Building A Talk The Boring Way - James Bore

from submission not kind just our surroundings to delivery and I'm this is basically running through a talk I recently submitted built and delivered for BS this is my approach to doing it it's not the one and only approach it's one that has worked possibly more than it should over about a decade so here we go at least here we go if I can get that there we go fstep plan first find inspiration usually this is something that annoys me off on LinkedIn second find a cfp somewhere that's doing a call for papers that's asking will people do talks for us not one of those ones that says do a call for papers and we'll accept it and then

we'll charge you £2,000 to attend only three ones third create an outline this is for me usually a list of things that I want to get across in the talk I start with a long list and then I'll cut it down then build the presentation and then deliver the talk one of the biggest mistakes I think you can make is trying to do the last three steps before the second one submit the talk before you're starting to build it you're not trying to build something perfect you're trying to submit an idea and if they like the idea then you can put the work in you only need about the paragraph at most to do the cfp side I now usually get away

with two three sentences and somehow people can spot that is me so finding inspiration well for the talk I'm talking about this gets very meta excuse me um what I found was a whole load of posts on LinkedIn and news articles and similar saying 70% of ransomware attacks targets businesses and I I like numbers and I realize that's unreadable but most of them are about how 70% of France and where Target small businesses and therefore buy our product and we'll solve it for you um that irritated me and because it irritated me I then said I'm going to go and talk about this and talk about it to people who will either find it annoying

humorous or care possibly all three so the next step was answer cfp now you can't see it at all on here which is less than useful but on the other side of this in this vague white area with a few gray smudges you have whole things like What's the title of your tour what's your elevator pitch 30 words or so what's your talk format that means how long is it I mean this one I put it in at 30 minutes I think they gave me nearly an hour never expect it to be what you're asking for what's the audience level is it expert technical people is it anyone and then a description and that's it that's

all you need to put in for the actual submission it is surprisingly easy to do and once you've put it in place and submitted it and they've gone oh yes we accept it you know you've got a week before the conference now so usually long from that but sometimes it's weak and sometimes your computer locks in the middle of present so you then go through you fill that in honestly it's only once it's being accepted that it's worth building people get hung up on oh but I want it to be right no deal with that offs you've got an idea submit the idea if people want to hear that idea they will accept it they will say to you yeah

we want you to come and be a speaker and we'll give you a special t-shirt and a free ticket Tre TI it's the important bit put it all together submit it wait do not worry about it you can have it bouncing around at the back of your L but submit it first then worry about fetching equally don't pursue Perfection that's not worth it uh create an outline so my outline was I want to talk about statistics I was irritated by the LinkedIn post and therefore I figured other people will be irritated by the LinkedIn post so I said well my first slide is going to be here the LinkedIn post it irritated me it probably

irritates you let's talk about why uh next I wanted to raise the lack of source now this is specific to cyber security communities and certain other technical ones we love puns therefore the lack of source was a lack of source check then show a statement from the people who were cited with that statistic where they said yeah we never actually said this we just referenced something else that we later found out to be wrong and so we refracted it then I wanted to break it down and going to the mathematics of okay but what if that 70% was Happ well it's not unrealistic because 99.99% of businesses are small businesses 70% they're doing pris work common mistakes in statistics that

was a natural lead on spotting made up numbers because that's another bug bear of mine and then questions contact slide I do not recommend doing a question slide we'll see one in a bit because what happens is you go any questions and you get a deadly silence there's two ways to deal with that one is to have someone prepped with a question and it might be your MC it might be friendly people in the audience you've had quick word with and said by the way when I say any questions if you can just stick your hand up and I'll call on you if you ask me this question I'm prepared and I sound really confident and that will also let

everyone else in the audience have permission to think up and ask their own questions and then the other thing often missed out in talks is after that and this is something you will probably need to talk to the MC about you want a call to action you do the questions and you want a fair were because there are a few things more depressing than going a final any questions obiously there aren't any important sadly off the stage so a call to action say just remember numbers lie to you markers are going to use numbers to you in this particular case whatever it might be have that call to action have that final message so we've done the submission the outline

is just a load of bullet points is I want to do this the next thing I do other people will say well you need to craft them you need to narrow them down you need to cut them out they're not wrong they just have a different approach my Approach may or may not work for you but the next thing I do is start building out slides and I do that directly from the outline so my rules for slides never ever more than three main points per slide I us usually try to stick to one as you will see in this case no more than three points per slide no more than three words per Point what's important to know is these

are guidelines not laws and the important thing about guidelines is if you're going to break them know why you're break it break it I had slides which are almost full of text one of the earliest ones had a whole load of LinkedIn posts I'm not expecting everyone to read with that but that's a lot of text on the side and yeah it's a guideline there's all sorts of rules and Frameworks and different things for building presentations and they are useful but they're not legally enforced no one will arrest you for using five words per point no one will arrest you for using five points per side maybe they should but they won't so the key thing about those is no

I'm goinging against the general advice why am I doing it am I doing it because my computer keeps locking because someone probably unplugged it but know why and when you're doing it be intentional when you're breaking these things even if you've chosen completely inappropriate rules it forces you to think about it so the case study because recycling is big and clever everyone loves recycling this was the one I built which I delivered a few weeks ago now uh the numbers game obviously clever use of numbers for Le speak in the title because it's a security conference come on there's my link inside to open it screenshot that one was mocked up because I don't like calling the

individuals out because they sue me or threaten to and then throwing in other bits and pieces repeating the statistic emphasizing the point and more importantly saying this is the problem this is the thing that really irritated me enough that I'm willing to stand on stage and talk to you about it doesn't have to be something that irritates you could be something you're passionate about could be something you don't care about in the least but someone's paying you to stand there and explain it to people but you've got to have a reason and you really want to emphasize that if it's because you're being paid to do it pretend your passion if it's because it's irritated you or you actually care

then just lean on that there were a lot of those po so next step was what's missing nice heading and here we go with the joke The Source if you can get an exra joking by doing old Wars hot sauce your surname is for or better people love puns and you know ones that pump up your own ego brilliant then going into the reference from the agency or the alliance who actually had that whole statistic and said yeah that's not what we said and you will keep referencing it and here is our statistic saying we didn't say that stop doing it which everyone ignores because Mar just do that then the maths now this is always a

challenge because people don't like a lot of text you'll notice more than three words per point and here it was just a breakdown there are people who will say never use animations and slides those people are wrong because use animations and slides when you are trying to make point and with this one as you saw it was broken down so that I could introduce each indiv to step one by one and it all stays up there so if I was given this actual presentation I was gone through this is what a micro small and medium business is this is a large business this is the numbers involved and at each one of those because in an

Ideal World I've I've remembered my clicker I one click and then done a dramatic yeah there's 5 and a half million small businesses which are micro small and medium it's 72% of UK businesses have no employees fun fact so statistically speaking 98 99.86% blah blah blah I've now made my point I've sourced it I got a reference at the bottom which is surprisingly read on this source and 0.14% are large businesses or not small to medium businesses so 70% of tax against small businesses really small businesses keep it up then more Ma how many taxs there are blah blah blah more R than supporting that original point or contradicting that Original Point thing that irritated

me and explaining why because I asked about the numbers behind it and whether it made sense to do it as this big alarm thing of small businesses are always targeted running through the mistakes this was just following on so another of points I was making in the outline I always go into the statistical mistakes that people make well how do I do that pie charts newspapers love pie charts newspapers love pie charts which don't show proportions for how can I illustrate that s CH visual representations work a lot better than text your ones when you're presenting there's also the fact that if you're presenting genuinely you want people focusing on you not on your slides what happens if you have a slide

filled with text is first thing people do is read it if you've got 50 words on that that's for most people 3 to 5 Seconds of reading so if you're immediately blasting into I'm going to talk about this slide they've got three to 5 Seconds of processing time with t before they start listening to you again we can only do one thing at a time that requires Focus we can do multiple things at a time that don't but one thing that requires Focus so if you're presenting and you want to present something with lots of text put it up give yourself a pause take a drink also because you're thirsty and let them read it CHS are always fun again lots are

always fun there is there is a genuine load of research out there that shows that people remember things that drive engagement if you can make people laugh during your presentation I would not recommend this for a eulogy in most cases having said that sometimes it's worthwhile having that b sweet love but if you can make people long for smile during your presentation that's something that sticks when the big secrets are presenting is no one actually cares none of you are going to go home and wake up at night thinking oh I've got to remember what James said about 100% moment you walk out there is probably going to drift away but you'll remember oh that bit was funny what was

the point Mak so emotional engagement and laughter are big things and incident the number of breweries in the United States do correlate with solar power generated in Peru and the website up there tyler.com fous correlations they've now introduced AI which gives explanations of the complete nonsense correlations more pictures I prefer pictures to text sometimes I'll just do a picture rather than text slides are actually option you I could present this without the slides and it would be almost the same except you'd have to try and remember the math effects but people to lean on them more than they should the slide is a fult the notes can be important particularly with things like my introduction to information Theory

where I have to remember a whole load of stuff including formula and that're hard but most of the time you only need an image or not even an image the slide's useful because it gives you something to gesture dramatically at that makes it look like you're speaking to an authoritative Source cherry picking data absence of evidence is not not equal to evidence of absence that I had a whole slide on logical symbols because I like them but we on that most importantly never trust marketing research or anyone telling you how to presentent house spot fake numbers we avoid zero I'm going to skin through this this is a presentation I gave but these are just a load of bullet

points that I wrote down under that original set saying well how do you sp fers okay is five tips custy sequences no doubles people don't like doubles and random numbers and benefit lovely one then the contact side so this is where you'd say right that was everything any questions I'm not going to do that now call to action if someone's using numbers to make a point ask questions then we go into deliver it we've built the slides brilliant how do we deliver it well that's readable enough remember it's an extreme s once you've stepped on stage it is like skydiving you know you've jumped out of the plane there's one way that you're going to go whether you pull the

parachute in time or not that's that's tomorrow's problem very briefly so things to remember you care more than anyone in the audience you are the only one focused on mistakes that you're making you are the only one paying attention to everyone lives in their own head in their own world so no one is going to remember your mistakes except as I do sometimes say if you set Parts Mage if you can avoid that you're probably doing okay planting questions is fair play it's not just fair play is a really good idea if you know where you're going to speak if you know someone in the audience or if you have the MC or anything else quick word beforehand to

say hey can you ask this question when I ask questions it just breaks that eyes otherwise everyone's Frozen Dearing head it's horrendous there are a few things more terrifying to us speaking go any questions everyone go didn't realize this was interactive last water is your friend I say water for legal reasons but one of the big tips that you can use is if you've forgotten what you're saying if you start to stumble if you start to um uh like pull in pause words and you get overc conscious about it take a Sit no one's going to care about that because that's something you do so your voice is getting TI and that gives you a few seconds just go oh yeah

I remember what I was talking about now so a gloss of water some sort of prop that you can use to just go right yeah that's where I was I'll carry on don't do a question slide because again it's that during head and there are cases you might want to but in most cases if you're presenting it's either to convince people to make a decision that's business presentations which are slightly different or it's for a mix between education entertainment to action in which case the question slide is wasted because everyone knows that you just said any questions and their brains immediately paralyze them so instead a context you want people to be able to talk to you without that top

afterwards because they care about it too and they couldn't think it then but they want to get in touch and if you're going to Dr rules or guidelines no matter which presentation your framew you're using do it deliberately think about it and consider it and really be intentional about it I'm not saying it's a bad thing to create those rules it's a great thing to create them that if you're going to do it they're there to make you think why am I doing this anyway any [Music] questions PL the question D

how so I I'm a p this um lots of people like to rehearse or write it out beforehand I do not like to write it out beforehand at all I will do in certain very narrow cases and that's where it is something like eulogy or a wedding address or mcing where no I really need to get this WR but in most cases it's a mixure between information and bullets because that lets me look at the audience see are they smiling are they happy are they engaged if they're not I'm going to just Shuffle that skip through it because that's not so relevant see if I can present it way that doesn't apply to everyone it's

very personal thing so a lot of people aren't comfortable doing that that's not that they're wrong and unri right although I am it's that it does take practice I've been with this for 10 years at this point I can as I probably get forced to do by certain people in B sides tomorrow pretend on any topic I know enough about with seconds of notice but that takes practice having a script can be useful for some people but I would advise against having a full script written out of I need to say these exact words because people can tell when you're reading and when you're not actually thinking about your audience or engaging with them and they

can see you looking at this white paper that you've stuck from your slides which are also up there and reading it out word by word including citations so I don't recommend having a full script but having bullet points if you think of the types of things you could put on index CS per slide they're great they just remind you to keep on track and remember what we were talking about at that point which is really useful when you lose track in the middle and have that SI W what the hell what were your intentions and breaking up that one that was purely human like I said a love it's it's almost always worthwh particularly in any public

presentations you can go wrong with humor there are things you should avoid self- deating humor which is one of my favorites is actually something to avoid because if you're on stage and you're presenting you are actually standing up as the expert you don't want to be standing there saying oh I actually know nothing about this but I'm going to talk to you about it any anyway unless that's part of your whole format such as pretending to be someone else also question slides they're a standard people just do them if you don't know what to put in it's better than a thank you slide at the end but genuinely that contact information side is better because

people will then contact you you [Music]

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what yes so when I when I say it's an extreme sport I'm I'm only half joking there is an adrenaline rush there's an endorphin rush when you get off the stage there's a whole load of stress dump I mean when I get off the stage I'm generally a bit shaky for a bit need a moment to P down and it is an intense experience the larger the crowd more intense but at a certain size smaller crowds also get quite focused yeah we as humans generally have a very strong sense of social embarrassment it's people say they Fear public speaking more than death I don't know how many of them have died and compared it but people say that

I don't quite believe it however it is a fear and it's a very common fear that means there is this huge adrenaline hormone endorphin r that you get and when you're in that position of stress things do blur and you might remember oh I said that sort of thing but there's there's no way I'm stepping off the stage and remembering the exact words I said

are we done and we're safe [Music]