Conference season is here. Which means many of you are currently staring at a presentation, maybe moving around slides, rehearsing the intro, or practicing the Q&A. That’s where almost everyone puts their effort … because it feels like the talk is the thirty minutes on stage.
But I think of conference talks differently. The time on stage is only the middle of the story. What happens before people decide to walk into your session and what happens after they walk out of it decide at least as much whether your presentation disappears with the rest of the program or whether it will be the one people can’t stop talking about.
And that has very little to do with the structure of your slides or your delivery on stage.
Here are four things to consider, beyond the actual time on stage, that will make your talk much more effective.
1. How will they speak about your talk during the coffee break? What will attendees of your talk say to those who were in parallel tracks? And what will they pass along to their colleagues when they’re back in the office? If you start there and build your talk towards this, you won’t let your audience look for it.
→ Write the pass-along phrase before you write the talk.
2. What will be on the photo? At every conference, phones go up to take photos of slides. These photos land in LinkedIn posts, team chats, and the trip report. Design your slides with that in mind and leave the crucial ones on screen long enough for the phones to come out.
→ Make your key slides photo-friendly.
3. Do they have a reason to seek you out? A talk that answers every question sends people straight to the next session. Hold back one thing deliberately: a case you mention but don’t unpack, a question you ask but don’t fully resolve. Then tell the room where you’ll be standing afterwards. The people who come to you are the ones for whom your topic is a live problem, and that conversation is often worth more than the talk itself.
→ Hold back a piece of the puzzle on purpose.
4. Will they even come to your session? Most conferences run parallel tracks. Two of my clients, Kathy and Dell, found a brilliant way to compel people to choose theirs. They left postcards around the conference site on the tables to pull in people. It worked: 18 concurrent sessions were running at the same time, and their room was packed with about 400 people.
→ Design a postcard with a question only your talk can answer.
An exclusive live session: Before You Take the Stage
I know that many of the tips are easier said than done, especially when you’re the expert and people around you don’t (or can’t) give you honest feedback. That’s why, for the first time this year, I’m offering a free public Talk Lab for those of you with an upcoming conference talk or presentation.
It’s going to be a hot-seat format and it’s the only way to get direct feedback from me outside a private Talk Lab.
Bring your most pressing questions about making your talk work and we’ll address them on Oct 1st, 5pm Berlin time / 11 am New York time. If you’d rather just watch and learn, that’s fine, too.
It’s free to attend. Hot-seat spots are limited and require a short questionnaire, which you can fill out after signing up (to ensure an efficient session and effective feedback). I’ll select them based on where I believe I can help the most, both the speaker and everyone watching. Expect 10-15 minutes per seat. If there’s no time for your question, I will reply with my thoughts via email.
Hope to see you there: michaelgerharz.com/live
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
PS: If you’d rather have private help, consider a 1:1 Talk Lab.
