I don’t see a singular “write” way to prepare a talk. My preference for both listening and delivering one is to be conversational; my mind starts wandering when I hear someone read prepared remarks to me. Why would I could to great lengths, travel to be in a room for some to orate what I could read myself? Especially when its monotonic.

But that’s not 100% true– Audrey Watters prepares her talks meticulously written first (which means she has those great summaries if you are not there). And I am more than happy for Gardner Campbell to read a quote from the slide (a thing that usually drives me batty) because of his great oratory skill, it is more than saying the words, be breathes life into them.

I have never written out a talk. But it’s not just winged. I work a lot out as outline, sketches. I go through it all the time in my head. I know the main points I want to hit, and if its anything I focus on it’s the first and last bits; if I can feel confident in the opening, get over being nervous, and know where I am headed, then the middle can flow.

Two years ago June (my last keynote, so my advice as a keynoter highly suspect), about 1/3 the way in, I noticed that darn Apple beachball spinning on my laptop. Then the video I wanted to show would not load. The phenomena of “podium time” was there, the distortion of time that makes every second of things awry feel like hours creeping. I just had to say, “sorry my laptop crashed, I need to restart” and was already thinking ahead if I had to do the talk (which was based on a lot of visuals) without the slides. I kept talking, and John, the host who had brought me in, pitched in with a joke.

The thing is you cannot fold, the show must go on. I got more compliments after about how people said I was not flustered by the technology failing. They seemed more comfortable with me being imperfect. I wondered if I could have my laptop crash in every talk. My hunch is people prefer seeing when your humanity shows, while our sense of worth forces us to try to be perfect? I always aim for the former.

In my first years of going to ed-tech conference I found most annoying when presenters were there to share a project or a technology, they would spend 90% of their time with background info on text slides, and try to squeeze the demo in the last minutes. The demo was the thing I came from! I started talking about my law of “Start with the &#^* Demo!” It was why nearly all my storytelling sessions started with a round of pechaflickr http://pechaflickr.net because it got the audience doing something, it shifts the energy of the room.

And learning more about the structure, the arc of stories, I realized that many speakers start by telling you the end of the story. They leave out the element of surprise, of overcoming obstacles, of the plot twist.

Lastly, as my comment is approaching a dump of a blog post inside yours, “Presentation Skills Considered Harmful” by Kathy Sierra really change my approach to planning talks, moving me out of the idea that it’s about me

http://seriouspony.com/blog/2013/10/4/presentation-skills-considered-harmful

So 90 slides not necessarily bad (JUST DON’T READ THEM! ha ha ha)