This doesn't really apply to academic conferences, which tend to have a more subdued atmosphere. (And you don't control the environment you present in, and there will be multiple talks in the sessions.)

I am on board with "hook them from the start", but you have to change it for an academic crowd. They will bristle at trying to be sensational. In an academic computer science context, it means put your conclusions first, along with your best results. People may tune out after the first few minutes, so you'd better tell them the most important stuff right away. The rest of your talk is then supporting and explaining how you achieved your best results.

I agree (with the sibling comment) that this is more general advice than just for academic settings.

I can't tell you how many presentations I sit through (or emails I read) that read like murder mysteries. Tell me the conclusion or essential element up front, so that I can frame my consumption a little better. Don't start with the Big Bang, the creation of matter, the coalescing into galaxies and planets, etc, etc and then build up the conclusion from all those constituent elements.

Good point. These are general tips to do if you are able to. :)

I find books are much better treatment of complex topics like public speaking. Blog posts of people who give several talks a year don't have the breadth and depth - they are essentially a list of small tips that work for that individual.

I would recommend the book "Even a geek can speak".

I did find the tips the author shared. But if you are fundamentally a poor speaker, you want to work on the fundamentals rather than marginal tips.

I would definitely push for improving your speaking before you address these types of details.

My number one tip for a conference talk is to use the 5 minutes before your talk starts (but people are filing in) to start connecting to the audience.

During the talk itself there's high expectations. People may have paid a lot, travelled overnight, found a baby sitter to be there. But during the travel time and breaks the expectations are much lower.

Use that time to your advantage. Tell a joke, an anecdote related to your topic, ask a good question of the audience. Start building that rapport before your slot even begins.

This helps your audience warm up to you, and helps you slide more comfortably into your talk.

Love this tip. I like to hand out a worksheet before my talk personally to each attendee. This way I get to meet them personally to make a connection. This helps me relax as well. :)

For academic seminars, I have started to always go through David Tong's ``How to Make Sure Your Talk Doesn’t Suck'' [0], before and after writing the presentation. I believe that it has at least helped me improve and feel more confident.

[0] www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf

Thanks for sharing the great resource. I was hooked on the first slide. :)

Tips are fun! Here are mine:

- Make sure to provide a text version of your talk online, in a sane format.

- Keep text off your slides. Use them to show code, or kittens, but not bullet points.

- Remember that you're speaking to an intelligent audience. They'll have more fun if you leave some stuff unsaid, and let them come to their own conclusions.

- Go through the painful process of watching yourself speak on video, to identify and correct the many verbal tics you didn't know you had.

- Have a single shot of booze ten minutes before liftoff

I do quite a few talks for work with non-native english speakers. They are pretty good english speakers in general, but it's still easy for them to get lost especially if it gets conversational with multiple people.

Initially I took to putting more text on the slides to counter that and give them some words to lock onto if they weren't catching the word or otherwise something to follow. This helped to some extent but I have since learnt what works better is to write a lot more into the "Speaker Notes" and distribute a copy of the file to them before the talk starts. Then they can follow along and when they get lost look at the speaker notes to try and get themselves in sync.

Linked in another thread is this interesting take on it for consumption after the talk.. achieves two purposes I guess. Annotated slides: http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf

Great tips. Watching myself speak is extremely painful. Last time I could only get through half of the talk. The next time I plan to sit through the whole talk. I haven't tried the last tip but I will definitely try it next time. :)

Do you write your entire talk out before you give it?

A tip I was recently given so haven't been able to fully execute on yet, is to write into the speakers notes not actual notes but instead "Questions to self" which you will then go ahead and answer.

This seems like a fantastic idea and it makes a lot of sense, given I can often make up a lot on the spot. The questions for self let me capitalise on that but also keep it on topic and in the correct direction, not forgetting things.

I never however "pre-write" my talk, but I do tend to write quite a lot of dot points or occasionally sentances into the speaker notes to try and remember.

This also works MUCH MUCH better if you can see your speaker notes in a "stage monitor" type position so you don't look away from the audience to a laptop but sadly that is rarely the case.

Yes, as many times as I can stand.

Do you memorize and rehearse the fully written-out talks?

For the most part you don't come off as having scripted the whole talk, but there are tells in your transcripts that they were written first.

I rehearse the talks but don't memorize them, if that makes any sense. The process of rewriting them ad nauseam helps me remember what to say.

I think of it as crossing a stream, and there are certain rocks that I have to make sure I step on. But getting between them is somewhat improvisational.

0. Tell something useful

That's a pre-requisite. :)