The best conference talks are written (without sounding scripted) and performed (while staying authentic).
The title of this post is no accident. There’s more to conference talks than “giving” them. Standing and speaking are the least important parts of what makes a conference talk memorable.
I had the opportunity to write, direct, and was part of delivering Sanity’s “Live by default” talk at Next.js Conf 2024. From all reports, it went quite well.
I’ve given conference talks online and in person before, but this was by far the one I put the most effort into. It’s also the most complex talk I’ve had to coordinate, writing parts of it for other speakers and producing a slide deck designed in-house.
Given its positive reception, I want to share a look into what I consider to be the key ways to elevate a conference talk from meh to memorable.
Conference attendees can learn things at home. They can read the documentation, browse a case study on your website, or watch a tutorial on YouTube. They come to conferences—among other reasons—to see a show. Give them one!
Whatever message you’re trying to get across in your talk will be far more memorable if the audience is entertained while you do it. This can go wrong with jokes that fall flat or if you badly misread the room.
Don’t try to be funny. Aim to be entertaining.
There still has to be substance to your message. You can’t write jokes first and shoehorn in a message later. Write something educational in a way that also happens to be entertaining.
People share photos of great slides; you should anticipate and encourage this behavior.
Your first slide needs punch-in-the-mouth impact, and every slide thereafter should be a non-stop assault of shots to the body. Finish with a haymaker. These are violent metaphors—but do you want your talk to be memorable or not?
A good slide can become a banger tweet, and the impact of your talk goes well beyond the conference.
Start the show with a show-stopper. This sounds counterintuitive, and maybe you have a big pay-off at the end of the talk—but it’s almost guaranteed that your largest engaged audience, on stream and during replays, is with you for the first 30 seconds. Hit them between the eyes.
We’ve all seen a presenter read every word of a slide, and every slide has too many words. These are both mistakes.
Use fewer words—ten per slide at the most—and do everything in your power to not read them. Incorporate them into a longer sentence if you must. Speak around the words on the screen.
Each slide should summarize what you're saying while it is on screen and be written so sharply that people can’t help but take a photo and share it.
Consider incorporating classic storytelling devices. Hooks. Set up a narrative at the beginning that pays off at the end of the talk. Ask questions that trigger the audience’s curiosity.
Giving your talk a narrative arc is far more likely to keep people engaged from start to finish.
Ground your talk in experience, whether yours or someone you know the audience can relate to. Set the foundation early about why you care about this topic, and why they should care.
Include personal stories; this is an investment in establishing your authenticity. You’ll never convince the audience you’re interested in a topic as a bystander or third party. Tell them how and why you’ve got skin in the game. How does this affect or impact you personally?
And where possible, include a miserable story. Everyone’s had a bad day at work and will see themselves in your experience. Or at least buy you some sympathy, which makes for great engagement.
During the "Live by default" talk I ad-libbed a story about being woken up at 3 am with a message asking if the demo still worked. That was completely unplanned. But it hit.
Framing a talk around storytelling is important because it makes your talk personal. This is especially important if your talk—like many of mine—are sponsorship slots. In these instances, I assume that the audience has some built-in skepticism (or cynicism) about the presentation.
I don't want you to feel like I'm selling you something. I want you to know we've solved a problem that I've been burnt by.
Through personal storytelling and immediate impact, my goal is to make you believe—because it’s true—that I genuinely believe in what I’m presenting.
If that’s not true for you or you’re not an elite-level actor, don’t take the stage.
Use your natural tone of voice. Don’t use words from marketing copy that you wouldn’t use in a conversation with your friends.
This was especially important when planning “Live by default” because I was writing a conference talk for others to present (and they did awesomely, obviously). I was careful not to script the talk line-by-line; instead, I wrote outlines for each speaker so they knew the points to hit but would explain them in their own words.
I’ve never been in an audience that rooted against the speaker's live demo. Everyone’s on your side and wants to see it work.
Live demos can be treacherous, especially on flaky conference wifi, but they’re worth it. They bring a sense of unscripted tension to the stage.
Keep it focused. It’s easy to begin rambling while coding. Keep the scope of what you’ll code small so you can still focus on delivering entertainment while getting work done.
Practice. Respect the audience's time.
And relax. A demo that breaks bad is an opportunity to improvise, inserting a hard break into talk that feels overly scripted.
Sure, this sounds trite, but above all, be yourself. This whole post is a framework that works for me—your mileage may vary.
Feel free to ignore any or all of it. Better to be yourself than try to emulate someone else.
