Nicholas Zakas' Personal Blog A deviation from my usual tech writing

The evolution of a speaking style

A couple of months ago I was giving what would turn out to be a really fun talk at the jQuery Conference in Mountain View, California. Prior to going up, someone said to me, "you know, you're a much better speaker now than when you first started." I was taken aback, both by the graciousness of the compliment and the attention that this person had paid to me over the years. This is the type of compliment that everyone wishes they receive and yet seldom do. And such, I began to ponder what I'd changed in speaking style over the years to arrive at being "much better" than I was.

As some people know, I have a background in acting. In high school and college I managed to get involved in all manner of performance, including musicals, dramas, improv, dancing, and even standup comedy. Stage fright has never been a problem for me - sure, I get nervous, but it's a nervous excitement that pushes me. If I were to compare the type of speaking I do now to any of the other performance types in which I've participated, I'd say it's closest to standup comedy. I don't say that because technology is inherently funny, or because I'm inherently funny, just that it's the same type of work.

In standup comedy, you are the actor, the writer, and the director all rolled up into one; if you bomb, you have no one to blame but yourself. You prepare like crazy, trying to understand your audience and practicing material over and over. If you're lucky, you pull someone in to critique you, but the final responsibility for the performance lies squarely on your own shoulders. Any part of it could go wrong: you could create the wrong character, the writing could be horrible, or the delivery could be off. All of these are still present in speaking at conferences.

So what happened to me? Looking back to four years ago when I gave my first public talk, I think almost everything was wrong. The character I chose unconsciously wasn't terribly effective - he was this aggressive lecturer, desperately seeking to prove he knew what he was talking about. He spoke at you instead of to you. I remember reading a comment from someone saying that he liked my content but not my speaking style. Looking back, I completely agree. The style wasn't conducive to my goal of teaching.
Seeking to improve, I sought out role models to emulate. I saw a lot of talks, watched a lot of speakers that were good and a lot that were bad, and came out with a lot of ideas. There are a few people in particular that stick out to me:

• Nate Koechley - When I got to Yahoo!, Nate was the resident rockstar evangelist. He traveled all around the world giving talks...and they were all damn good. The thing I loved about his presentations was the story he weaved into the talk. It wasn't just a bunch of random data, it was a journey along a path to discovery. I also loved his presentation slides - he had this great way of including photos that really brought the deck to life. Those who've been in my recent talks will note a liberal use of photos in my slides.
• Bill Scott - I also met Bill working at Yahoo!, but the first time I got to see him talk was actually once he left. Bill came back to Yahoo! to do a talk and the one thing that stuck out to me about his presentation was the tone of voice. Instead of sounding like a lecturer, Bill sounded like a guy who just having an informal conversation with a friend. In effect, the audience and he were sitting around a dinner table discussing technology. The talk was entirely comfortable and you felt completely comfortable asking questions because of the personal connection. Ever since I saw that talk, I tried to change my tone into more of a conversational one (I frequently also encourage people to interrupt me as I'm going along).
• Jonathan Coulton - Okay, JoCo isn't a speaker, he's a comedian singer/songwriter. But as I said earlier, I compare public speaking to being a comedian, so where better to look for inspiration? The thing I love about JoCo is his ability to banter. In between songs, he seemingly just says whatever comes to mind without attempting to be funny. The humor comes on its own through his wit, but there aren't any jokes per se. Because of this approach, he can easily react to outbursts from the audience - it's all just coming out of his mouth as it flows into his brain. He tends to say "um" and "ah" a lot, which we're always told is a Very Bad Thing for speakers. Yet in this context doing so actually makes him seem that much more human, and that's important in getting the audience to react positively. For instance, I love the small bit of banter at the beginning of this clip.

Patterning parts of my presentations against these three, I arrived at a character that I think works pretty well: myself. I was definitely not being myself when I gave my first few talks. People who know me know that I'm about the least serious person you'd meet, I'm kind of geeky, I make really bad jokes and am incredibly sarcastic. I tried to suppress all of that early in my speaking career and it just didn't work.

Now when I go up in front of people to speak, I don't switch into a different mode, it's still just me talking about something or other. I make sure that I have good story to tell, that my tone is conversational, and that I just say whatever pops into my head as I'm going along. With a couple of exceptions, I don't try to be funny. Trying to be funny backfires way too often. If I happen to be funny as I'm telling my story, then so be it - but it's not really a goal. My goal is to provide information in a way that's easily consumable, and I do that by being myself.