BenP (00:30)
Hi folks and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. I am really excited about today's episode. Today, we're gonna peek behind the curtain. We're going backstage to see how those massive, big tech keynotes are created. We're gonna learn how to put together and then see what lessons we can learn to raise our game in our own settings. Now, to share his pearls of wisdom with us, we have...
Principal Technical Keynote Lead from Amazon Web Services. If you follow the AWS events, you'll have seen his work. So please welcome to the show Martin Beebe. Martin, it is brilliant to have you with us.
Martin Beeby (01:13)
Thank you very much. It's great to see you again, Ben. We go back a long way in terms of our work careers. So it's great to be finally joining you on your podcast, which I think is brilliant, by the way, just to let you know. I've been watching back the episodes and it's really interesting to see the human skills involved in technology. And I think what we're going to be talking about today is a little bit about that, the human skills of communication in Keynote, but also in smaller talks.
BenP (01:36)
Yeah, well flattery of course will get you everywhere Martin, so thank you for that. Now for people that don't know you, could you give us a bit about your background, little bit on your career and what it is that you actually do now?
Martin Beeby (01:48)
Well, currently I write keynotes. So I write keynotes for a big technology company, Amazon Web Services. But my career spans 20 odd years. I started off as a software developer, so I'm relatively technical. I...
I then joined Microsoft. of started working on POCs and proof of concept work at Microsoft. And then so happened upon this idea that you could become an evangelist, which is like talk about technology on stages. So I started talking about technology on stages to camera. I wrote about it. I worked at Microsoft for about seven years doing that, kind of getting better and better. I was terrible when I first started. I couldn't speak on stage. I was incredibly nervous. I was a poor writer.
I'm dyslexic. I've got everything, everything we could go wrong in terms of my setup for this career.
BenP (02:40)
Why?
Martin Beeby (02:41)
that it's like sort of laid out. then I somehow, I gradually got better and better at it. Part of that's just working at it. And then I became a director of evangelism at Oracle for a short period of time. then about another six, seven years ago, I joined AWS where I became a principal developer advocate, where again, I would be on stage myself speaking to audiences. And over that career, I must've done upwards of 500 events and spoke at 500 sort of conferences.
thousands of customers, done thousands of customer briefings, written hundreds of blogs.
And then a few years back, about three years back, I kind of got into this world of writing for other people. So I'm still very much a public speaker and I kind of enjoy that aspect of it, but I certainly went behind the scenes and started kind of ghostwriting for other people. So doing the research for other people, looking at topics, looking at technology, synthesizing ideas, helping keynote presenters kind of be more impactful, be more technically correct.
And yeah, so that's kind what I've been doing now for three nearly four years. I think maybe actually four years this month.
I've lots of keynotes for lots of different executives at AWS, some of our most senior executives. And it's generally in the realm of if they're talking technically. So I'm not really writing business strategy keynotes. I'm writing keynotes where there is a technical element. So they need to go deep on something or they need to talk about machine learning or generative AI, or they need to speak about serverless compute or event -driven architecture or...
distributed databases or something which is cloud related, I'd be the person which would work with them to kind of deepen the technical stories in their keynotes. And the fact is, most AWS keynotes are that. Most AWS keynotes are technical keynotes. We don't do very much, very high level business. Even the CEO keynotes at our company are very technical in their nature, so they require a technical keynote writer.
BenP (04:52)
Yeah, no, I love it. And I love what you said right at the beginning actually that you started off you had all the odds stacked against you and yet you're still able to really thrive at this because you know I was just chatting to a guy the other day and he's like yeah, but this is a natural gift. It's not something you can learn. I'm like I completely disagree. You can raise your game so much and so it's lovely to hear somebody in a role like yours telling us that.
Martin Beeby (05:16)
Yeah, I mean, background.
I'm from a council estate in Corby. It's a small little town which doesn't have a very big tech scene. And I remember distinctly when I went to a much better school in my sixth form, being 16 years old and being asked to speak in front of the class. And I was petrified of speaking in front of the class. I was petrified in reading aloud. I was petrified in... And I remember holding a piece of paper and my hand shaking. And there was a guy, which I didn't really like very much, who made fun of it. I could see him making fun of it. And I was petrified.
And at that moment I was like, I can never do that again. I can't ever speak in front of people. And I didn't until university, then again forced into it, but a much better experience where I actually enjoyed it. People said that was good, probably wasn't. And then what I discovered is, you know, the more you work at it, the better and better you get. And then I actually made it like a passion. It's something I genuinely wanted to do. And I was very much into music as well and getting up on stage and trying to...
BenP (06:02)
Ha ha ha.
Martin Beeby (06:17)
kind of convey something and be vulnerable on stage became a little bit of a thrill for me. And so I started really enjoying it. And now I really enjoy it. I like throwing myself into really dangerous situations or things that where things go wrong or unexpected things happen and happen. kind of, I thrive off of that excitement. So it's weird.
BenP (06:38)
Yeah, it's almost like a geek adrenaline sports like extreme sports telly, you know instead of surfing or you know BMX in or whatever like that It's getting on stage in front of a big it's a similar sort of adrenaline rush
Martin Beeby (06:50)
Yeah, I'm as nervous now on stage as I was back then as a 16 year old. I genuinely inside, it's the same feeling. I am petrified, but you would never guess it.
BenP (06:52)
You
Martin Beeby (07:01)
when you watch me on stage, I would hope nowadays. I look incredibly confident, but it's all an act and confidence is all an act. And so, yeah, if you're thinking I can't speak or you probably can, it's probably just that you need to try. The difference will be whether or not you will try. Like some people just won't. And so that's the reason why good speakers get ahead is that they just do it a lot.
BenP (07:03)
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (07:24)
And I think anyway, it's very rare that you find someone which is genuinely gifted at public speaking without any level of background. It's always to do with, know, they've either been in, some of them might come to work and they're really great speakers, but they probably were in things like debate clubs, or they maybe were the class clown and they were good at standing up and telling jokes. There'll be something about their history which led them to that moment, gave them that experience. And if you never try to get that experience, then you'll never be good at it. But yeah.
BenP (07:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, fascinated. Now, let's start to peek behind the curtain because I have seen that many big, pizzazzy keynotes. And you mentioned in your career, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Apple fame for theirs as well. All the big techs will have their big keynotes at their big conferences.
And I'm sure lots of people that are listening have either been there in the crowd of hundreds and thousands or watched it online or seen the stuff on YouTube and that kind of stuff. So, how does it work? Tell me, I'm rubbing my hands with glee here. What's the reality of a big tech exec getting on stage? What's happened before? And how does it all work?
Martin Beeby (08:43)
I mean, what's happened before is preparation generally. In almost every keynote I've ever been involved in from Microsoft all the way through to AWS in my current role, months and months of work.
huge budgets, like astronomical production costs. Just the fact, most of these things are in places like Las Vegas and they sell out, you buy huge hotels and I think at AWS we span five different hotels for a whole week. It's millions and millions of dollars which are spent on these things. The production costs, again, millions of dollars.
They are big, huge monsters of events, incredibly complex things. The keynote aspect of it is a smaller little working unit. At Amazon, tend not to have, we have this idea of two pizza teams. So a team should be no bigger than can be fed by two pizzas. So that generally caps out between six and eight people. So your average keynote probably has that sort of V team or a surrounding it. And there'll be a lead like me.
and my job in putting that keynote on is working with an executive or a VP or the CEO of a company and getting them prepared and getting them on stage. Now don't actually work with a CEO at AWS but we work with lots of different other people. There's people in my team which do work with a CEO but we kind of...
Every different VP and every different executive at AWS has a different kind of requirement. Some people do require you to write the entire script for them and they'll review it and they'll edit it. Some of them want you to help research. Some of them want you to help you talk to people which are subject matter experts.
and then distill it and give it to them so they can synthesize it and they can present it. But then once you've got all your ideas created, there's design teams that we have to engage because I'm pretty good at PowerPoint. I'm relatively good at design, but I am not.
design capable of delivering a keynote speech. I, you know, I've had to, we have to engage designers, we have to engage 3D modelers because there's elements of 3D animation in lots of our keynotes nowadays. We have audio designers, musicians, we have all the things that you see on stage happen because somewhere someone like me wrote it down on a notepad and made it happen.
We have very complicated video shoots nowadays as well. And so when I'm saying all these things, what you also recognize is we have a very long lead time because to film a video, takes at least three months, like from initial conception to storyboarding to idea. And any of the big visual moments.
They take a ton of meetings and a ton of agreements. If you want to bring a car out on stage or a lorry on stage, which we've done in both in AWS keynotes, you have to make sure the stage is reinforced. You have to make sure that the labor laws allow that to happen, the security which is adequate. There's tons of things which go on in the production of a keynote that you'd never imagine. And we try and give this illusion that all these things just came together.
BenP (12:04)
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (12:09)
and wow, this hour is amazing, but they just came together with this in last week. But the reality is, keynotes probably take about six months. And that's true of most companies, if you're putting on a sort of 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 person keynote.
it's going to take months and months and months of work and it takes a literal village of people to kind of work on it in its completeness. But in my world, yeah, I work with a select number of people doing very specific things over a long period of time and we hopefully deliver a really good, engaging hour, hour and a half keynote which people leave thinking, wow, that was pretty cool or hopefully that's what they leave with.
BenP (12:50)
Yeah, energized, educated, informed, and ready to do something next with the product, or try out this new tech or whatever it might be.
Martin Beeby (12:57)
Yeah.
And whilst all those things are massive and the scale is massive in a keynote, the fundamentals of putting on a good show don't change for a keynote versus a small 50 person talk or a 10 person talk or a standup or a video call or whatever you present. There's certain rules, there's certain things as someone which is developing a talk.
that you should abide by. And there's certain things I always tell people that are joining our team. And when I'm trying to hire people onto our team, looking to build some of those experiences up. I want people which have been and spoken on stage a little bit. I want people which can write a little bit. But it's because you might speak in front of 100 people, but there's a lot of similarity between that, more than you might imagine between doing that and speaking in front of 10 ,000 people.
BenP (13:58)
What's the difference between, so let's say I've got an audience of 100, I still can't see individual faces, or I can, but it's a big group, versus 5 ,000, one of those massive rooms in Vegas you were talking about. What's the main difference?
Martin Beeby (14:17)
Well, the biggest difference will be fear immediately. So you'll be scared.
BenP (14:20)
Okay. Okay.
Martin Beeby (14:23)
Almost if you've never done a 10 ,000 person talk or a 5 ,000, you'll be scared being on that stage. It's scary. It's not natural to be in front of that many people. It's very unnatural to have them on the edge of your seat. But the reality of it, it's secretly easier. If you can get over that initial fear, there's a few advantages of being on a big stage. One is no one's going to interrupt you. Like you can pause.
Like if I pause now, you're naturally kind of thinking, well, I should jump in and fill the void of space. But like I should chat because in a conversation or in a small group of people, people do that. They fill in and they jump in. So they interrupt you. They interrupt your flow or they awkwardly ask a question which takes you somewhere else.
On a keynote stage, that doesn't happen. You can pause for a very long time and you just look cool if you can do that. If you've got the gravitas to pull that off, you look like someone which is just gonna sip some water and make 10 ,000 people wait. That's a power move. So there's cool things about being, if you're able to get over the initial fear of it.
BenP (15:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Martin Beeby (15:34)
then it's great. The other thing, when you're speaking in front of a big room of people, a big auditorium, you can't really see that many people. I generally, when I'm speaking, I'm focusing on one or two people. I pick people in different parts of the audience and I look at those people.
or in their general direction. When I was starting, I was quite scared of looking directly at people. And so what I used to do is I'd pick spots at the back of the room. And what I realized is that no one would realize that I wasn't looking at them. And you'd often get people saying to you, you were looking at me all the way through and I wasn't, I was looking over their head, but it looks like you're looking at them. So I used to pick three spots and would look across. And so when you're doing that sort of thing, you don't really notice the number of people and it very quickly evaporates from your mind that there's that many people.
BenP (16:20)
And also often you've got then the bright lights right in your face. So they take out a load of your vision. So it's sort of you get up there, you've got these lights in your face, your instinct is to squint and you're going, I don't wanna squint, but there's just a few faces and lots of lights at you.
Martin Beeby (16:35)
Yeah, it's weird. You can't remember the audience. thing I try not sometimes don't tell people, I used to say to people, don't worry about it. You won't be able to see the audience because the lights will obscure it. I stopped doing that for one reason is because in rehearsal, often the house lights are up and you've told someone that they won't be able to see the audience and they go up there and they see the house lights are up and they'll be like, I can see everyone. He lied to me.
BenP (16:51)
Right.
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (17:01)
Yeah, when the house lights are down and the lights are on you, you can't really see people. yeah, I would say it's much more freeing to be on a big stage than it is on small. It's much harder when you're in a small room, people interrupting, asking questions, sometimes heckling you. That's why stand up comedians when they do stadiums don't get as many heckles as they do when they're working 10 people in a pub.
because there's not that interruption. And also, have you ever got that feeling when you go into a small room and you start presenting and you think, this is awkward that I'm presenting. I feel like I should be having a conversation. Being on a big stage gives you the right to put on a show. And so you don't feel embarrassed by the fact that this is a big production. so you can be over the top. You can be bigger.
BenP (17:51)
Yeah. Yeah.
Martin Beeby (17:53)
and feel less embarrassed about it. So I think there's a huge advantage to it. But the skill of speaking, certainly between a hundred people and 10 ,000, the skill is the same. Being able to tell stories, being able to communicate, being able to construct a story, all of that is exactly the same. It's just your emotions that might be different.
BenP (18:16)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's funny. I've just done I've just released a new pro a new course actually that I big stage speaker that customers were asking me for for exactly like that and we hire a theater and we practice in a theater and the reason that we do that is because there's lots of little things that are gonna Throw you off your game like suddenly you got a mic on you know One of those little ones that you might have seen in the West End or Britney Spears or Beyonce You've got a mic on like that suddenly they announce your name and then there's like the white stripes are playing as you walk onto the stage, you know, and you
walk out and then there's all these lights in your eyes and you're like going you know well this wasn't what I was imagining you know and actually getting a bit of experience to help you master that theatre is a really powerful thing but time is marching on so we talked about the differences what are the things then that are the same you know so what the sort of skills that whether you're speaking at a user group
Martin Beeby (18:53)
Yeah.
BenP (19:12)
You know in an evening somewhere or you're at a customer meeting. What are those sorts of skills that are the same?
Martin Beeby (19:19)
Well, at Amazon we have a term for all our business, not just keynotes, about working back from customers. And this idea is you listen to customers and you work back and build things that they want. And that is true of keynote and speech writing. Work back from your audience, your audience, your customers effectively, right? They're the ones enjoying this hour, hopefully, of you speaking or however long it's going to be.
BenP (19:25)
Okay. Okay.
Martin Beeby (19:44)
So it's really important to try and understand what their expectations are of you. What are they coming to your event for? And a lot of people start from, am gonna tell them? Especially if you've got a product you really wanna talk about or you've got an idea, it's like, right, I'm gonna tell them this, I'm gonna tell them that, I'm giving a call to action, right?
But the reality is that, what do they want to hear? Like if they see your abstract in your title, what are they expecting to learn from you? And there's really not a great way of figuring that out. Unless you're very, very empathetic and you can put yourself in their shoes, it's very difficult to actually to figure that out, what they want, what their motivations are, why are they coming to listen to you, what do they want to hear? What I tend to do...
BenP (20:08)
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (20:34)
is because it's hard to put yourself in their shoes, you want to try and find as many ways as possible to speak to your audience before your event. If it's a user group, for example, you want to speak to the user group leader for sure about what the expectation of the audience is. But they're not always the greatest people to tell you because they're also trying to soft sell you to come speak at the event. I will often ask a user group if I'm asked to meet a user group or a meetup like.
BenP (20:55)
Yeah, yeah.
Martin Beeby (21:02)
Can you put me in contact with any of your regulars or people which come along regularly? Or what a trick I used to use as an evangelist is I used to go to, I used to go onto Twitter and LinkedIn and I'd search the hashtag for the, you know, the event and I would say, okay.
these people go regularly, like they talk about it regularly on Twitter and stuff, and I just DM them and say, hey, I'm gonna be speaking at your event. Like, this is the title, this is roughly the abstract. What would you expect to hear from that?
And you'd be surprised, people will respond to you and tell you. The other thing is you can just have a little browse on their social media history and see what other things they were tweeting when they were at that event and what they were sort of saying. And that can lead to really interesting discoveries about what your content should be before you start writing it.
BenP (21:55)
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (21:56)
I'll give you one example of where this was really specific. When I worked at Microsoft, I spoke about Windows Phone. I was going to speak at this user group about phone development or whatever. I picked five people which were regular goers to this event. I'd spoken to a couple on the phone about, literally called them and said, I'm going to be speaking at this event. Would you mind just having a chat for 30 minutes or a few minutes, 15 minutes or whatever?
and what I'm going to be doing. And then there was this one guy, I didn't speak to him directly, but I was looking on his timeline and he said something which was, every Microsoft speaker that I ever see has an Apple stutter. And the Apple stutter is, they want to talk about the innovation in mobile phone development, but they don't want to mention Apple. So just before they say, you know, and in 2007, we were revolutionized the smartphone, the smartphone was revolutionized by...
by Apple and he was like there was this always an Apple stutter, they've always got that thing and I just put that in the back of my mind and as I was writing my talk I thought you know when I do, I do that a little bit.
BenP (22:56)
hahahaha
Martin Beeby (23:05)
So when I'm going to mention Apple, do you know what? I'm going to go all in. I'm going to give them all the credit they deserve for revolutionizing this market. And I'm going to say it bold, and I'm going to say it proud, and I'm going to say it in a really over the top way. So I did, and I wrote it when I was doing it about how Apple revolutionized it. And then I didn't communicate with this guy at all. But a few days later, when I was looking over the feedback for that event, he tweeted, hey, that was the first person from Microsoft I've ever seen without the Apple star.
BenP (23:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just a bit of research before.
Martin Beeby (23:34)
It was like this little, yeah, it's a tight loop. No, that was extreme, but like, pick up on people's, know, people will tell you a lot of things about what they wanna hear and what they wanna know. And if you can get hold of that information about your audience ahead of time, that's gonna develop your keynote in a much better way.
BenP (23:54)
music to me, so know your audience. Right, what else you got?
Martin Beeby (23:57)
Yeah. Well, the second one is I mentioned like we work over six month periods to figure out a keynote. You probably don't always have that time luxury in a smaller event, but you should, whatever amount of time you've got, have a work back schedule. Like have, I am here, I am 10 weeks out from the event. What am I gonna do in week nine, week eight, week seven, week six, week five, four, three.
and split up your work over those times. Because if you're like me and you procrastinate, you will leave it till the last minute. And over time, you will develop this idea that you are better when you leave it till the last minute. You will convince yourself that you are a better speaker if you rush or if you stay up late four nights in a row before the keynote. You will convince yourself that that is your skill. It's not true. The more prepared you are, the better you are.
and you have to chunk up the work over a long period of time. Sorry, Siri just interrupted me there. But yeah, you have to chunk up the work that you're doing over a long period of time. We call that a work back schedule. In big productions, it's really important because you have lots of different workflows. But even if it's just you, even if you've just got a day to do it, what are you going to do in the next hour 10, hour 9, hour 8? What's the things that you're going to do to get you from where you are to where you're going to want to be?
BenP (24:54)
Yeah. No, no, no, that's all right.
Martin Beeby (25:20)
having a schedule is key to developing a keynote.
BenP (25:24)
And it's interesting, had, loads of episodes ago I had a comedian on here, Louise, and she was saying like for comedians when they're prepping it's about a third writing, a third editing, and then a third practising. So in that work back schedule, it's not all I designed my slides, I made my slides for the entire prep time, it's right, I brainstormed it, I wrote it, I edited it, I created some slides, some demos, and then I practised it. And that's how you nail it then on the stage. That needs to go in the work back plan as well.
Martin Beeby (25:53)
Yeah, and what often happens when you write a work back plan, you start going, my God, I've got to start working on this now. Like you realize, if I want to do some deep technical stuff, I need to start doing my research now. I need to start speaking to certain people. I need to set up meetings with those people. They're not going to be available because they're on holiday for a couple of weeks. So you start realizing.
BenP (25:58)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (26:12)
Whereas if you leave it till the last minute, what happens is you can't get in contact with those people or you can't get varied opinions. You'll still make it happen because the keynote or the talk always happens. And that's one of the problems with it as well. You convince yourself because it happened and you worked against all odds and you stayed up late and you, you know, and you really pushed it and you delivered and everyone seemed to like it. You did really well. The fact is like almost always it would be better.
BenP (26:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Martin Beeby (26:41)
if you had yourself more time and you planned it a little bit more. And we lie to ourselves that it's not, like, or that we're special kind of unicorns and that we work better under pressure. But it really isn't true, like, in my experience.
BenP (26:47)
Yeah. Yeah. What's your thoughts on scripts versus, you know, what sort of notes do people using keynotes and what sort of stuff would you advocate?
Martin Beeby (27:04)
What I advocate for, prepare so much that it looks like you've made no preparation. You want the audience to feel like this is coming off the top of your brain. I feel that that's the way that the best keynote speakers are, is that they just thought about this. But the reality behind that is that it's been so well prepared that that's how it comes across.
BenP (27:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
Martin Beeby (27:26)
One of the biggest challenges is if you write a script and then read a script, you look like you're reading a script, you look ridiculous on stage. so lots of people say, I don't want to write a script because I don't want to appear like I'm reading. But yeah. But what that means is that you've kind of only done half what you need to do with a script, which is you want to write a script and then you want to like embed it into you.
BenP (27:43)
An automaton, know, like a robot. Yeah, like.
Martin Beeby (27:55)
to the point where you don't need the script anymore, that you just need bullets in your notes, and then you can deliver it. And you'll deliver it differently, obviously, from the script, but it will be ingrained in you what that slide means, what that flow of the keynote is.
And then when you actually deliver, you're delivering from bullets, bullet points. And when I say bullet points, I mean like three bullets per slide, no more than 10 words a bullet or very, so you can just basically glance down on it, but there's never an opportunity to really read. That's my preferred approach to this. The things that I keep in notes are like mental cues to make sure I hit a point.
BenP (28:25)
yet. Yep.
Yeah I completely agree.
Martin Beeby (28:36)
and any stats that I can't get wrong. In keynote, that's a really important thing. You can say the wrong number and affect stock price. So you have to be very careful about what you do and don't. You've got to prepare the speaker to be accurate. So the note should be a little bit of a support, but not a crutch for the speaker. So.
BenP (28:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Martin Beeby (29:01)
I advocate if you have time, script the entire thing end to end, you'll figure out all the problems with flow, you'll figure out all the, you'll get it really concise and nice. But you know, if you're scripting a 60 minute keynote, my God, that's a lot of words, you know? So it's a lot of, that's a lot of effort. That's month worth of effort scripting an entire keynote for that. So like not everyone has that luxury. So.
BenP (29:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Martin Beeby (29:28)
Script it, bullet it, and if you're gonna, if you're not, really, really, I can't script anything, like just make sure that you script the beginning and the end, because that's the key thing in a keynote or any kind of talk. you're, if someone's asked me to go on stage now, right now, the first thing I'll do is literally write down what am gonna say in the first two minutes? What's my first two, what's 240 words that I'm going to say on on stage now? And if I've got time, I'll write the closing as well.
Because I feel like that grounds me, it makes me not scared when I know exactly what I'm going to say as an opener. And then everything else will just flow naturally.
BenP (30:07)
Yeah, and I agree because the beginning is such a double whammy of hardness, shall we say, because so firstly, you're not in your flow, you know, like you've got all the nerves, the fear, you know, it's like the first kick of the game, as it were. And at the same time, the audience is at their most judgy. They're all going, am I going to listen to this person? Is this a good time for me to check my mobile phone? You know, and that all happens at the beginning. So you need to perform at your best.
and you're most vulnerable. So if you can get that nailed, it sets you up.
Martin Beeby (30:41)
Yeah, someone described it to me once like a flight, like the beginning is your takeoff and it's what everyone judges you on, If you imagine a plane, like if it took off and it was really scary, you would concentrate that entire flight on is this pilot capable of delivering this plane? And then the landing as well, that's the most crucial thing where you have to be really careful about how you land this plane. And that's where the pilot is most engaged.
BenP (30:57)
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (31:06)
In the middle, he probably puts on autopilot. And to some extent, that's what a speaker does as well, is that they get into a flow where they almost forget what they're doing. If you're good at it, that's what you almost forget. You just flow from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. But it's very difficult to do that.
the beginning, like the takeoff, and it's very difficult to do that at the landing. And as you say, know, big stages, lights, lots of people, applause. My heart beats so hard. my breath, my, my breathing goes wrong. I know all of my tales. I know tales, sorry. I know all of the things that I do on stage and I try and...
BenP (31:35)
Like I have to go in.
Martin Beeby (31:47)
But again, whenever I speak on stage, you'll see me, the first thing I do is, hello! Sorry, I shout there, but that is genuinely like a stress release for me. Hello, New York, or hello, London. I do that as a like shout into the void and it grounds me. And that's why I do it, to relieve all that negative energy. yeah, you've got to find your own little ways to get over what your problems are. for me, it's breathing and heart rate when I'm on stage.
BenP (31:51)
Hahaha
Right, let's move on. Any other tips you got?
Martin Beeby (32:20)
Well, if you're scripting it, you want to know how long you're going to take. So you will know how long you take because it's literally you take the number of words and you divide it by the amount of, and you can figure out the minutes that you're going to be on stage speaking. So a script is really helpful from knowing how long you're to take as well. The other thing is you should do for timing is rehearsing.
And when you're rehearsing as well, trying to make the rehearsal as real as possible. I find if it's just me, recording a rehearsal really helps because it forces you to try and stay on track. And then try and create mechanisms so that you don't stop the flow. So if there's a temptation when you're in rehearsal to sort of comment on a slide or I don't like the way we're saying that, we should revisit that.
So I have, when I'm working with a speaker, we have the sort of tap method, which is as you're speaking, if something you don't like, tap your leg, we'll note down the slide number you're on and you did a leg tap. And then at the end of the keynote, the rehearsal, we'll revisit those slides and you can tell us what you did and didn't like. But it means you get an end to end rehearsal. You figure out what the time was, you see the flow. Yeah, rehearsing, first figure out how long it's going to take from your script. And second,
If you've got time, do rehearsals because they tell you how long you're to be. And there's nothing worse than wasting people's time. If you tell them it's going to be 30 minutes, it better be 30 minutes.
BenP (33:46)
Yeah. Yeah, and I sort of see that manifest a few ways. The first one, if I think about the day to day, I would hate it when you're like on team calls, you know, and let's say we've got three things we're going to be talking. It's a department call, we've got 100 people on this call, you know, and we've got 15 minutes on update one, 15 minutes on update two, 15 minutes on update three, whatever. And the first person is 25 minutes.
And then everybody else is like, well, what are we, right. And like somebody's furiously chatting, right, you're down to five minutes. And like you've just ruined, because you were 25 minutes instead of 15, you've just ruined somebody else's really important message. So that time is just, you you need to be respectful. Second thing is, when you get to the higher stakes games, I remember doing one, and this was a virtual one I remember doing.
where there was some minor celebrity from, I don't know, the 90s that was going to come on at like 3 .17 and was going to sing some song, you know, from their home studio, you know, or, you know, and they booked the celebrity for and, and literally I remember being told you've got 21 minutes, that's how long you need to be. And I needed to hit 21 minutes. And if, if you don't, you start to be seen as not sure we can go to this person again, you know, you've got, so that timing's really important.
Martin Beeby (35:05)
It is, I think the stakes for that are lower in a meetup, like for sure. Actually quite often a meetup will often ask you to go longer, a little bit longer. I've done four hour talks at a meetup before, but they're more conversational, I guess. yeah, keynotes like, if I'm a minute over, I'm genuinely in trouble. Like I have got real problems with...
BenP (35:09)
Yeah. Yes.
Martin Beeby (35:31)
There's lots of stakeholders in this whole thing and it's considered to be one of the worst things to go over time, I'd say, in my experience, especially at the keynote level. Not being on time and not being disciplined to get stuff on time is like the biggest failure. That would be the thing which would get you kind of not hired again to write a keynote.
BenP (35:53)
So with that said, let's move on to the next bit. What's the, any other tips?
Martin Beeby (36:00)
I would kind of say
There is differences between the bigger rooms or the smaller rooms and you need to adapt to that room size. So you need to change the way that you're speaking and presenting depending on the room size. if you've, as you say, if you've got a very big room, you can make really cool pauses. And I really encourage that. take your water. I always say this to speakers. Like if you're speaking on a big stage, you know.
don't feel that you need to say anything straight away. fact, make them wait whilst you drink water. think that's such a really, it shows such power from a speaker that's willing to do that.
and collect your thoughts. And people actually like that in some kind of weird way. They like people which are considering what they're going to say. Don't waste people time. That's not what saying. like feel like you can control it better. if you, sometimes I've been booked for keynotes at events and then you realize it's not a keynote. This is a side room and you've been sold it as a keynote, but it's not a keynote or you go to an event and you've been told there's going be 50 people in the room and two people show up.
and you're in Prague, this has obviously actually happened to me, and you're thinking, there's two people here now, so what am I gonna do? Am I not gonna speak anymore? Well, no, I'll adjust, I'll change the way I'm gonna work to this. And that generally changes what's the presentation style, is it gonna be more conversational, is it gonna be you running through slides?
Be willing to kind of adapt to those sorts of things. The things I mentioned before is that if you're in a smaller room, you're gonna be interrupted more. So it's better to make it more conversational. If you're in a bigger room, you're not gonna be interrupted, so you can just deliver a presentation as you wish. If you're in a really big room and not many people show up, one great tip as well is trying to get everyone to the front. Like actually ask people, look guys, you're way over there, you're way over there, just all come together because...
What you find is groups of people clap at the same time, they laugh at the same time. But if they're too far apart, that doesn't happen. another great little tip, if you're ever in a big room, and this sadly in my career has happened a lot, and then not many people have come to see you, you stand up on stage and just say, look, everyone, would you guys mind coming in? And it's just like a nice little opener as well, I find. And so it's useful.
BenP (38:05)
Yeah, yeah,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not to get upset about it, because it happens to the very best, you know, for a variety of reasons. So just crack on, you know, brilliant. There's two people that I can have a really great time with now. I was hoping for 3 ,000, but do you know what? Who knows what's going to happen with these two people? So let's lean into it.
Martin Beeby (38:40)
Yeah, and that stuff happens, like things like that happen and you've just got to get over it. It can be very humbling. Like you feel like you've told your mum you're going to be on stage and it's going to be huge and it's not. And it's happened to me a lot. It's happened the other way as well, where I think it's going to be smaller and I get there and there's lots of people and you're like, I should have told legal about this. I should have told PR that I'm going to be speaking in front of this many people and I haven't.
BenP (38:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Martin Beeby (39:07)
So you're going to have these instances where stuff doesn't work out how you expect it to. The trick is rolling with it a little bit, adjusting the way that you're going to work. And I guess it goes on to the next tip as well, really, is that you want to manage your fear. Because in those situations, when things don't go right,
you kind of, is probably the thing which will get to you the most and your fear signals will start showing. So for me, it's breathing and heart rate and shaking, you know? So I try and avoid like, I try and avoid holding pieces of paper when I'm on stage, because you can see, sometimes you can see it rattling and that's not a really good sign of a confident person, right? So everyone has different ones, like they're not all the same.
BenP (39:50)
Yeah. No, no, no.
Martin Beeby (40:00)
Figure out what yours are. And it's really hard to do that because you have to film yourself or you have to be really honest with yourself as well. Because the problem is if you ask someone else, what am I doing wrong on stage? Almost everyone will say, you're great. You're doing such a great, no actually Martin, you're brilliant on stage. There's nothing you can improve on. You're brilliant. And they're doing that to be nice, but it's not helpful.
Try and find a coach or someone which is genuinely gonna tell you what you're doing wrong or film yourself and watch yourself back and try and be really like critical.
What can I do better? What would be, could I remove some ums in the way I say things? Are there certain ticks in the way that I speak? Are there certain things which show my fear? Because everyone gets scared on stage. There's just two types of speakers. Those that get scared on stage and those that lie about getting scared on stage. Everyone gets scared on stage. The difference between a confident speaker and someone which is not confident is how well they cover their tells, how well they cover
their fear. And so get really good at covering your fear on stage and then people will start telling you, you're super confident. I don't know how you do that. Like inside I'm dying.
BenP (41:12)
Yeah, yeah, it's just managing the fear managing. Yeah, I mean I went on some training years ago with the US women's volleyball team we talked about and they called it activation and they talked about like 10 is you're about to have a panic attack zero is you're asleep
And if you're up around the eights, nines, tens, your heart is going like that. You can't think rationally, you make bad decisions. And so it's how you kind of deactivate yourself a little bit so that you can think rationally, you can think what's coming next, you can perform. And I found that really useful, so thinking about how you kind of deactivate yourself a little bit.
Martin Beeby (41:47)
Yeah, I love the fact that you said I went to a training conference with volleyball. That is such a corporate thing. Do you know what? The amount of weird corporate training I've been on where storytelling workshops with...
BenP (41:51)
Ha ha!
Yeah!
Martin Beeby (42:01)
really strange setups and all of them, all of which I've learned something from. like, when I look back at some of the, I think this happens a lot in big corporates, they bring people in, they do specialists sort of like day off sites or whatever, and you do, you end up doing some kind of strange things. But like, as a perfect example is when on earth would you have met the US women's volleyball team to give you information about that? Never. And I love the serendipity of stuff like,
BenP (42:16)
Yeah?
Yeah.
Never.
Martin Beeby (42:30)
You can pull from all these different resources. I think that in terms of writing interesting keynotes.
That's really important to try and open yourself up to serendipity. Put yourself in awkward positions. Meet people that you wouldn't, call people you wouldn't usually phone. Ask people when they're good at something, why are they good at it? Open yourself up to serendipity because then it happens and then you find these little anecdotes that you can include in your keynote or whatnot. That's a great, that US women's volleyball team is a great anecdote to put into a keynote.
If the subject matter is around that, finding those little stories, those little human stories and injecting them back into your keynote is super great.
BenP (43:17)
Yeah, I'm looking at the clock. need to, you know, time is marching on. Any final tips before we start to wrap up, Martin?
Martin Beeby (43:22)
Okay. Well, I guess it's always about, my last tip is just always prepare for the unexpected. Like, if you prepare for failure, then failure will never happen. Like, what's the bare minimum things you could do on stage? Like, and I always think about it, if the keynote, if the slides don't project, if the smoke machines don't work, if the audio fails, what could you do on stage? What's the minimum thing you could do on stage?
And I have a talk in my head about me that you'll often hear me do, which tells you about my background, where I'm from, my journey to tech. And if I'm ever telling that story on stage, something's gone wrong. That's my like filler content. And if you ever hear me talking about myself for 20 minutes, you're like, why this guy's talking a lot about himself? Because I've got one story that I can tell, which is about improvement and how you can improve yourself.
which is relevant to pretty much any technology or any topic that I know that I can use. So I always have this backup talk. Like if everything else goes wrong, if my mic stops working, I can shout that. Or maybe it's like, well, we can have a conversation with some people or like we could turn this into a chat. I once interviewed Scott Hanselman, who's one of my idols actually, Tech Days. he was...
BenP (44:44)
We've him on the show. did an episode a few weeks ago.
Martin Beeby (44:47)
Yeah, he's an incredible, credible speaker, one of the best in the world. And he was giving a talk, and I was the host of Tech Days Online 2013 or something like that. And he came and gave a talk and started going, and it stopped working. The whole thing stopped working, and all you could hear was him and his camera. And in my ear, I just got this word, which is just feel. Just feel whilst you fix this technology problem.
And so I said, look, Scott, like this stuff's not working at the moment. I'll tell you what, if there's a few things I've always wanted to ask you. And then for the next 40 minutes, I asked him question after question after question of just things that I'm interested in, like about Scott. And it went okay, right? It wasn't the content that was going to be delivered on that online event, but it was the only, it's better than saying, it, technology problem, sorry guys, technology conference is over.
BenP (45:30)
Yeah
Martin Beeby (45:44)
Like at least we had an interview with Scott Hanselman. so like, think about that. Like what if everything goes wrong, what am I going to do? And that will hold you in really good stead because things really always do go wrong. And from tornadoes to earthquakes to all sorts of problems.
BenP (46:02)
Wi -Fi, yeah, all kinds of, yeah. I mean, yeah.
Martin Beeby (46:05)
Wi -Fi, yeah, especially if you're doing live demos. Yeah, that's a whole different topic, right? yeah, things will always go, failure will always happen. So what do you do in those moments of failure? And thinking about that upfront is really helpful.
BenP (46:18)
Yeah. Well, Martin, I reckon we're about at time. I've loved this conversation. It's been music to my ears. So thank you so much for taking the time to come and help us peek behind the curtain and see what's happening. Just, I guess, key takeaways from your perspective. What would the key takeaways for folks be from this session?
Martin Beeby (46:42)
I think it's all in preparation. Like that's the key to any kind of good talk is like prepare, prepare and make it look like you didn't prepare. Like that's prepare so well that it makes it looks like you didn't, didn't, didn't prepare. But if you're struggling with any of this, like it's not completely new territory. There are lots, lots of people in the world which are good at it. So yourself, Ben, I know you're very good at public speaking and you know how to coach people on it. So if you're struggling with, you know,
how you're going to get from where you are to the next level, and it's important for your role or it's important for your job, do find someone which is a coach, reach out someone like Ben, chat to someone like me, whatever your stage of your career is, speak to someone. Go to a good speaker, find a good speaker which you think, you you idolise and thinks great. I definitely in my career have spoken to Scott Hanselman and asked him questions about, not just on camera, but privately, how do you do what you do?
I learned a lot from him and there's lots of others as well. You can learn a lot by just asking questions and looking for support. then the other thing, get really good at looking for support and asking for support. But if you're getting really good and you're starting to become a really good public speaker as well, reach out to me.
If you're interested in sort of writing keynotes, because we're certainly looking for people all the time to be able to, who are good technical storytellers, who are wanting to sort of write keynotes to have this huge impact. So if you're getting good at writing keynotes, then yeah, come and speak to me. I'd love to open this world of keynote development. And it's not just at AWS, there's lots of companies have this role. so, yeah, know that it exists.
BenP (48:29)
Yeah Yeah, yeah, no wonderful and we'll pop in the show notes for LinkedIn is probably the best place to get hold of you Is it so we'll pop in there your your LinkedIn? Your LinkedIn page so people could make sure they find the right Martin PB and I think for me what I've loved is firstly, know you what you've talked to sure is the journey from 16 year old hating this and not having a God -given gift to do this right through to the
biggest events in the world in the tech sector by learning stuff, practicing stuff, learning frameworks, putting them into practice, failing, trying, and just the way you brought that to life for us as I thought been really inspirational for me and anybody else that's out there that really thinks, know, I could do, because if you, you know, if I think about when I was people managing, the high performers that took all the bonuses and the...
Promos and all that kind of stuff with the people that had a great technical foundation great logical thought, know brilliant, but then could take that message out to people and Convince and persuade, you know, you fuse those together. It's just amazing to see and such a brilliant career accelerator So thank you so much Thank you so much for taking the time and everything you've done
Martin Beeby (49:55)
Thank you very much. Cheers for having me, Ben.
