
<p>Public Speaking.</p>



<p>These 2 words put together can either cause your hair to straighten, and palms sweat OR you shrug it off with confidence. I have yet to meet someone who is indifferent to public speaking, love it or hate it.</p>



<p>This is my story of going from someone who could not muster the courage to talk to anyone, to being confident enough in my skills and myself to stand up in front of a large group to speak. </p>



<p>Before you get the wrong impression of me, I still get nervous every time, I still usually keep myself in denial till the very last minute, and sometimes it shows.</p>



<h2>The First Time is the Hardest</h2>



<p>The first time I spoke to a group (outside of school) of larger than 10 was WordCamp LAX 2014. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/alexjvasquez" target="_blank">Alex Vasquez</a> with great hair of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://digisavvy.com/" target="_blank">DigiSavvy</a> convinced me to apply to this WordCamp he was organizing and that my content could be seen of value. He had already convinced me to go to a meetup or two and discuss development there, so how could the hair steer me wrong? </p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><a href="https://la.wordcamp.org/2014/session/wordpress-as-an-application-framework/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="510" src="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-1024x510.png" alt="WordCamp LAX 2014 screenshot of my talk" class="wp-image-2845" srcset="https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-1024x510.png 1024w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-300x150.png 300w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-768x383.png 768w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-1536x766.png 1536w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM-1568x782.png 1568w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.34.02-PM.png 1573w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>The site is <a href="https://la.wordcamp.org/2014/session/wordpress-as-an-application-framework/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">still live</a>, there is my talk.</figcaption></figure></div>



<h3>A Nervous Wreck</h3>



<p>To say butterflies in my stomach would be an understatement to what my stomach was doing. I was a ball of nerves wanting to both cry and run out of the WordCamp to never be seen again. Hindsight, maybe I should have?</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t remember who gave me what advice, but in the weeks and even minutes leading up to my first talk, I asked for any piece of advice I could give about speaking in front of a group. Here are the ones I remember, and used:</p>



<ul><li>When you start to feel losing control, focus on your feet touching the floor, it will literally ground you</li><li>Try to get a good read of the room as you are talking, if you find yourself fixating on certain people, look at the back wall just above everyone&#8217;s head</li><li>Don&#8217;t worry, you&#8217;ll do great</li></ul>



<p>I don&#8217;t remember what else was said, but I do remember I added 1 more thing, and honestly the reception made it for me</p>



<p>As I stood up there, first time, I told the whole audience (last session of a Saturday, kinda packed) that it was my first time speaking, and I was beyond nervous. The WordPress community, being the WordPress community it was, gave me the biggest cheer and applause, and I hadn&#8217;t even said what the name of my talk was yet. It immediately resonated into my core, and while I did have to use the mentioned advice, it was way easier and a lot of the nerves vanished.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>The WordPress community, being the WordPress community it was, gave me the biggest cheer and applause</p><cite>Brutal honesty has its perks</cite></blockquote></figure>



<p>To this day, I am a ball of nerves up till the moment I start talking. It all goes away, part of me knows its because its too late and nothing I can do about it, but part of me always ALWAYS thinks back to that first time and how receptive that were there to hear me talk, were.</p>



<p>Last thing I&#8217;ll say about that first time. It was the most prepared I was for a WordCamp talk, ever. Don&#8217;t be as stupid as me, prepare, it&#8217;ll help. The more prepared the more the knowledge of your talk you&#8217;ll have so it doesn&#8217;t become a thing. Nothing sucks more than not knowing what the next slide is or what you were going to say.</p>



<h2>Want to Improve Your Delivery? Focus on Delivery</h2>



<p>After that first talk and the feedback, I knew I had some interesting content to share. People were receptive, and individuals in the audience that knew what I was talking about asked me many questions.</p>



<p><em>Fun Fact: My future first bosses at Disney were in that audience, and it played a role in me starting my Disney career. I still blame Alex.</em></p>



<p>The one thing I did not do well was delivery. As I scanned the audience I saw a lot of blank stares. I learned later that this also comes from dense material, which most developer talks are. I knew I did not like that, I needed more engagement.</p>



<h3>Give the same talk with iteration</h3>



<p>Over the next year or so I gave the same talk around the US and Canada, each time improving the slides. This allowed me to focus on delivery and increasing engagement. Tweaking the content slightly, but overall giving the same talk to new audiences. I imagine this iteration is similar to stand up comedians methodologies. Start with something, see if it works. If it does, make it better while improving how it engages with the audience.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>Make it better while improving how it engages with the audience</p></blockquote></figure>



<p>Me being me, I also added in fun bits to my talks, I knew if I was going to give deeper talks that required focused, the best way to break it up is laughter.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-wordpress-tv wp-block-embed-wordpress-tv wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe title="VideoPress Video Player" aria-label='VideoPress Video Player' width='500' height='281' src='https://video.wordpress.com/embed/4JglXgBY?hd=1&amp;cover=1' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen allow='clipboard-write'></iframe><script src='https://v0.wordpress.com/js/next/videopress-iframe.js?m=1658470809'></script>
</div><figcaption>#WordCatMTL 2016</figcaption></figure>



<p>By WordCamp Montreal 2016 I and some fellow presenters included things like #WordCatMTL or KittyCount. We injected cats into our slides and the one with with the most would win the respect of cats around the world.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="501" src="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.56.44-PM-1024x501.png" alt="WordCamp Montreal 2017 WordCat slide" class="wp-image-2846" srcset="https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.56.44-PM-1024x501.png 1024w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.56.44-PM-300x147.png 300w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.56.44-PM-768x376.png 768w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-19-at-11.56.44-PM.png 1331w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>From WordCamp Montreal 2017</figcaption></figure>



<p>I think WordCamp 2016 was the last iteration of that talk, and it had evolved into a REST API justification (at the time a controversial topic)</p>



<h3>Find the Delivery that Matches You</h3>



<p>As mentioned, my delivery became inserting humor, jokes, memes, and other fun things into my talks. This broke up the more in depths part of my talk, and was true to me.</p>



<p>Find what you do best and find how to use that in your delivery. It can be humor, or it can be some piece of storytelling. Some presenters like to use personal stories to explain their point, which ultimately helps with the delivery of the content. I actually tried this way of delivery in 2019 (my last talk) about WordPress in the enterprise. This was the first time I did it, and I don&#8217;t think I did it well, but I&#8217;m going to keep on trying. </p>



<h2>Repeat</h2>



<p>Once you have a better understanding, if not a full understanding, of how you best deliver content, repeat.</p>



<p>Start with a new topic, go try it out somewhere like a meetup in a small setting and see what resonates. It doesn&#8217;t? switch it up. You can give the same talk multiple times, with some changes to the content, but bigger changes to how you deliver it.</p>



<h2>Don&#8217;t Expect Perfection</h2>



<p>No matter how many hours you put into your slides, or the research before you make your slides, or the research you put into thinking of a talk to submit, you&#8217;ll know its not perfect. The beauty, only you will know that.</p>



<p>In one of my earlier talks, I skipped whole sections of my content because my nerves. I was talking too fast and couldn&#8217;t get a hold of myself. It was so bad of the 40-50 min.  time slot, I used 20 for my talk. That left about half the time for Q&amp;A which typically only lasts 5-10 min. I was ready to let everyone out early, but questions starting popping up, and an actual conversation started. I think it was about Angular vs. React in use with WordPress REST. It was a good conversation that was tangentially related to my talk. People really appreciated the time to ask questions and have that conversation. </p>



<p>No one knew I skipped a bunch of content.</p>



<p>The only person that cared, was me.</p>



<h2>Closing Remarks</h2>



<p>At the end of the day, public speaking is not for everyone. If you told me in 2013 I&#8217;d love getting up there to talk to a group of 50+ people, I would have laughed. So don&#8217;t push yourself to do something you will never be comfortable doing, it isn&#8217;t worth it.</p>



<p>If you are finding that itch, and you want to speak and enjoy it, try to focus on 1 thing at a time.</p>



<p>When in doubt, Hero Pose.</p>



<p></p>


Hi.

Public Speaking: Nervous Wreck to Slightly Less Nervous Wreck

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