We in the editorial office of Netology talked with experts who have extensive experience in public speaking. Artyom Novichkov - iOS developer at Skyeng and Anastasia Sharikova - QA Lead at Bookmate told how to start speaking at specialized conferences and what helps to feel more confident during a speech.
Anastasia is a speaker at 404fest , Podlodka QA Crew , Otus QA Meetup and several internal conferences, a teacher of the " Tester " course . Artyom regularly shares his experience in the field of mobile development, talks about productivity and smart home at events in different companies - Rosberry and Skyeng, teaches at Netology on the course " iOS developer from scratch " and was also a speaker at the Mobilatorium festival.
Artyom Novichkov, iOS developer at Skyeng
My goal is to make business contacts and share experience with the professional community. Public speaking is a great opportunity to establish business contacts. It is also a contribution to the development of the professional community. I want to believe that when you give a talk and share your opinion, you are bringing value to the community. Plus, many people will learn about you - this is a great opportunity to show expertise in a particular field, develop a personal brand and establish yourself as a good specialist.
For myself, I highlight a retrospective of my experience as a separate item. I like to stop and look back: what I did, how successful it was, what I did and what I didn’t - this allows me to understand what I learned and what should be changed or improved in the future.
How to start speaking at specialized events?
Artyom Novichkov, iOS developer at Skyeng
To start participating in conferences, you just need to apply at least somewhere. Do not be afraid to send out a proposal with topics for the report. If you want to give it a try, don't expect the organizers to notice and call you.
Yes, not all conferences are responsible organizers, they do not always respond to the speakers' suggestions and may not notice the letter. Probably, many people have their mail bursting with unread letters. Don't worry about the lack of an instant response. In some cases, if the organizers of the conferences are in the same professional community as you, you can write to them in the messenger or social network. And even if they turn you down this time, you can keep in touch for the future. After all, events take place every year.
When the first step of approving the topic for the speech has been passed, find out in what format the event will be held - a lecture, hackathon, meetup, or in some other. Maybe your topic is not suitable in the format of a report, but in an interactive version. Clarify what will be the way to interact with the audience and what the topic of the conference is. Even if it's a highly focused topic, there may be different levels or sections for beginners.
My path began with speeches within the company - we met once a month, the guys chose topics and prepared reports on mobile development. We always had 2-3 people willing to perform.
Every two weeks we also demoed apps for clients. This is a kind of public speaking, for which we carefully prepared and tried to make it interesting.
Now I work for Skyeng, where the practice of public speaking has increased and intensified. Every week we have a mobile update - a special format where anyone from the development team can speak with a small topic in front of the mobile development team. This is usually a short talk.
At the start, I would advise you to come up with a relevant topic (or even several) for the conference format. In this case, you should not take the same topic for several conferences.
For example, at mobile development events, the work of platforms (iOS / Android) and programming languages (Swift / Kotlin / Java), Software Craftsmanship (approaches and practices in developing mobile applications and working with frameworks), Clean Code (architectural patterns, legacy and technical debt, refactoring), product quality (performance, security), trends in mobile development and infrastructure (build systems, CI / CD, DevOps, Continuous testing). At such highly specialized events, techies perform and you can delve into the "hardware".
And at events for product managers, in addition to the products themselves, there are marketers, projects, designers and founders of various companies. It deals with strategy, monetization, analytics, marketing, hypothesis testing, market analytics and user experience.
I like to build on my experience more. I understand that I did something interesting, and then you can talk about it. Look for interesting tasks and pick them for yourself, but this is already two steps ahead. But in general, if you do what you like on the project, you can just talk about your experience and what you come across.
Once I talked about skills for "Alice" and used the "Pecha-Kucha" format - when you have 20 slides of 20 seconds each. It turned out to be quite interesting and helped to look in a new way on the topic: what exactly is useful in the report, what to leave or discard, what exactly is worth mentioning and what is not. This stimulates, and you start to look differently at the topic you are talking about.
I also had a big talk about "Alice" - it lasted about 40 minutes. For preparation, I worked with a public speaking coach. I can say that this was my first practice of such training. Through reflection and the right questions from the coach, it was possible to turn the whole concept around and present it differently. This approach became close to me, and I would continue to work with a coach on my reports.
Where to look for sites for the first performances?
Anastasia Sharikova, QA Lead at Bookmate
There is a large selection of specialized projects online. For example, TEDx, CreativeMornings, Science Slam. You can search for local projects on your topic. Or take part in small discussions, workshops with no more than 30 people. There are many such events on the TimePad site.
You can give an open lecture at the university. Universities support the initiatives of their graduates. Write to your local student council or suggest this idea to a teacher - I'm sure they won't refuse. It doesn't have to be a formal event, you can be an invited guest on a couple. Believe me, students are always happy to see graduates and learn first-hand information about their future profession.
A small list of Russian-language conferences:
- Mobius — , 600 .
- AppsConf — . 3 000 .
- 404fest — IT-. : , , , UX, , PR , , , , . 2 000 .
- + — -, . - , , . 10 000 .
- — IT- , , , . 5 000 .
- IT nights — IT- , UX/UI-, - -, , HR-, , .
- ProductSense — - -.
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On the website call4paper.com you can choose and apply for participation in any international conference. If your candidacy is approved and the organizers like your topic, then you are invited to speak. This is a great chance to meet foreign colleagues, exchange experiences, learn to own different audiences and develop professionally, since preparing a report requires deep immersion in the topic.
In fact, not everyone loves conferences and public speaking. In this case, I would look at other ways to increase awareness as an expert - writing author columns in the media, participating in thematic podcasts or YouTube channels.
What is important to remember when performing for the first time?
Anastasia Sharikova, QA Lead at Bookmate
I was very nervous at the first serious conference. I had a banal fear that no one would come or listen, since the conference was not a specialized one, and QA was only one of the tracks. Nevertheless, when I arrived, I saw a full hall. I did it, and, as they say, quite successfully for the first time. Experienced colleagues helped a lot, reassured, supported and gave very useful advice.
It helped me to realize that in IT, personal experience is always interesting, because it can be useful to others. Many beginners have trouble finding a topic, because they think that their development experience is insignificant, because they did not create a multimillion-dollar site, or that their projects are not interesting enough.
In fact, the same ordinary developers go to the conference, for whom it is not so important to hear about the scale of the project, rather than about the problems in interesting code, how they were solved, how long and what approaches they used. Telling about your fucking does not make a specialist a loser, such reports come with a bang, because it is vital. People love hearing about the findings and experiences of the person.
Stories about projects and products of companies are also popular at conferences:
how the team is organized, how the product has changed, how everything was covered with tests, and so on.
If you can't come up with a unique topic, you should try to look at any popular topic from a new angle, present a new look at an existing and known problem, and look at it from the other side. You shouldn't worry that copy-paste will turn out: when there is no purpose to copy, but there is a goal to take the topic as a basis and bring something of your own, then the performance will not be perceived as a copy.
I consider it an important skill to be able to convey information to people who do not understand the topic.
Within your team, you can tell in detail what features were implemented, how the work went, how the result affected the speed of rolling out tasks by the development team, and so on. But when you know that there will be a mixed audience at the conference - marketers, product designers, projects and others - I would think in advance how to tell about the project in a simple and understandable way, with details that will be of interest to other specialists besides developers.
When there is no experience of speaking, then the simplest advice is to take someone's speech that is pleasant in structure and apply the cool tricks from there, but only with your own topic and presentation. You can remember the one who inspired you, analyze what exactly, and try to do something similar, but in your own manner. And after the performance, see if this tempo, structure suits you, and whether something needs to be changed.
I would advise you to study the recommendations for beginners and life hacks, for example, how to breathe better when you tell me that it is better not to drink, so that your voice does not sit down because you are not used to where to look or not to look in the hall - this helps to concentrate very well. And if you came forward and realized that it was not yours, it is better not to torture yourself. There are other ways to share knowledge with the community and show yourself. Here are the ways that help me personally.
Make eye contact... I try to keep it up with my listeners the same way I do it with my friends. After all, when the speaker looks at his notes, he does not involve the audience in the conversation. I also try to listen to the audience, because any extraneous sounds - rustling, turning pages and coughing - are a signal that the audience is losing engagement, which means that something needs to be changed in the performance right now.
Pause . Pauses do not always mean awkwardness, sometimes they help emphasize a tense moment and intrigue the listener. A pause of a few seconds raises the interest of the audience and makes them wait for the next phrases, while I have the opportunity to catch my breath and collect my thoughts.
Communicate with the public... During your speech, you can and even need to address the public with judgments or questions. I try to use known facts and events to increase audience engagement.
Imagine that the listeners are friends . It's not easy to do right away, but this approach helps to become more relaxed in front of an unfamiliar audience, the voice becomes more confident, and the audience feels that I am behaving more naturally.
Don't apologize... It seems superfluous to me when the speakers use the phrase "I'm sorry for ..." and list a huge number of reasons - extraneous noise from repairs, weather, screen size, and so on. I think it's pointless to apologize for things that don't depend on you. Instead, you can try to joke about such situations if a joke comes to mind, or simply ignore.
What can get in the way of speaking at conferences?
Artyom Novichkov, iOS developer at Skyeng
Neither school nor institute teach us to speak in public. In ordinary life, we do not speak in public so often - most often this is not necessary.
A sense of lack of skill can lead to insecurity - a feeling that many who are just starting out to perform face. Complicating things can be the "impostor syndrome", which convinces us that we are not good enough, "not yet at that stage," there is no necessary experience or an interesting topic, and in general, no one will listen to us.
Public speaking for many, even experienced professionals, causes fear and excitement. In addition, the inability and ignorance of where to speak and how to offer oneself as a speaker also stops many in public activities. And sometimes you can face the fact that the employer is against the statements of their employees.
It seems to me that the only way to work through these obstacles is to simply start performing, first at small events, and assess what skills are lacking in order to feel confident.
When you start to practice speaking, it is useful to collect feedback - it helps to look at yourself from the outside, to understand how good the report is, structured and understandable, how interesting the speech itself. I like the BOFF format (behavior - outcome - feeling - future):
- Behavior - ask to describe the speaker's behavior.
- Outcome - ask how, in the listener's opinion, the speaker's behavior influenced the presentation.
- Feeling - ask to describe the feelings that arose during the performance, what you liked and what you didn't.
- Future - to ask what can be changed to make it better.
Anastasia Sharikova, QA Lead at Bookmate
Due to the pandemic, many events have gone online, and this is a great opportunity to gain experience and practice without feeling trembling in the knees. It is at online conferences that it is most often possible to organize a test presentation. You can find out about this from the organizers. And it's best to schedule your test presentation a few hours or a day before the main one so you can correct your shortcomings.
If this is not possible, you can conduct the dress rehearsal yourself: record yourself in one take and try to perform the way you want to do it at the conference. If something does not work out in the process - it's okay, you shouldn't stop. This is how it will turn out to correctly understand the timing: in fact, it may turn out that the performance lasts 2 times longer than it was intended: somewhere you talk longer, somewhere you stumble or walk away.
I am always in favor of studying the reviews of your speech, if possible, and drawing conclusions. And it's also good to ask yourself questions - how comfortable it was to perform, where there was a drawdown, and where there were good moments. It is convenient to record your speech and then revise it - at first it is so-so sensations, but you can see if everything is fine with the structure of the report, whether the slides were chosen and whether it is worth working on the diction.
If a report (or a workshop and other formats) helped at least someone, that's already good. Each time, the performances will get better, and you will become more confident.
From the editor
Netology courses for the development of Soft Skills for IT professionals:
- " Basics of effective communication "
- " Networking "
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