and listened to countless sessions. I saw bad mistakes, amazing deliveries and some real gotchas. Here's some real tips from what I saw with my very own eyes last week.
3 Good
1. Be Brave And Do It
Meri Williams was honest and said how petrified they were to get on the stage. But you know what, Meri did it anyway. And it was a great session. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Put yourself out there. Speak at events. Help others and build your reputation.
2. Use Stories
Etay Meor presented "AI Agents - The Next Target For Threat Actors". It was awesome. Why? There was loads of content on how AI can be hacked. And every vulnerability was brought alive by a great story. The story made you want to understand the detail of every hack, and was easy to remember.
A great reminder that stories work brilliantly in deeply technical presentations.
3. Tell Us Why
James Free presented "Cracking the Code: Are We Getting Digital Right". Hint, we're not! James talked through how many digital projects were failing and why they were failing. Bringing the why to life was so important. So often we jump to solution straight away, but taking time to understand the why helped craft a very different solution.
3 Bad
1. Wordy Slides
Slides are there to amplify your message. They are not your notes. Many speakers need to learn that lesson. There were slides too small to read, even from the second row. There were slides that presenters just read. There were slides that didn't match the narrative.
Slides should amplify, not distract. This was one of the most common problems I saw.
2. Too Much Content
Golden rule. You cannot overrun at a conference. You won't get asked back. Lots of speakers had to skip slides, rush their last points and make a hurried finish. Why? They had too much content.
It's an easy fix. A timed practice. Practice your session with a stopwatch out. If you go over, prioritise and rip content out. Less is more. It's better to deliver a few points brilliantly than many points terribly.
3. The Long Corporate Intro
Speakers started off talking about themselves, their company, their products. But they took ages! We were half-way through the session before they got to anything valuable for us the audience. By then I was bored and didn't want to listen.
Quickly hit the audience between the eyes with something interesting and valuable . Hook them in. The "About Us" can come later when they know you have something valuable to say.
3 Gotchas
1. No Screen For Your Notes
This has happened to me at a few conferences and it happened at Tech Show London. There was no screen in front of me for speaker notes. I saw the face fall like a lead balloon for one poor speaker as she found out she couldn't use digital notes.
Don't assume you can use Powerpoint Presenter view. It's great if you can. But you need a backup. Either create some cue cards with your notes on, or know the content so well you don't need notes.
2. No Dongles
I saw a couple of problems where the most recent speaker's slides had not made it to the stage PC. Two quick solutions were available. Either copy the deck across on a USB drive or connect your laptop to the main display.
However, the speakers didn't have any dongles and the laptops were USB-C only. The session had to be delayed whilst everything was sorted. I saw this happen a couple of times, both of them Mac users. Make sure you take your dongles so you can connect to the stage setup. In my experience they're normally PC setups.
3. Deliver What You Said
A few people didn't deliver what their session title said. There is nothing more disappointing than going to a session with great expectations, only to find the delivery doesn't match.
As a speaker it's tough because you have to submit your title months in advance. But you need to nail your brief. If you promised something, that’s what you need to deliver.
Well there we go. Hope this helps. Nine tips from my observations last week.
Cheers
Ben
