Public Speaking Resources
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This repository contains an ever-growing and -evolving list of resources for public speaking. The primary focus is presenting at technical conferences, but many of the lessons here can be applied to many different public speaking events & audiences.
Contributing
Have a public speaking resource you'd like to contribute? Thank you! We love contributors!
Please have a look at CONTRIBUTING.md for all your contributing needs. :-)
All contributors to and participants in this project (including the IRC channel) agree to abide by the Code of Conduct.
Please contact us if you have any questions about the project or contributing to it.
Resources
Browse below or click here to jump directly to a section:
- General
- Finding a Conference
- Proposing Talks
- Rejections
- Writing presentations
- Presenting talks
- Tools
- Other
General
- 🎥 Speaker Training Workshop by VM Brasseur
- Advice for new speakers by VM Brasseur
- 7 best practices for giving a conference talk by VM Brasseur
- 5 public speaking resolutions for 2019 by VM Brasseur
- A Tactical Guide to Effective Public Speaking for Marketing, Content and Tech Events by Ronell Smith
- Public Speaking by Dr. Keith B. Jenkins, RIT (edX course)
- Introduction to Public Speaking by Matt McGarrity, University of Washington (edX course)
- speaking.io: Thoughts on public speaking by Zach Holman
- Why you should give technical talks by Daphne Rouw
- The art of the keynote by Guy Kawasaki
- A collection of awesome resources about public speaking by Matteo Figus
- 5 Ways to Leave Your Fears Behind and Learn to Love Public Speaking by Kathryn Minshew
- Propose, Prepare, Present by Alistair Croll
- Helpful talk tips! by Paul Ford
- Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story by Tim Urban
- How to start speaking (in tech conferences) by Karen Meep
- An Open Letter To Speakers by Scott Berkun
- How to Become a Public Speaker in 1 Year: Gain the confidence to engage audiences on and offstage by Catt Small
- 🎥 How to get started with technical public speaking! by Scott Hanselman, Kendra Havens, Maria Naggaga Nakanwagi, Kasey Uhlenhuth, and Donovan Brown
- The Three Things I’ve Learned From Eighteen Years of Public Speaking by Jer Thorpe
- 📚 Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan
- 5 years behind the mic by Heidi Waterhouse
- Preparing Talks is Scary by Helen V. Holmes
- 🎧 The Michael Jordan of Tech Talks by Kim Crayton
- On Conference Speaking by Hynek Schlawack
- What You Need to Know About Speaking at Conferences by Ashe Dryden
- Don't send proposals at the last moment by Damir Svrtan
- How to be an Android Expert by Chiu-Ki Chan (scroll down to Call for Proposals section of this post)
- Three things you don’t need to become a speaker by Karolina Szczur
- Who am I to give this talk by Thomas Ballinger
- How public speaking made me a better leader (and vice-versa) by Yash Prabhu
- 🇨🇳 新手演讲：走上演讲台的第一步 作者：Ivan Eye
- 🇹🇼 學術會議英文社交演講技巧 作者：Dr Fiona Hu
- Why I Speak at Developer Conferences by Heidi Waterhouse
- What I've learned after giving 100 talks by Zeno Rocha
- Technical Speaker Starter Kit by Cory House
- 5 Essential Ingredients for an Awesome Tech Talk by Dave Neal
- give actionable takeaways by Bridget Kromhout
- The Portland Experience; Confessions of a First Time Speaker @DevOpsDaysPDX by Jason Grimes
- A problem like public speaking by Maria Neumayer
Finding a Conference
Tech conferences are not the only way to do public speaking. You can find local users groups on Meetup and similar sites that might be interested in hearing your talks, as well!
- How To Get Speaking Engagements by Sam Jarman
Aggregators of CFPs and Conferences
A CFP is a "Call For Papers", "Call For Proposals", or "Call For Participation" depending on the conference.
- Opensource.com Events Calendar
- Papercall.io, tech with a DevOps focus
- WikiCFP, primarily academic and industry * conferences
- DevOps Conferences
- confs.tech
- Central US Community Tech Events
- Mozilla Tech CFPs (all events welcome, not just Mozilla ones)
- Lanyrd (Conferences and CFPs)
- CFP Time
- ConferenceList (conferences only)
- Conference Radar
- Code And Talk (Conferences and CFPs)
- KDNuggets, primarily data-focused conferences
- IT CFP List - List of IT conferences Call For Papers, changes are also published via Twitter @ItCfpList
- CFP Land
- Techmeme Events List
- conferCal
Mailing lists with tech CFPs
Technically Speaking, emphasizes inclusive conferences with stipends(This newsletter is on indefinite hiatus)
Proposing talks
- 🎥 Writing a great conference talk submission by VM Brasseur
- Community Pulse: How to Submit the Best CFP of Your Life (And What to Do When It Gets Accepted) by VM Brasseur and the Community Pulse Podcast Team
- Proposing a Compelling Fluent Talk by Simon St. Laurent
- Sample Proposals for O'Reilly Conferences By O'Reilly Media
- 🎥 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations by Matthew McCullough
- How to craft a successful OpenStack Summit proposal by Nicole Martinelli
- How to Write a Conference Talk Proposal by Rikki Endsley
- Three tips for getting a talk accepted at Fluent… or any other technology conference, tbh. by Ben Vinegar
- How to Write a Successful Conference Proposal by Karolina Szczur
- How to write a good submission by CodeMash (scroll down to the relevant & very helpful section of the page)
- Writing winning abstracts by Marcy Sutton
- Finding Your Killer Talk Idea by Rachel Nabors
- SpeakerLine, built by Nadia Odunayo to showcase speakers' proposals and timelines to demystify the CFP process and help new speakers get started.
- Preparing a talk: before you start by Julia Ferraioli
- Your Abstract Sucks by Clark Sell
- 🎥 CFP Advice by Raquel Vélez and Sarah Mei
- 🎥 How to Write a Conference Proposal by Chiu-Ki Chan
- What Your Conference Proposal Is Missing by Sarah Mei
- A Process for Writing an Abstract by Cate Huston
- How to come up with conference proposal ideas by Lucy Bain
- Finding Your Killer Talk Idea by Rachel Nabors
- Writing Conference Proposals by Rebecca Murphey
- How to write a compelling proposal by the We Are All Awesome Blog authors
- Is Your Conference Proposal Good Enough? by Raquel Vélez
- Addendum About Conference Proposals by Chris Williams
- Don’t Fear the CFP by Matt Stratton
Writing a bio
- How to Write a Personal Biography for a Conference by Elle Smith
- How to Write an Academic Bio for Conferences by Sophie Shorland (most tips here apply to technical conferences as well as academic)
- 🎥 Crafting Your Biography by Danielle Barnes
Rejections
- Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected by Sarah Gray
- WHY YOU SHOULD AIM FOR 100 REJECTIONS A YEAR by Kim Liao
- On conference proposal rejections by Tracy Osborn
- On collecting no's by Katie McLaughlin
- 🎥 #speakerlife lightning talk (slides) by John Anderson
- Rejection & Revision: On Improving Conference Proposals by Alaina Kafkes
Writing presentations
- slidelint: Checks for common problems in presentation slides!
- Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns by Troy Hunt
- 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations video by Matthew McCullough
- The Secret Structure of Great Talks by Nancy Duarte
- 3 Steps to Better Presentation Visuals by Harvard Business Review
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
- The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut
- A white-label slide deck by Alice Bartlett
- Your slides do matter by Davey Shafik
- Experienced speakers discuss how they prepare their talks by Neil Bowers
- A Checklist for More Persuasive Presentations by Dorie Clark
- How to prepare and write a tech conference talk by Lena Reinhard
- A Public Speaking Experiment: Blank Slides by Florina Muntenescu
- How I Create Talks by Michele Titolo
- My presentation workflow and challenges by Lara Hogan
- 🎥 Top Tips for Terrible Tech Talks by Chet Haase
- The Art of Slide Design by Melinda Seckington (🎥 video of this content
- Preparing a talk: writing your talk by Julia Ferraioli
- Choosing Colors for Data Visualization
Presenting talks
- How to give a great talk, the lazy way by Donnie Berkholz
- Give a Great Tech Talk 2 by Josh Berkus
- How To Give a Great Ignite Talk by Scott Berkun
- Women Who Code panel discussion on preparing for and speaking at technical conferences (video)
- 4 Secrets to Giving a Speech Worthy of a Standing Ovation by Baron Schwartz
- 10 things you should NEVER say during presentations by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
- Let's stop tormenting speakers about these four normal qualities by Denise Graveline
- 7 tips for learning how to give a technical talk by Ala Hino
- Speech Anxiety for Game Developers by Brie Code
- Preparing For Your First Talk by Yash Prabhu, presented at ElaConf 2015
- Speaking and Nerves by Cate Huston
- Tradecraft of Public Speaking by Alex Moundalexis
- Public Speaking for Nerds by Barbara Shaurette
- Public Speaking without Barfing on Your Shoes by David Neal
- Preparing a talk: presenting by Julia Ferraioli
- How to make your OpenStack Summit talk a big success by Anne Bertucio
- Presenting presenting by Chet Haase
- 🇨🇳 向柴静学习21个演讲技巧 来源：培训经理指南
- 🇨🇳 如何雕琢一场“走心”的技术演讲，让听众放下手机 作者：刘芸
- 🇨🇳 如何做一场像TED一样精彩的技术演讲 作者：西涛
- 🇹🇼 18個PPT演講的技巧，讓你的提案能力提高N倍 來源:瘋狂簡報
- In which the Floor is open by David Malki !
- 🎥 Your Perfect Tech Talk by Saron Yitbarek
- 🎥 Intro to Public Speaking: The day of your talk by Jessica Rose
- 11 Things You Should Never Say During A Presentation by Bernard Marr
Tools
Slides
- Ask HN: What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there?
- 4 Markdown-powered slide generators
- Deckset
- Ultradeck
- sent
Demos
- demoshell A simplified shell for live demonstrations. It always shows the command prompt at the top of the screen and pushes command output down instead of letting iscroll up.
Code
- carbon.now.sh A tool for generating images of pleasantly sized and highlighted code for slides.
Other
- How do conference speakers get compensated by Curtis "Ovid" Poe
- 10 ways for a conference to upset their speakers by Troy Hunt
- Strategies For Attracting More of the “Underrepresented” Onto the Conference Stage by Kim Crayton
- LADY SPEAKER SMALL TALK by Heidi Waterhouse
- How To Ask To Get Paid To Speak by Seb Lee-Delisle
- A Formula For Speaking Fees by Jenn Lukas
- How to Land Your First Paid Speaking Gig by Dorie Clark
- 🎥 Carrying On: Tech Travel Lessons by Kara Sowles
History & acknowledgments
This collection of resources started as a bibliography for a public speaking tutorial written & presented by VM (Vicky) Brasseur and Josh Berkus.
Since that tutorial, the collection continued to grow as Vicky located new resources to add to the list. While the collection was public, it was buried. This repository brings it out into the light and makes it easy for everyone to locate, use, and contribute to it.
Immense thanks due to Josh for helping build the initial collection of resources. Thank you, Josh!
Licensing
While the individual works in this list each have their own copyright and licensing, this work itself is copyright VM Brasseur. All contributors retain copyright to their contributions to the work.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Please see LICENSE.md for more information.
