Preparing to Present - Thoughts of a Speaker

From our guest blogger, Terry McKenzie, at Sun Microsystems...

Have you noticed? Conference season is right around the corner!

My email box is filled with enticing offers to sign up for events, and my datebook has a few fun speaking engagements in it (a couple of them for Melcrum!). So I've been busy, busy, busy writing talks - and practicing them on my poor beleaguered staff (yes, you do have to hear me again, and yes, you will hurt my feelings if you don't do a more enthusiastic courtesy laugh for my better lines!).

Let me tell you what's so great about speaking at conferences, at least for me. It forces me to take a lot of stuff that's been floating around my head for months and use it to actually tell a story. In the average 10 hours it takes me to put together a decent presentation, I go from unconscious competent to conscious competent. That's a pretty good return on investment. Not only does it provide a good sharing experience in a formal setting, but it sets me up to apply learnings to other situations that I might otherwise have missed.

My process of writing a presentation starts with a rough outline, and I then go on to waste way too much time on a clever opening, including surfing the net for photos I can use without breaking copyright law or paying usage fees. I find this enormously entertaining, and when I finally get serious about writing the meat of the presentation, feel great sadness at letting go of such images as this:

or this:

Alas...

Anyway, as a development opportunity for my staff, I have a standing offer that goes like this: Anyone who would like to take the learnings from a particular project or initiative and turn them into a talk has my support in two ways:

First, I'll work with them on their presentation, both content and style.

Second, if the presentation is good enough, I'll help them find a venue to present.

In the two years I've made this offer, I've had a couple takers. The result? We can talk with good authority about outsourcing, change management, manager communication training, CEO transition, and now...social networking.

We all get smarter and all gain ways to network with the communication community. The staff member gains confidence in speech writing and presentation skills, plus meets lots of great people. A win/win for all...

So I look forward to the start of the fall conference season.  Hope to see many of you there... And don't worry, no Davy Crockett hats to look out for - I've edited that image from all my talks!