I find myself in a constant state of writing / preparing keynotes nowadays. I keep telling myself “I’ll write about the process of writing a keynote after I finish the next one” but then, by the time I’m finished, I’m writing the next next one!
I said yes to doing another keynote today. It’s gonna happen in December, though I think they’ll want one that I’ve already given.. maybe… we’ll see what they say on the call.
Some conferences want a brand new “world exclusive” keynote. Some want a tried and tested already-done one that I’ve already done. Those latter ones tend to pay better because the audiences are bigger and the stakes are higher.
Conferences pay a large range of different amounts. Some pay nothing and I don’t do those ones. Some pay a little amount and I do those ones if I like the conference and want to attend. Some pay a decent amount but don’t really pay for my time. Some pay a lot and pay my wages, but these are really rare for me. I’m not a very good negotiator.
At this point in my career, I’d rather build up a large number of happy clients rather than squeezing each one as much as I possibly can. That way… hopefully I can be repeatedly booked on 1-3 year cycles for increasing amounts each time. It’s working well so far but I’m only a few years in so it doesn’t mean much :)
I think my reputation is very important. Every single keynote I give is a massive open goal for me, as well as a marketing opportunity for myself. All my speaking jobs are from “inbound”. People email me because they saw me give a keynote somewhere else, or someone else saw me and recommended me.
I’m increasingly unavailable thanks to this, and I hope this can drive my prices up.
Anyway, my reputation: I see the “speaker circuit” as a huge opportunity. I think conference organisers are craving really compelling keynote speakers. You can’t really get the same keynote speaker two years in a row, so you always need more.
Picking a keynote speaker is always a risk. A keynote can define your entire event (for better or worse). And to make things harder, going for a “safe” keynote is a recipe for disaster because a “safe” keynote usually means a “boring” keynote and that’s no good. If you pick a speaker who’s a bit more of a wildcard, there’s a chance the keynote will be amazing.. but there’s a chance the keynote will be awful or awkward or uncomfortable.
It’s my job to somehow come across as both “wildcard” and “safe” at the same time. I need to have a reputation for completely hitting it out of the park every single time. One single bad keynote would really damage that reputation. I can’t afford to flop!
When I’m at a conference, I watch as many talks as possible and I pay attention to the audience to see how they react to things. I like to sit in a variety of different places to get a sense for how talks deliver to a variety of different places. But I mostly sit right at the front, partly out of solidarity to fellow speakers, partly to watch and learn from fellow speakers.
I think I learn a lot from watching. I’ve seen all manner of talks in my time: many successful talks, many unsuccessful talks. I obsessively think through what makes talks successful or unsuccessful and in what ways and why. I find it a very interesting thing to examine. I think it’s mostly down to trust and pacing, no matter what. If the audience trusts you, and the pacing is right, you can do pretty much anything. This is my theory and I might be wrong.
After I’ve done a talk, I watch it back many many times, twenty or more times, sometimes many more times. I think through every single delivery of every line and what worked and what didn’t. It’s never what I thought from having done the talk first-person. I always get a very different perception of a talk from watching it back afterwards.
One of my common mistakes is not smiling enough.
Making slides is one of the quickest and easiest parts of making a talk. I do it right at the end of the process. It’s much more important to get the story and the pacing and the order right. Then the slides fall into place.
I like to use zero text. The ideal scenario is no text at all on screen. The text comes from me speaking. Okay that isn’t really true. I like to put big bold mantras behind me like “LET CODE DIE” and “NO MORE IDEAS” and whatnot. But its not really writing: They’re symbols / images.
Never use bullet points
Fullscreen images / mantras only
(exceptions are allowed for storytelling purposes)
WHEN I WRITE MY SCRIPT
I WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS
IT KEEPS ME SHORT
IT MAKES ME MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT
IT FORCES ME TO WRITE
AS IF I’M WRITING A POEM
I do many many many many run-throughs of my talk, but it’s not for practice: It’s to hear back my talk to see how it sounds. I make many many mental notes when I do a run through and many on-the-spot changes too. When I do a run-through and have nothing else to change…… that’s when I know I’m ready.
By doing all these run-throughs I end up memorising the talk by accident.
The only section I rehearse for real is the very beginning. It’s important I get the first 5 minutes really good.
I try to test out material at smaller local events like the Feeling of Computing here in London and also the live coding meetups here in London. I also constantly do over-the-shoulder demos at conferences and conference after-parties to test out things too. Some of these over-the-shoulder demos have also got me speaking jobs, which is nice!
Increasingly, it’s hard to practise material because I’m not doing any non-keynote talks anymore. Partly because no one’s asking me to do them and partly because I’m trying to maintain my reputation as a keynote speaker.
But yeah, I try to test out the material I’m least sure about and it often goes badly which helps me to make it better in the real thing.
Ideas: I will never run out of ideas, unfortunately.
I think the most compelling idea are the ones that are hidden in plain site. For example, I like a talk that connects two previously unconnected things together. I like a talk that looks at something well-known from a completely different angle. I like to tackle questions that are a little bit taboo because it means that people are little bit blind to their details and I can bring a bit of boldness to the topic.
This section is very vague and wishy washy… oh dear.
When a conference asks me to suggest some talk ideas, I tend to write up 3 different talk titles and abstracts. A talk title and its abstract are very important. The title needs to be eye catching and relevant and intriguing. An abstract needs to tick various boxes. It needs to grab the reader’s interest from the first sentence. It needs to sound useful and meaningful to someone deciding if they should attend the conference or not (keynotes are often used to advertise the event). And it needs to leave you curious and it needs to make your really really want to watch the talk.
For abstracts, I like to throw in some real wildcard towards the end to create intrigue. I like to start with something really bold and opinionated. I also like to include some things that “we can all agree on”.
Titles are a whole other thing. I’m getting tired.
On the day itself.. well… in the build up, you NEED to have backup plans upon backup plans upon backup plans. It’s not okay for a technical failure to spoil your keynote. Be prepared for EVERYTHING to fail. If you need the internet, have offline backups. If your demo doesn’t work, be ready to do the talk without it. I see too many talks get ruined by these things. If something doesn’t work, don’t stand there for 5 minutes trying to fix it. [Just] mourn it and move on.
At the event, I don’t drink any alcohol until I’ve done my talk, which is unfortunate if I’m doing the closing keynote, which is what I’m increasingly booked for nowadays (instead of opening keynotes).
On the night before, I stock up on snacks, get a really early night and do a ton of run-throughs. If I’ve been there for multiple days, there’s no doubt that I’ll have lots of changes to do (because I’ll know way more the vibe of the event, and I’ll incorporate things and lessons from other talks).
In the morning, I get up early and do ONE timed “dress rehearsal” and do not let myself make any changes at all even if I want to. Then I stuff my face full of snacks and don’t eat anything until I’ve done my talk, even if it’s late. I’m way too nervous about eating something weird or getting food on my top or something, so I just eat food I know really well in the morning even if it’s unhealthy. Lots of bananas though
I drink a lot of coffee during the day to get hyper
I also drink a lot of water to help my voice get prepared to speak a lot and I go to the loo 500 times because of all the coffee and water
I shake off my nerves in the loo and make sure I’m camera-ready
I ask the AV people if I can test my laptop and stuff really early.
When people start entering the room, I get all the early people to fill the seats at the front to improve the atmosphere (and make the photos look better - empty seats look shit and kill the mood).
Then i DO IT
wanna book me for a keynote?
lu@todepond.com