1.
A Talk About
Talking!
Tanya Reilly
@whereistanya

2.
HELLO!This is a talk about
talking
It might get meta?
Hello! My name is Tanya and I've written exactly three public talks so I am definitely
an expert and you should listen to me.
That was an intro. Mostly I'm not wild about intros that just tell the bio of the person
that's talking, because you're already in the room and you've already decided to listen
to them.
At this point of a talk I want to make you feel engaged, so maybe you close your
laptop or engage your whole brain and go along with whatever I'm talking about.
The intro is a good place for a question to the audience. So here's one:
How many people here feel are a bit scared of public speaking. Like, the idea is not
completely comfortable.
Yeah, me too.

3.
Topics
1. Why even do this?
2. Getting past the
terror
3. What to talk about
4. Outline and
abstract
5. Writing the talk
6. Preparing
7. Actually talking
8. Recovering
We're going to talk about how to do it anyway, and some small steps to make it an
easier path. And we're going to cover a bunch of other stuff, like how to think of a talk,
submit a proposal to a conference and get it accepted, how to write a talk, how to
make slides and deal with the pesky issue of pictures, what to do on the day of the
talk when the fear comes back but for real, some tips for being on stage, and what
happens once you're done. We're going to do the whole life cycle of speaking at a
conference.
This, btw, is the "tell people what you're going to tell them" section of a talk. You don't
NEED to do this, but it's very anchoring for people. We like to pretend like there's
some order and structure in the chaos of the world. So if you give people numbered
things and let them see how far through the numbered things you got, that'll make
them feel good. So…there are 8 sections. You'll see the numbers go by.

4.
"But I already did
something today": why
to talk.
Ok, first: why would you want to talk at a thing? I think it's genuinely beneficial to you
and to your employers.
Before I tell you why, a note: the astute among you will recognise "but I already did
something today" as a quote from the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and you might
ask "Why not use a picture of the excellent Titus Andromedon". The answer is
"because copyright!" and we will get to that in part 5.
----
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=191858&picture=pr
etty-kitty-cat CC0

5.
Speaking makes
you a better
storyteller.
Writing a talk hones your skill of crafting a narrative, which you do in any job that
involves convincing someone else of your ideas.
It makes you practice organising your ideas and explaining them into the brains of
other humans which… I'll come out now and say it: if you're doing an interview and
someone asks you about a recent project and you've just spent hours and hours on
thinking about how to talk about it, that interview will go well.

6.
Speaking introduces
you to interesting
people.
I had this comedy gold bit at SRECon this year where I was walking around with a
colleague, and he said "do you know everyone here?" and I was like "of course not,
oh hi Tom, hi Bridget, hey David". If you're speaking at a conference, you're more
likely to end up talking to other speakers. There's often a speakers dinner, where you
meet people you've seen talk at previous things. Sometimes people you totally fangirl
on will be there and, if you're me, you're starstruck and completely avoid them.

7.
Speaking increases
your visibility in the
industry.
Speaking is amazing for your resume. If you say technical things on stage and you
say them well, people will know you know what you're talking about. It's a head start
when entering a technical conversation. And people are more likely to seek you out
for cool things, like, well, other talks mostly, but also writing books, or coming to work
with them.

8.
Speaking also
increases your
company's visibility
in the industry.
But, good as it is for you, it's also really good for your employer. Standing up on a
stage and saying "hi I'm whoever and I work for wherever" does a bunch of things: it
tells a captive audience of people who do your job that your company hires people
doing your job -- including amazing people like you who are now visible! -- and
supports them in doing public speaking. And it's just free advertising. It's considered
very bad form to stand on stage and do a vendor talk about your company's product,
but you can certainly spend 20 seconds saying who you work for and what they do.

9.
Speaking makes
you learn things.
If you're speaking on a topic, you're likely to keep hitting edges of the topic that you
don't know as well as you think you do. It forces you to go deep into topics to
understand them well enough to explain them. And the act of explaining them
highlights which parts of the topic are important.
The other thing I like, is that I tend to go into talks with a bunch of ideas, and as I start
writing the talk, new ideas appear. It's a way of putting a bunch of ideas into the large
hadron collider of your brain and banging them together in a weird way. New ideas
appear. Note: this only happens if you give it time, so I always recommend starting to
write a talk long before you need it.

10.
"Sorry, I couldn't hear you
over my internal
screaming": overcoming
the fear
Are you convinced? Talking is scary. It really is. It's a really common fear, called
glossophobia!
But it's possible to get past the fear in a manageable way. There are two approaches
to this that I know about, and I think most of us do a combination of the two.
----
https://pixabay.com/en/scared-eggs-egg-food-nutrition-eat-2939061/

11.
One is to do an extremely horrible thing to your future self and put them in a position
where it's more scary to not to the thing than to do it. This requires a certain
sociopathic ability to not think of your future self as really you. Choose a thing that's
far enough away that it doesn't really feel real and sign up for it. Make it something
that will be hard to get out of.
I don't know that I recommend this, but it sure makes you do a thing. You need to
make the fear of backing out greater than the fear of going ahead, and you have a
long, long time to get used to it. I've used this for other impossibly terrifying things like
travelling on my own for three months, and like giving birth.
The other, more sensible approach is to take tiny steps, one at a time. For some of
us, even taking the first tiny step is a process that will involve doing a horrible thing to
your future self, but they're much tinier steps.
----
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving#/media/File:Diver2.jpg Public domain.
2) Photo by Mikito Tateisi on Unsplash. Public domain.

12.
video
TV? I dunno
team meetings
local meetups
conferences
all-hands meetings
podcasts
status updates
absolute blinding terror of speaking in public
Here's a set of steps you could take, starting at the bottom. Some of these will
be big terrifying jumps that you need to trick yourself into doing. Some will
follow easily from the previous one. It depends on the person. Start by speaking
up in team meetings. Not a presentation, just a status update. If you can do that,
see if you can present a two minute thing at your team meeting. Maybe move to
a longer presentation, or a nearby team, or a customer. Work up to a few teams
at once, maybe an all hands. If you can do that, a local meetup is maybe not so
bad. Maybe they record it. If you've done a meetup, a conference is nbd. From
there, maybe podcasts? TED Talks? TV? I don't know.
Btw, if you're a manager or a TL, get everyone else to present all the time,
including your interns.
-----
Photo by Mikito Tateisi on Unsplash

13.
internal women-in-tech summit
expensive and time-consuming ESL class
customer teams
local meetups
podcasts, anything unscripted
present to team
conferences
status updates
absolute blinding terror of speaking in public
Here's how I did it. two jobs ago, I was terrified of even standing up in front of
my team. I realised that this was a barrier to success and I signed up for a four
week "teaching ESL" class, where you had to teach some classes to real
students. This thing was super intense: three hours after work four days a week
and most of Saturday. I figured the qualification would be useful if I ever wanted
to travel, but mostly I figured it would be a gentle introduction to presenting.
Think about that. An extra 18 hours a week of learning on top of a day job, and
that was the easiest way I could imagine to learn public speaking.
It worked. I taught four practice classes of 4-10 people. I had to do it: the
students had paid for the class.
Then I started the new job and a while later we needed someone to present for
10m about our team to another team who were supposed to page us if they
needed to. Could I do that? Yes, yes I could. I stayed at that level of comfort with
presentations for years. And, honestly, I think that's fine. If you can present
basic information to small teams, that's most of what you need in the world.
But then I started going to conferences. And I saw this style of talk that I really
enjoyed -- entertaining and funny, lots of pictures -- and I wanted to try that
style. So I did a lightning talk for our local all hands -- like 50 people -- and
people laughed and I was like this is amazing. I did a longer talk to sell our new

14.
system, included a bunch of stupid jokes, gave it a few times, people really liked
it.
Worked up to bigger audiences until I keynoted an internal tech women summit:
200 people, on a massive stage. It went great. And after that, meetups and
conferences didn't seem like a big deal.
What I haven't done yet is anything above that. I write and rehearse every word
I'm going to say. The idea of being on a podcast or TV show, unscripted, is still
intimidating to me. I'm working on it.
Let's move on to how to choose what to talk about
-----
Photo by Mikito Tateisi on Unsplash

15.
"I expect you're all
wondering why I invited
you here today..":
choosing a topic
Ok, so what do you want to do a talk about? A lot of people think they don't have a
talk in them, and that's often because they think if they know something, EVERYONE
must know it.
You don't need to be an expert to present.
----
https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1005947 CC0

16.
Talk idea: how to
do a thing you just
learned how to do
I just used postman for the first
time and it was so cool :-D :-D
Teach the last thing you learned.

17.
Talk idea: the
theory and practice
of some topic
How does train signalling work?
Do a deep dive on a concept or technology.

18.
Talk idea: case
study of how your
company did a
thing
We moved to Kubernetes and it was
awesome and we are awesome
and you could be awesome too.
Tell a story of your path to something.

19.
Talk idea: I wish
everyone else
would...
I wish y'all would put dates on your
design documents. Thank you for
coming to my TED talk.
You have something to say. If you're not sure, keep a pen and paper on your person
and make a note when you next thing "grrr I wish everyone would… " and there's your
talk.

20.
"Pick me! Pick me!":
writing the abstract
Now time for a conference, which means choosing the conference. Usually a good
start is to submit talks to conferences that you'd like to go to. It probably means your
ideas are in that area, and also if your talk is accepted you get a free ticket, so bonus
points.
Another technique I use is to look at talks by speakers that I like, and see where
they're submitting to. I like listening to Liz Fong Jones and Bridget Kromhaut, so I'll go
ask them or look at their speakers pages and see where else they've spoken at.
It's fine to submit multiple proposals to the same conference. If they accept more than
one, it's fine to decline and just do one. It's ok to submit it and have it accepted and
then back out but organising a conference is work so be apologetic.
Most conferences have a call for papers, a cfp, which invites you to fill out some
information about your talk on who you are. Usually there's an abstract section you
give a short summary of your talk.
----
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=44807&picture=abst
ract-art-face. Public domain.

21.
Your talk proposal
should be relevant.
The first thing is to make sure your proposal is relevant to the meetup or conference.
The CFP should say what themes and topics they're looking for. Sometimes you can
only get this information by starting to submit a proposal, which is annoying, but do it.
This will also tell you how long the talks are. Some places only want 20 minute talks.
Others only want 45m. Propose a talk that fits their model.
While I'm here, I'll also add a warning about talks that are considered "vendory". I
know nobody here would, but don't send in a talk that's a blatant shill for your
company's product. That's very frowned upon.

22.
Your talk proposal
should be readable.
Well spelled and punctuated implies that you care. It doesn't need to be perfect but
take time to lay it out so that your proposal is clear. And get a proof reader.

23.
Your talk proposal
should be engaging.
Be entertaining. Talks are about entertainment at least as much as information. The
conference organisers want people to leave their conferences happy. We humans are
not very complicated monkeys. We like to be entertained. If the talk is entertaining,
we'll feel more happy. Happy people buy tickets for next year's conference.
If you're reading the words back and you're bored, the committee will be too. Make it
exciting.

24.
Your talk proposal
should say what
you're going to say.
Conference organisers see a lot of abstracts like "I will deliver five insights on
leadership" and everyone scores that as "nope" because… what are they? Are they
actually insightful? Maybe they would have been, but that talk doesn't get picked.
Include in the proposal what the takeaways will be. Btw, you can include stuff in the
abstract that you don't actually want going up on the conference webpage, if you don't
want your insights spoilered. Just add a note like "please don't include this paragraph
in the abstract"
Some conferences will ask for an outline at this point, and that is great, because that's
where you say what you're going to say. Even if the conference doesn't ask, I
recommend writing it now anyway.

25.
"May 22nd seemed further
away when I agreed to this":
writing the talk
… because you'll need the outline later, and it'll make your abstract better. It also
makes it clearer what you're going to say.
Having an outline already figured out will make a better abstract. Doing the outline is
the first step in writing a talk. My way of doing them is that I grab a google doc and I
start typing crap into it, under headings and I do that here and there for maybe a few
weeks. This is always a complete brainstorm and I write stuff in even if I don't think it
works or I don't know where I'm going with the idea. Occasionally I'll hit on something
that feels really big and stressful, like this feels important but I don't know what to do
with it, and that's usually a sign I have something new and interesting that is worth
pushing on.
For a talk like this one, I had a fairly clear idea of what order I wanted things in, so I
wrote section headings and shoved in notes under each one as bullet points. I did this
talk in a couple of days on the subway; just adding some stuff when I thought of it. For
a big conference talk, I might do this over weeks. Not every day or anything. Just add
things in as they occur to me.
----
https://www.maxpixel.net/Hands-To-Write-Vintage-Lyrics-2208717 CC0

26.
The outline.
Here's a screenshot of the outline for this talk, and a zoom in to this section. You can
see that it looks pretty much like it looks now. You don't need to read that; it's what I
just said.

27.
The narrative.
The talk needs a structure. I always find the narrative the most difficult thing. Ok I'll
be honest, a lot of talks are like "I threw a bunch of ideas at some slides and here
they are". But if you put it in a coherent order, it's so much better. If you really have a
bunch of points without a story, the format of "ten things I wish people knew about…"
or "five ways to be better at…" is totally fine.
As I go along, I note what stories the information is settling into. Is this a "how I did a
thing?" story? Is it an intro? This is why it's useful to do it before the abstract. It might
be a different talk than you think.

28.
Dan DeLuca
CC BY-2.0
For my last talk, the narrative took a long time to fall into place. I had this idea that fire
escapes were a good illustration of how we used to build buildings thinking about
escaping from fires but now we build them to be hard to set on fire, and how software
is still at the first half of that… but I didn't really know how I wanted to structure that or
what I wanted to say. Here's a tweet I wrote on December 26th, 15 days after I'd
gotten a mail that my half-assed talk submission was accepted for devops days and
also was the keynote. I was not feeling very good about the talk at that moment, but
after a couple of weeks of putting raw material into my outline doc I had sort of turned
the corner and found the narrative. (Phew!) Everything after that is just writing it; it's
just work. But getting the narrative together is the difficult part, at least for me.
There were actually about 10 extra stages I wanted to add in that tweet but I only had
280 characters.
This slide sucks, btw. Too many words.
----
Dan DeLuca CC BY 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/76Jmb2
Dan DeLuca
CC BY-2.0

29.
Make slides.
The next thing I do after getting the outline is start on the slides. I choose a template
and choose a font. In my opinion, this is the second most important thing after the
narrative. I'm so serious. You definitely need to have something to say, but if you
have attractive slides, people will remember your talk fondly.
If you only take two pieces of advice away from this talk:

30.
Don't use the
default Docs or
Powerpoint slide
template.
Try http://slidescarnival.com
If you only take two pieces of advice away from this talk…
1
Everyone at a conference has seen the default slide templates for Google Slides and
Powerpoint. If you make yours different, it'll keep people more engaged. If you want to
make an impact, do something people haven't seen before. I really like
slidescarnival.com. This template's from there.

31.
Promise me that
you won't use Arial.
Arial is boring. There, I said
it. In Arial. Look how boring
this is :-(
2
If you only take two pieces of advice away from this talk...
Look, I am not a creative. I'm an engineer. I don't claim to have any taste -- look at the
colours I chose for this thing. You should not take creative advice from me. But knock
it off with Arial. Just… it's the worst. Nothing says "I do not care about this
presentation" like Arial.
Don't use comic sans either.
This slide sucks because it has too many words on it. (Also because it's in Arial.
Frickin Arial.) You've probably already heard advice around not putting too many
words on a slide and not reading your slides. This is important and true. If you have a
lot of text, your audience will read your slides and not listen to you. If you read your
slides, everyone will feel bored.

32.
Nothing says
I don't care
about this
presentation
like Arial. (Comic sans
is also a no.)
One other note about slides is that if you're at a conference, people will likely be
tweeting what you're saying. If you have a particular point you really want to make,
intentionally make it super tweetable. Here's an intentionally tweetable slide.
It's got a few words that say something pithy and easy to understand and an
illustration.
The picture isn't necessary here! It just adds texture. Which is what pictures should
do, I think. Well, sometimes pictures are diagrams that you're using to actually make
your point, but a lot of the time, they're there to entertain, and to make your point
again. They back up the words.
You don't need images, btw. There are a lot of reasons you might not want to include
them.
----
https://pixabay.com/en/cat-lazy-animal-tired-domestic-965174/ CC0

33.
Choose some
pictures (maybe).
First thing: images are an enormous pain. It takes work to find them, the licenses will
be wrong, they'll be the wrong size, and most of them aren't that good. But when you
find the right one, the joy, my friends, the joy. The best images are non-obvious, but
the audience immediately gets it without any context. If you really can't find one that
speaks for itself, maybe it's worth calling out. In my experience, a joke is worth it. I
mean, a good joke that you can drop well. If the audience laughs, they'll have a better
time and at least half your job is to entertain.
But don't be boring. I might be on my own with this one, but I recommend you don't
use memes that everyone uses. Whatever your first thought for an image is, push on
through, keep thinking. Do something original.
Also, I beg you, don't use images that are shocking or offensive unless you're *really
100% no doubt* sure of your audience. Do not use sexy cartoon characters. Do not
use political references unless you've really thought hard about it. Do not, really really
do not use an iconic political image to illustrate something trivial.
Let's talk licensing! Can you imagine anything more fun!

34.
ATTRIBUTION: give credit on the slide
SHARE ALIKE: slides need to be shared
with the same license
NO DERIVS: don't change the image
NONCOMMERCIAL: don't use the image
for commercial advantage
ZERO: public domain, no credit needed
You need permission to use the images. Yeah, you're going to go to conferences and
see people using tv characters and you're going to grit your teeth and think of what
you could do with Kimmy Schmidt facial expressions, but nope. You could extremely
get your employer into trouble, and it's not worth the risk. Don't take chances with this
stuff.
There are a GAJILLION licenses and I am not a lawyer. Is anyone here a lawyer?
Talk to them. But here is what I think they mean.
CC0 means public domain. You can just use the image.
CC BY means "By Attribution". You can do what you want with it so long as you
give credit.
SA means sharealike. You have to reshare your work, i.e., your slides, with the
same license. This one's very common on wikimedia and it's a pain when you
think you found the best image but then can't use it.
ND means no derivative works. You can't change the image, even to crop it.

35.
NC means non-commercial. Note: commercial means you can't directly or
indirectly make money from it. If you speak at a conference and have your
employer's name attached, you might ask their legal or comms team what to
do. Even if you're not trying to make money, assume it could be construed as
commercial use until legal tells you otherwise.

36.
CC0
● pixabay.com
● pexels.com
● unsplash.com
● works published in the US before 1923
Search
● Google image search
● Flickr image search
● Wikimedia
● Google photos: text search on your own images
Stock images of people doing tech
● #wocintechchat archive
● The Jopwell Collection
Here's some resources.

37.
16:9 4:3
Modifying
images
The other problem you're going to run into with images is sizing. Sometimes you want
a big lovely splash image to fill the whole page. But there's a problem.
Slides usually have an aspect ratio of 16 to 9: they're 16 units across and 9 units
down. But if you look at photos online, they're more often square or 4:3. So what do
you do?

38.
Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored], Alias 0591 CC BY 2.0
Stretched
Well, you can stretch it, but it changes the image. This is actually not terrible here, but
in a lot of cases it looks rubbish.
----
https://flic.kr/p/bTLWFM Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored] By
Alias 0591

39.
Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored], Alias 0591 CC BY 2.0
Cropped
In a lot of cases, you can crop it -- cut out a rectangle that's the size you want. It
works fantastically a lot of the time. But here, again, this doesn't work. You either lose
the top or bottom half of the castle. So the third option, which I still find kind of
hilarious: you open up your image editor and…
https://flic.kr/p/bTLWFM Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored] By
Alias 0591

40.
Mirroring
You take a copy of the picture, reverse it and put it side by side. And hope nobody
notices the grass. This one looks kind of obvious, so you might choose that place to
put your text.
----
https://flic.kr/p/bTLWFM Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored] By
Alias 0591

41.
SOME
PROFOUND
POINT
ABOUT
CASTLES
So, this is a pain to do, especially if you're not into image manipulation: probably it's
easy for people who like graphics, but it's a pain for me. So in reality I've only done
this a few times. My preferred approach is much lazier:
----
https://flic.kr/p/bTLWFM Sleeping Beauty Castle Disney resort Paris [Explored] By
Alias 0591

42.
Take an image that's the wrong size…
--
Image from Pixabay, CC0

43.
And put it on an appropriately coloured background and call it good enough.
--
Image from Pixabay, CC0

44.
Another one….
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https://www.pexels.com/photo/time-watch-clock-hours-9352/ CC0

45.
Tada!
----
https://www.pexels.com/photo/time-watch-clock-hours-9352/ CC0

46.
tick tick tick...
If there's text on the screen, people will look at the text and not notice. Probably.
I may be overthinking this.
----
https://www.pexels.com/photo/time-watch-clock-hours-9352/ CC0

47.
Write some words.
So, that's the narrative, the slides and the pictures, but of course the fourth part of
writing the talk is the words. Your talk needs to sound like you, so it's hard to give
advice here. Reading someone else's words is the worst. How much you plan in
advance, how much you adlib, that depends on what kind of person you are. I have
traditionally planned out EVERY SINGLE WORD in advance. The jokes, the
emphasis, when I wave my hands in the air, everything. People are like "come be on
my podcast" and I'm like "...say unrehearsed words? I will accidentally swear! I'll get
nervous and start talking nonsense"
I'm just starting to try out talks with the speaker notes turned off, walking around with
a clicker. It's terrifying. (This very talk was the first time I did that and it went ok!)

48.
“I hate writing, I love having
written.”
― Dorothy Parker
All of this takes a long time.
I like images, which are fiddly, and I really want a good narrative, and the narrative
takes me forever to put together. You see people throwing together talks the night
before, and that's fine, you do you, friends, but I can't make something that feels good
enough without many hours work. I estimate 50-60 hours for my last talk, something
like 15h for this very easy (and extremely unpolished :-/) one.
I asked on Twitter to see if it was just me, and the most common response was an
hour of work for every minute of a talk.

49.
"Carnegie Hall? Sure, it's
on 57th and 7th":
practice
Ok, step six! PRACTICE. Never phone it in. Rehearse. This is genuinely something
where if you put more work in, it will go better.
---
https://pixabay.com/en/piano-music-girl-young-musical-606080/ CC0

50.
Practice a lot.
Practice the
beginning and end
even more.

51.
Do a dry run.
Some conferences schedule you for a rehearsal. Take it! Do a dry run in front of
friends. Find out what jokes don't work. The talk will get better every time.

52.
"Oh crap, it's today":
actually speaking
Alright! It's the day of the talk. I try to prepare by having an early night and then a solid
protein smart-brain breakfast, but do whatever makes you feel smart and resilient.
Wear clothes that make you feel confident.
----
https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-gray-microphone-164829/ CC0

53.
Turn fear into
excitement.
I get incredibly nervous about 45 minutes before the talk. Used to be hours, so I'm
getting better. I need to turn the nervous energy into excitement. If you tell yourself
"wow, I feel so excited", it'll help. I listen to fast music very loud, so my brain thinks my
body is having a reasonable response.
----
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/12/performance-anxiety.aspx

54.
Develop your own
rituals.
I always get an early night, and I always go stand on the stage the day before my talk
(if I can, or at least earlier that day), and walk around and own it. Just before getting
miked, I go check my teeth and bra strap in the mirror.

55.
Get mic'd
The AV folks will set you up with microphones. Take off your conference badge or any
jewelery or scarves that could rustle the microphone.

56.
Go get on stage!
Try to look at the crowd a lot. Bring water. If you get nervous or forget what to say,
drink water.
Have a friend in the front row who will give you a thumbs up and tell you you're doing
good. I have been that friend a lot. LMK if you need me to be that friend.
If you're going to get scared and speak fast, leave reminders in your speaker notes to
slow down.
Try to enjoy it.

57.
Feel free to skip the
Q&A. Up to you.
Ways to get out of Q&A:
- If you've rehearsed enough times, you can make your talk exactly 29.9
minutes long.
- If you're telling stories of breakage, you can say "who will share a story of a
time they broke something". Get a couple of people primed to do that in
advance or you will be mortified if nobody speaks. Tag me if you ever plan to
do that and I'm there. I have broken many things.
- You can say "I hate Q&A but come talk to me afterwards"
Alternatively, you can do Q&A but make it not terrible:

58.
You need to see Jessica Hilt's talk, "Strategic
Storytelling" from LISA 2016. Slide used with
permission.
One is to make it clear that Q&A is something you don't like, but you're doing it
despite that, so everyone better be nice. I saw Jessica Hilt do this thing where she
said "I hate Q&A but I will accept questions if everyone promises to be kind." I love
that.
https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa16/conference-program/presentation/hilt

59.
From Corey Quinn's fantastic LISA talk "Don't
You Know Who I Am: The Dangers of Celebrity
in Tech". Used with permission.
Or use Corey Quinn's method, which is putting up this slide for the Q&A and
reminding everyone to ask an actual question. (It worked.)

60.
"I never have to do that
again. Until next time."
It's
OVER!
Hurray! You did it!
Immediately after the talk, you may have a bunch of people who want to talk about
your topic, or you may get to just go on with your life like nothing happened.
----
https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/the-winner_766744.htm

61.
Reply to your
twitter
notifications (or
don't; it's fine)
If there were livetweeters, your mentions may now completely be toast. You can try to
read them all or you can declare notification bankruptcy.
In theory you should sit down and watch the next talk, but in practice everyone reads
their mentions. (If you want to do conference speaking and don't have twitter, I
recommend you get one for conferences. It's a good way to engage with people who
want to talk to you about your talk.)

62.
Watch the video (or
don't; it's fine)
A few weeks after the conference, there's usually a video. It's up to you if you want to
watch it. I send mine to my mom without looking at them.

63.
Submit the talk to
other conferences
(or don't; that's fine
too)
It's fine to use the same talk multiple times. Writing talks takes ages. Most people do
multiple times. It's fine to send the video of a talk you gave in to other conferences
and be like "hey do you want this?" A few places maybe want completely original
content, but unless the audiences are identical, most places are fine with reusing.
You'll probably get better the more times you do the talk.

64.
Do something to
celebrate. (Really.)
And finally.. Lara Hogan has this great blog post (https://larahogan.me/donuts/) about
career celebration and marking achievements. I completely buy in to this philosophy.
Lara celebrates with donuts. Me, I like fish and chips and a beer. You do whatever
feels celebratory to you.
You did good.
And that was my last line.

65.
THANKS
!
Questions……………..
"It's more of an
observation really..."
free
$20
You can find me on Twitter: @whereistanya! Or the armchairs on the 10th floor of Squarespace New York.
And this is my thank you slide with contact details.
I mostly don't do Q&A but I will if everyone promises to be nice.