Category: Presentations

16 May, 2013

How to Start Getting Speaking Engagements

I know many people are afraid of public speaking, I was too! It just so happened that I managed to get rid of it once in for all after doing it for 18 years

(I started doing oratory and debate when I was 12.)

If you’ve looked at my speaker page it’s clear that I speak a lot! So it’s natural that I get asked the question, “How did you get started getting speaking engagements?” I’m assuming that if you’re asking this question then you’ve gotten past your fear of public speaking. If not I’d highly recommend that you join ToastMasters to get some practice.

Public speaking is a great way to build a personal brand, but you cannot start out thinking that people are going to come after you. In fact conference and event organizers are getting pretty picky about who speaks at their conference, and will often times ask you to submit a sample of your work.

So if you’re a newbie to public speaking, but want to eventually be like me and travel the country speaking, here are some steps to get you started:

Figure out what you want to speak about, and start very focused. I initially started speaking on just engineering best practices with topics like Build v. Buy. Then as I become more knowledgable I branched out to additional topics like product development, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Speaking at unconferences. I started speaking at any place that had a speaker volunteer program like CodeCamp and ProductCamp. This gave me a chance to practice my public speaking and presentation skills, but most importantly got used to interacting with a larger audience.

Make friends with event and conference organizers. I let people know that I was interested and capable. Some organizers are reluctant, and will want to meet with you to see if you have the chops. So as I mentioned before, you’ll need a little portfolio. Even something as simple as a YouTube video of you presenting can be powerful. Or you can offer to teach or present something in person.

Know who you’re audience is. If you decide to go down this track realize that you need to care about what your audience needs, which means you need to think and anticipate context and questions. You’ll also want to get feedback from them on formats and styles, like talks, panels, workshops, and what they took away.

Full court press! I tell the world I’m a qualified speaker, because well I am! My senior year of high school I was flying all over the country, and gave over a 100 speeches. Fast forward to the present, I’ve done 50+ talks and presentations in a 3 year period. I stay up-to-date on conferences that are coming up where I think they’ll need speakers. This is a full time job for me. You can do less if it’s meant to be a supplement to your main job. Also I know many people who get invited to speak because they’ve published a book or are an expert in their field. But despite getting the invite, you still need to be an engaging and entertaining speaker, or word will get out…

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16 January, 2013

How to Overcome Stage Fright

Even I who have been public speaking since the ripe age of 12 had stage fright. The major cause of my stage fright was actually concentrating too much on the content and outcome of speaking, instead of connecting with an audience. Here’s a step-by-step guide for how you too can overcome stage fright with time:

Get comfortable talking to strangers. We’ve all been taught to not talk to strangers. (Caveat: don’t talk to strangers in dark alleys.) Do approach people at events, coffee shops, or even when you’re waiting in line for the groceries. It’s easier to initiate conversation than you think. You can start with something like “Hi, I’m so-and-so.” Or if you want to be more subtle, “Hey, are the drinks here any good?” Practice breaking the ice, and do it as often as you can. Yes there maybe some people who look at your funny or walk away, so what? Remember they are a stranger, but who knows maybe you’ll make a new life long friend! The upside is in your favor.

Get comfortable with groups. Pick group settings such as your family, friends, or colleagues and lead a discussion or conversation. It doesn’t need to be formal, but you need to be the one to initiate it. You also don’t need to be talking the whole time, but you need to steer the conversation with questions, and keep it going for 10 to 15 minutes. This is basically an exercise to get you comfortable handling and engaging with an audience.

Record yourself on camera. One of the reasons people have stage fright is because they somehow think they look silly or awkward. Instead of assuming this take a little video of yourself. Maybe you do have nervous ticks, or maybe you’re very eloquent and just don’t realize it! Hard to judge, but the camera never lies.

Combine elements 1-3 and tell a story. The next time you’re a dinner party recall a story or incident you recently had experienced. The key ingredient when telling this story is to put together a mix of people you know and people you don’t know, but a small enough group, no more than 10. Keep your story short, no more than 5 minutes. Before you speak do 2 things: take 10 deep breathes and then proceed to deliver your talk as if you were talking to a friend. Telling a story is much easier than giving a presentation, because you’re focused on recalling a series of events. This approach also lets you practice spontaneity, which is really important. Too often people have stage fright because they think they’ll forget their “lines”. With a story there is nothing to forget, because you’re just recalling a series of events from memory!

Practice, practice, practice! Between high school, when I was actively public speaking every week, to college when I was just doing problem sets and coding, my public speaking skills got really rusty. I wanted to get back into it, and wouldn’t you know the stage fright of course came back! But I made it a point to do 1-4, and to keep giving talks despite feeling uncomfortable with new audiences.

Stage fright is normal! Most people are self-conscious, especially those who are like me and care about coming off polished! But they key is to worry less about coming off polished and instead focus on making connections with your audience through the act of having a conversation. Try these simple steps out, because if you start here it becomes easier, but the key of course is to start small and simple.

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27 November, 2010

Presentation Skillz: Handling Audio and Video

Keeping an audience captivated is the number 1 goal of any presenter. The content of your presentation takes a backseat to being captivating; no one is going to pay attention to what you are saying if you aren’t interesting and engaging! Being engaging requires energy and enthusiasm, which is easier to do in person because people absorb it through your body language and facial expressions. But so many presentations today are done across a variety of technology mediums that it become hard to keep people interested. I’ve done podcasts, videos, and more recently a presentation via Skype and received pretty good reviews. Here are tips to keeping your audience enthralled through the use of subtle body cues. Some of these may seem silly or overly obvious, but I’ve seen and hear a lot of bad presenters that didn’t take the time to prep and think about how they were presenting. The result was an audience that didn’t find them to be credible and tuned out.

1. Audio

If I’m participating in a podcast or phone call where I’m not leading it I will ask for questions and topics that will be covered ahead of time. I like to understand the context and then run through answers in my head. Preparing ahead of time helps me to be more articulate and clear in my answers. Small pauses are good but the last thing you want is dead air, to stutter, or use a lot of “ums” and “uhs”. To avoid sounding the like drone make sure there is intonation in your voice.

To place emphasis on a point or explain a difficult topic slow your pace down and be a little more deliberate in your delivery.

Its also good to express positive emotion such as enthusiasm through laughter, raising your voice slightly, ending a sentence up tempo, or speeding up your words slightly.

Of course all of these should be sprinkled throughout a presentation, and should come out sounding natural not rehearsed. So treat an audio presentation like you are having a conversation with a best friend. Don’t try to sound like a sportscaster or fake the radio voice; people want to be able to connect with you and can only do so if your natural accent and voice come through.

Don’t ramble! Its ok to have a mix of short and long sentence and take breaks when speaking. Remember you audience needs time to process what you said.

2. Video

While the key to delivering a good presentation via audio is vocal quality the key for video is facial expression. Your facial expressions should mirror the emotion you are conveying.

Once again positive emotion is emphasized through a smile, and when you want to highlight a point keep a neutral expression and bow your head slightly. Be aware of head and eye movements, overuse of either can be distracting and detract from the point you are trying to make.

Keeping eye contact with the camera shows focus and that you are attentive, but at the same time you can come off as intimidating if you don’t break the focus once in awhile. To do so raise your eyebrows or open your eyes when trying to convey excitement. No need for a death stare…

Also be aware of your overall posture when doing video. The way you sit or stand conveys confidence and credibility.

I know people get nervous when giving a presentation, I still have 30 seconds of fear before any presentation I give. Dealing with technology can exacerbate your nervousness. The key to delivering a relaxed presentation is to prep and practice your delivery.

Finally, once the presentation is done take time to review it. Watching or listening to your presentation isn’t narcissistic, you need to be aware of how you look and sound to improve for the next time.

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9 November, 2010

Presentation Skillz

Many people have recently asked me for advice on presentation skills because I’ve had a number of speaking engagements so I figured I’d share some of my so-called skillz. I’ll do a series of posts because the knowledge I have spans 16 years, and I want to give people the full spectrum.

The rules of software product creation apply to presentations, the main goal of a presenter is to keep people engaged and coming back for more! Sure there’s an element of information exchange, but really a presenter should be entertaining and captivate the audience for the entire length of his presentation. So instead of doing a bunch of how-to posts or lists, I’m going to take a slightly different approach and present narratives based on my experiences as a presenter, which I hope will still be informative and instructive, but mainly fun

Poornima’s first presentation

At the age of 8 I decided I was going to be a lawyer and after watching one too many episodes of Matlock I knew that I had to have good presentation skills, but I was still a little shy four-eyed introvert so it wasn’t until the age of 12 that I signed up for the debate team. The first real presentation I ever did was for the “Optimist Oratorical Contest” it had the tagline: “The time for…”. The grand prize was $1000 towards a college scholarship. I spent 2 months preparing for my presentation. One of my neighbors, Anne-Marie was a 30 something lawyer. I idolized her, because she was articulate and drove a Toyota 4-runner SUV. I asked Anne-Marie if she wouldn’t mind helping me out and she responded that she’d love to.

A picture is worth a 1000 words

I started drafting up my oratory. First thing was to figure out the tagline. I looked up the word optimist to understand what it meant, and then completed the tagline with “The time for action is now!” I sat down outlined my speech, wrote it up with lots of catchy phrases, and then took it to Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie being a sweetheart at the time did what anyone who is approached by a precocious 12 year-old would do, she sat down with me, and proceeded to teach me a few things about speech writing. The first thing I learned was imagery. The words I had chosen were flat, I need to paint a picture in the minds of my audience. She handed me a speech she had written while in law school and I read over it. It visually depicted the effects of alcohol of a fetus and I was appalled, but more importantly I got the point. I took my speech back and changed it to included sentences like “bestowed upon your shoulders”, which is really the only sentence can still remember to this day.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Once I had nailed down my speech in writing I proceeded to practice it. I rehearsed it everyday and timed myself, because it had to be under 5 minutes. On the day of the speech I needed something to calm my nerves and prevent me from forgetting my speech so I outlined it on a notecard. I was one of the presenters in the middle going up against a few other girls my age from other middle schools across the school district, and only knew the one other girl from my school, Margaret. I liked Margaret she was a head taller than me (who wasn’t at the time?) and we were on the debate team together. The speeches began. I got up and was a little nervous presenting to an audience of my peers, their parents, and a few adults who were judging. My heart was racing, but I began the intro strong and then kept going. I didn’t even look down at my notecard, but just held it in my hand and used it to gesture.

Then Margaret got up, I noticed she was the only presenter who didn’t have a notecard or set of papers that she was reading from. Her speech went well.

After all the speeches we took a break while the judges decided our fate. I wasn’t too concerned with the cash prize, because I knew $1000 wasn’t going to be enough for college, but I still held on to a shred of hope. During the break a lot adults came up to me and commended me for my speech, which I thought was OK, but they thought was fantastic. I didn’t see them commending anyone else so my shred of hope got bigger.

Results

The judges came back. We all sat eagerly awaiting. They were going to announce the people who placed and the winner would go on to try out at regionals for the $1000 scholarship. They announced the 3rd place winner, it wasn’t me… I started to get a little excited but was still nervous. Then they announced the 2nd place winner, the announcer paused to pronounce the name slowly… It was me! Wow, second place not bad. Sure I hadn’t won but hey I had placed! Margaret ended up winning.

After the awards I ran into one of the judges, who told me I had the best presentation out of everyone, but the panel had docked me points for using a notecard. DOH! Regardless I liked the feedback and from that day on knew that whenever I did a presentation I would do it empty handed.

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Speaking Engagements

June 2013

Femgineer Forum: Overcoming Insecurities to Innovate (San Francisco, CA) June 10th 6-9pm
Femgineer Forum: Learn to Be a Leading Tech Lady (NYC, NY) June 19th 6-9pm
Tampa Bay Technology Forum: Keynote and Entrepreneurship Working (Tampa, FL) June 26th-27th

May 2013

Startup Product Talks: Two Steps to Make Your MVP a Success (San Mateo, CA) May 15th 630-9pm

April 2013

SHPE: Building Agile Teams (Phoenix, AZ) April 6th
SHPE: Will it Launch? (Sunnyvale, CA) April 27th
TechWatch Interview hosted by Anusha Ramesh of KZSU Stanford Public Radio

March 2013

Product Camp: How to Get Buy-In and Deal with Push Back (San Jose, CA) March 23rd

February 2013

Startup Product Summit (San Francisco, CA) February 7th
Common Mistakes Founders Make hosted by Wharton (San Francisco, CA) February 7th
Global Product Management Talk: Lean Product Development Methodologies For Building And Shipping Products That People Love. February 25th

January 2013

Femgineer Forum: Changing Roles (Burlingame, CA) January 10, 6-9pm

December 2012

The Interview Process: Best Practices for Your Startup (San Francisco, CA) December 5, 2012 6 – 8:30pm.
Parisoma: Technical Recruiting: Techniques to Attract Top Talent (San Francisco, CA) December 8, 2012 9:30am – 12:30pm.
Femgineer Forum: Tech Talk on Compelling Communication Hosted by Twilio (San Francisco, CA) December 13, 2012 6-9pm.
General Assembly SF: Lean Product Development Workshop (San Francisco, CA) December 15, 2012 9am – 1 pm.
General Assembly SF: Scrappy Marketing Strategies: SEO & Email Marketing (San Francisco, CA) December 12, 2012 6:30-9pm.

November 2012

Simple Strategies to Increase Sales (Microsoft Store Valley Fair Mall San Jose, CA) November 6, 2012 8am.
Women Who Code: Technical Interview Workshop (Facebook HQ – Menlo Park, CA) November 7, 2012 6-9pm.
General Assembly SF: Technical Recruiting: Keys to Attracting Top Talent (San Francisco, CA) November 12, 2012 5:30-7pm.
Girl Geek Dinner at Atlassian on November 14, 2012 5:30-8:30pm.

October 2012

SVForum: Women & Leaner Startups (Palo Alto, CA) October 25, 6-9pm.
General Assembly SF: Introduction to Product Development (San Francisco, CA) October 27, 2012 9am-1pm.

August 2012

General Assembly SF: Technical Recruiting for the Non-Technical Founder (San Francisco, CA) August 16, 2012 6:30-8pm.

June 2012

RailsGirls SF: Git on Tracker and Ride the Rails! (San Francisco, CA) June 30, 2012.
Q&A Session on Angel Funding (Web) June 1, 2012 9am PST. For details send me an email.

May 2012

Groupinar: Think You Know the SMB Owner Mind? Guess Again. (Palo Alto, CA) May 31, 2012 5pm. Slides
The Crave Company: Online Money-Makers (San Francisco, CA) May 29, 2012 6pm.
Fearless Female Founders: AirBnB (San Francisco, CA) May 10, 2012 6:30pm.
Social Media Conference Silicon Valley: Mountain View Chamber of Commerce (Palo Alto, CA) May 1, 2012 8am-5pm. Blogging 101 Slides, Blogging 102 Slides,

April 2012

SVForum: Women Angel Investors in Our Midst (DLA Piper, East Palo Alto, CA) April 26, 2012 6-9pm
She++: Stanford’s First Conference for Women in Technology (Stanford, CA) April 21, 2012

March 2012

Women in Leadership Conference: Beyond Mentorship – Women Championing Women (Berkeley, CA) March 3, 2012

February 2012

Technovation Challenge: Market Research & Customer Development. February 14th 5:30-7:30PM (Linkedin, Mountain View, CA) and Feburary 15th 6-8PM (Adobe, San Jose, CA).

August 2011

BayBrazil: Global Women’s Journey – a series on female business leaders around the world (San Jose, CA) August 25, 2011.

November 2010

Deploy: Pre-Launch Prep ( Seattle, WA) November 8, 2010.

October 2010

“Will it Launch?” Entrepreneurship at Duke October 21, 2010, 4pm PST (Skype: femgineer101, #willitlaunch).

August 2010

Zonta Club of Silicon Valley: Topic TBD August 17th, 2010 5:30-7:30pm. (Don Giovanni’s 235 Castro Street Mountain View, CA)

June 2010

Social Developers Summit Scaling Social Analytics (Palace Hotel, San Francisco) June 29, 2010.
Fearless Women Entrepreneur Network: Top Five Female Entrepreneur Must-Have’s (The Hub, SOMA, San Francisco, CA) June 2, 2010, 6-8:30pm.

May 2010

I Don’t Know to CEO: Transforming Passion into Action Taking Flight – Launching a Belief into a Brand (Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University, Stanford, CA) May 1, 2010, 11:15am-12pm.

April 2010

Invent Your Future Conference for Women (Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA): Careers of the Future: Which One is Right for You? Tuesday April 20, 2010, 10:15am – 11:45am.

February 2010

“Will It Launch?” Workshop (Microsoft 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103) February 6-7, 2010.
YII Entrepreneurship Series Podcast February 2, 2010.

January 2010

Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference (Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA): Curious About Coding & Developing: Developing Creativity & Building a Business. Tuesday January 26, 2010.
Duke University MEM Program (Durham, NC): From Duke to Mint: The Blue She-Devil and Successful Silicon Valley Startup. Friday January 22, 2010 4-5pm Schiciano Auditorium.

November 2009

University of Berkeley Computer Science Department (Berkeley, CA): Building an Engineering Team. Wednesday November 3, 2009 6-7pm 310 Soda.

October 2009

Code Camp, Foot Hill College (Los Gatos, CA): When to Build and When to Buy

November 2008

Code Camp, Foot Hill College (Los Gatos, CA): The Evolution of a Scrappy Startup to a Successful Web Service

September 2008

Society of Women Engineers, Duke University (Durham, NC): Starting Your Career at a Silicon Valley Startup

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