Finding Something Worth Saying
After a decade curating UX London and Leading Design, I’ve watched thousands of presentations. That volume makes patterns clear: some talks land beautifully, others leave the room restless. But before worrying about delivery, you need to get on stage in the first place.
A common misconception is that you need a brand-new concept nobody has ever explored. That’s rarely the case. I can count on one hand the times a genuinely novel idea appeared in a talk. In a hyper-connected industry, ideas spread faster than a conference planning cycle. By the time a “groundbreaking” idea reaches a stage, the speaker has usually already blogged, tweeted, and presented it elsewhere. What matters instead is the personal filter you bring to a topic. Someone can say a subject like OKRs or usability testing is done to death — but your specific experience, the challenges you hit, and how you worked through them are unknown.
There’s also a constant stream of newcomers. Techniques I’ve assumed were baseline knowledge often turn out to be entirely unfamiliar to a room. The industry atrophies when core practices from a decade ago stop getting mentioned. So what feels obvious to you may be new to someone else.
If you’re unsure where to start, a case study is a reliable route. Pick a project, explain your approach, the problems, and how you solved them. You already know the material deeply, which helps with nerves.
Prep: What It Actually Takes
Another mistake is feeling compelled to write a fresh talk for every event. That also stems from insecurity. In reality, most people won’t watch your video at all, and those who do will retain a fraction of it. Talks are context-sensitive — I watched Jeff Veen’s talk five times and enjoyed it each outing, not because it changed, but because I had.
The most obvious reason to reuse a talk is that performance improves with repetition. I find it takes three or four outings to hit a talk’s stride. Only then do you learn which parts resonate, where structure drags, what pacing works, and how to land key ideas. Giving a talk once means you’re delivering something at maybe 60% of its potential. A practitioner’s guideline: budget an hour of preparation for every minute of content. A 45-minute talk requires roughly a week’s work. Write it the night before and you risk a mediocre performance — and don’t expect another invitation.
Performing, Not Presenting
No subject survives a monotonous speaker for 45 minutes. Treat the talk as a performance. Your voice is an instrument: shift speed, pitch, and volume. Excitement calls for fast and bright; when you want the room to lean in, slow down and lower your voice. Physical space matters too. The lectern might feel safe, but the best speakers use the entire stage — stepping forward to address the audience personally, or separating sides of the stage for different ideas.
How you open matters enormously. You do not need a 20-minute bio. I’ve seen a talk start with exactly that and lost a third of the room before the main content began. One effective trick is to open in the middle of something intense: “So all of a sudden, my air cut out. I was in a cave, underwater, in the pitch black.” The audience stops checking their phones. A series of open questions takes hold, and you have bought yourself a few minutes of undivided attention to frame the rest of the talk.
Likewise, avoid long preamble. Speakers often spend so much time bringing everyone to a baseline that they rush the genuinely valuable parts. Assume some prior knowledge. If parts stretch or even fly over heads, that’s acceptable — it may prompt curiosity afterward. But teaching absolute basics will make experienced attendees zone out, and winning them back becomes tough.
Also be wary of formulaic structures. A “listicle” talk — here are twelve things, one by one — makes everyone conscious of the clock. Reading bullet points off a screen is similarly doomed: the audience can scan ahead faster than you can speak, so they already know what you’re about to say. Keep the lists in your notes and let your slides carry images or a strong title instead.
Walking On Stage Without Falling Apart
Feeling nervous before a talk is normal — even seasoned performers get it. What separates a good talk from a painful one is how you manage that energy. One trick is to memorize the first five minutes of your talk. Then, even if your mind goes blank backstage, you already have a scripted runway that lets you settle into the material before you need to improvise.
That’s why opening with a story works well: it's easier to remember, and you can naturally adjust the telling to what’s happening in the room. Combined with memorizing the opening, it gives you the best possible start.
The bigger strategy, though, is preparation and practice. Read your whole talk out loud, several times. It’s surprising how often words look fine on a slide or in your head, but fall apart when spoken aloud. Practice on colleagues or friends if you can, and do dry runs at smaller local meetups before hitting the big stage. The more your material is burned in, the less anxious you’ll be on the day.
Relatedly, don’t fall for the “I wing it” bravado. Some speakers brag about minimal prep or late nights, but this often just preempts a poor performance — a bit like the classmate who claims they never studied but then gets a B- and wonders if an A was within reach. Ignore the posturing, and instead make sure you are well rested and well prepared. It's the better way to set yourself up for success.
It’s also worth re-framing how you think about butterflies before you go on. Call it “excitement” rather than “nerves,” and remember it’s your body preparing you to perform. That energy is useful — if you can keep it from spilling out in counterproductive ways.
Shifting, Fidgeting, and Filler Words
The tricky part is channelling that nervous energy. This is where a common phenomenon I call the “speaker square dance” happens: shifting weight from foot to foot, or stepping forward, sideways, and back like a restless animal. It’s very distracting for the audience, even if it soothes the speaker. If you can, plant your feet and move only with deliberate intent — for instance, when you want to emphasize a point.
The other giveaway of nerves is the filler pattern: umms, ahs, and audible hesitation while you search for your next thought. Speakers often do this to buy time mid-sentence, but it sounds like a lack of preparation. Replace it with actual pauses between concepts — a kind of auditory whitespace that lets the audience absorb one idea before you move on.
And just to be clear: these are criticisms from experience. These are habits I recognize in my own delivery and am working to fix — with inconsistent success.
Audience Engagement — Where It Goes Wrong
Audience participation can be a great pressure valve: it takes attention off you for a few minutes while people interact with each other. The side benefit is increased engagement, and though these sessions give the speaker a breather, they need careful choreography. Otherwise, they go wrong in one of two common ways.
First, there’s the cultural mismatch. I’ve seen a very upbeat American speaker bounce up and down conference aisles in Northern Europe, trying to get high-fives and whoops going with an audience that found the entire display deeply embarrassing. What thrives as crowd-engagement in Vegas can flatline with audiences who would rather, well, curl up and die than engage in that kind of spontaneous interaction. And it’s an example of why audience participation goes wrong more often than right inn certain settings.
Then there’s the flip side: if you’ve managed to get people talking, you’re not always able to stop them. Speakers ask people to “introduce yourselves to someone sitting next to you” and then cut them off thirty seconds later, when they were just warming up. If you plan an interactive segment, leave enough time for it to become a meaningful connection, and have a strategy to bring everyone’s focus back to the stage when you’re done.
One more nuance on speaker “human-ness.” A couple of clichés get repeated at nearly every conference: jokes about how the talk was only written the night before, or about nights out drinking before the talk. The first speaker is “endearingly disheveled”; by the third, it’s clear nobody listened to anybody else. There’s a thin line between appearing humble and signaling that you don’t really care about the audience. Speakers worth watching are the ones who’ve watched their peers and can reference what was said in earlier talks rather than cycling through the same old jokes.
And a note of caution on one particular “last speaker of the day” gag — joking that you’re the only thing standing between the room and beer makes two assumptions: that the crowd is there for the drink above all, and often, that overconsumption is fair game. I find that one worth dropping.
Nice Speakers Get Invited Back
While you may think your next invitation depends on your last talk going well, conference organizers have a different matrix. Organizing an event means keeping track of many speakers with wildly different response times and schedules. Some speakers say “yes” readily, then fall off the grid for months — while ticket sales, site launches, travel bookings and hotel rates march on. Making a coordinator chase you for basic details is straight-forwardly unhelpful.
Especially when costs rise the longer you delay. The fix is easy: reply to your emails in good time, nail down your talk description, send your bio and headshot, and confirm travel and accommodation far enough out to lock in decent prices.
The speakers who get booked again are not necessarily the strongest performers, but the most reliable ones to work with. This is actually a reason the same faces keep cropping up on event schedules: it’s the confidence of organizers in a proven-to-be-risk-free logistical line, not necessarily the absence of other great voices. Word gets around in organizer Slack groups too — and speakers who disappear or drip-feed their filing become former speakers very quickly. If you treat an organizer as a partner in getting your message out, they’ll treat you the same way back. And that’s what truly makes you a return act.
Speaking Can Be a Career Boost — Or Just a Good Time
Beyond the practical advice, it’s worth remembering that speaking is genuinely enjoyable. It opens doors to conferences you might not otherwise attend, puts you in direct contact with speakers you’ve long admired, and offers a real sense of accomplishment in sharing what you know. Many assume speakers are all extroverts, but the format actually suits introverts well: having given a talk, you suddenly have a natural conversation starter, making post-talk mingling far less awkward.
That said, don’t feel any pressure to become a speaker. The idea that you need “conference speaker” on your LinkedIn profile to advance is a misconception — plenty of the most successful people in this industry never speak publicly. It’s not a career impediment.
If you do want to share your experience, though, the current climate is favorable. In-person events have declined since the pandemic, but those that remain are actively looking for new, diverse voices. If you’re curious, there’s little to lose and potentially much to gain by putting yourself out there.
Further Reading On Conference Speaking
The following resources offer deeper dives into the craft and business of public speaking.
- “Breaking into the speaker circuit,” by Andy Budd. Advice from someone who both organizes and speaks at events, written as a quick reference for those frequently asking how to get started.
- “Confessions of a Public Speaker,” by Scott Berkun. A practical insider’s look at what great communicators do, drawn from fifteen years of speaking to audiences of all sizes.
- “Demystifying Public Speaking,” by Lara Hogan. A guide to identifying and facing fears ahead of any presentation, from team meetings to conference stages.
- “Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Presentation Design,” by Nancy Duarte. A book addressing the gap in visual communication training, offering methods for crafting effective slides.
- “Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery,” by Garr Reynolds. A revised take on reaching audiences through simplicity and storytelling in presentations.
- “How To — Public Speaking,” a video talk by Ze Frank. A short visual resource with useful perspectives on speaking.
- “Getting Started In Public Speaking: Global Diversity CFP Day,” by Rachel Andrew. A roundup of takeaways and resources from an event aimed at helping new speakers submit proposals.
- “Getting The Most Out Of Your Web Conference Experience,” by Jeremy Girard. A look at how to choose among the many web conferences, given the industry’s need for continuous learning.
- “Don’t Pay To Speak At Commercial Events,” by Vitaly Friedman. An examination of the toxic financial culture at some commercial conferences, where speakers are often left covering their own travel and lodging.
- “How to make meaningful connections at in-person conferences,” by Grace Ling. A concise Twitter thread with practical tips for networking at live events.
