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I feel very lucky to have started a new phase of my career over the past year and a half as a public speaker. It’s the realization of a goal I set for myself a few years ago. And while it’s not the same as being an educator, a role I experienced only briefly, it gives me a lot of the same satisfaction and enjoyment.

Over the I’ve been speaking, and in conjunction attending many more conferences, I’ve formulated a few guiding rules for myself to help make sure I create solid presentations. In the off chance they’re helpful to others, I figured I’d share them here.

Set the right goal.

In my opinion the goal of a good conference talk is not to “teach” but to expose. You want to get your audience to open themselves up to a new idea or way of looking at something. You don’t have to explain every intricate detail. There won’t be a pop quiz for them at the end. Just give them enough interesting points that, when you’re done and get off stage, they’re left saying to themselves: “Damn, that was kind of cool, I should look into that more.”

Show them you’ve been there.

I owe this one to Jared Spool, who told me that in order to get an audience’s interest right from the get go, you need to show them you’ve been where they’ve been. Identify the pain they’ve felt or experiences they’ve gone through and tell a story about it so that they feel like you were there with them the whole time. Then start talking about your solution or new way of looking at things.

Don’t sell yourself.

So many speakers, especially new ones, spend a significant amount of time telling the audience who they are, what they do, who they’ve worked for, etc. It always feels to me like they’re trying to convince me that they belong up there.

Introducing yourself is necessary, but keep it as short as possible: your name and (if pertinent) who you work for, that’s it.

I know that at least I, as an audience member, assume you must already have something that the conference committee feels is worth hearing, and that’s why you were selected. Nothing you can say in your introduction is going to convince me of that more. Your on stage, it’s time to show me what you’ve got.

Include frequent little “ah-hah”s.

Most sessions that I’ve been to average 40-45 minutes, which depending on how you look at it, can seem like a ton of time, or no time at all to both the speaker and the audience.

On the speaker’s side, if it feels like not enough time, you’ve got too much. If it feels like too much, you may not have enough to talk about.

For your audience though, you’re in control of how it feels. You’ve hopefully got their attention for the first few minutes while, and you want to make sure you keep it. It feels pretty bad to look out into the audience and see multiple pairs of eyes slide shut as the heads their embedded in snap back on their necks due to talk-induced snoozing.

To avoid this make sure that your talk’s content is exposing little “ah-hah” moments frequently, about every 3-5 minutes. And don’t leave those “ah-hah”s to be determined by the audience, be explicit with them. Quote them in your slides. Think about the kinds of things that someone would want to quickly post on twitter, short and too the point. That’s what you’re after.

Be cautious in using only one example.

In the last few conferences I attended, I sat through a handful of talks that tried to use a single example to illustrate their entire concept.

Now this isn’t always bad. If that example can illustrate a number of smaller sub points, all of which are “ah-hah” worthy, it can work. But in all of my recent experiences, the speaker had no frequent “ah-hah” moments. If they did, I missed them entirely.

It just felt like they were going through an overly intensive examination, the kind you’d be subject to in a college lecture, and going back to my first point, the goal is to expose, not educate. The examples dragged on and on, until at the end I had lost all interest, no matter how valid the point the speaker was trying to make was.

The other challenge with single example presentations is it can sometimes give the impression that there isn’t a lot of validity to your point. Were you not able to find other examples to illustrate with?

Agree or disagree?

Like I said before, these are just a few things I’ve picked up on and come from my own personal opinions and experiences. I’m sure their formulation is due in large part to the types of conferences I attend. They may very well not apply to other types of conferences, for example, more academically focused ones.

If you’re just getting started speaking, I hope you find them helpful. If you’ve been speaking for a while and have different or conflicting opinions or suggestions, feel free to share them.