139 Public Speaking Tips and Resources

Public speaking allows us to form connections, influence decisions, and motivate change. Without communication skills, the ability to progress in the working world and in life, itself, would be nearly impossible. Public speaking is one of the most important and most dreaded forms of communication. It is an excellent way to break out of your comfort zone and build confidence. Speaking out loud to a class or an even larger group of people is difficult for most people at first but you’ll get there.

In this compilation, you’ll find 139 public speaking tips and resources covering articles, recommended books, CFPs, proposals, how to write a bio, how to handle rejections, how to write presentations, tools and other information that will definitely help you in your public speaking journey.

139 Public Speaking Tips and Resources

General / Articles / Books

1. 5 Essential Ingredients for an Awesome Tech Talk by Dave Neal
2. 5 public speaking resolutions for 2019 by VM Brasseur
3. 5 Ways to Leave Your Fears Behind and Learn to Love Public Speaking by Kathryn Minshew
4. 5 years behind the mic by Heidi Waterhouse
5. 7 best practices for giving a conference talk by VM Brasseur
6. 8 Classic Storytelling Techniques for Engaging Presentations by Ffion Lindsay
7. A problem like public speaking by Maria Neumayer
8. A Tactical Guide to Effective Public Speaking for Marketing, Content and Tech Events by Ronell Smith
9. Advice for new speakers by VM Brasseur
10. An Open Letter To Speakers by Scott Berkun
11. Block Your Talk by Christina Wodtke
12. Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story by Tim Urban
13. Don’t Send Proposals at the Last Moment by Damir Svrtan
14. give actionable takeaways by Bridget Kromhout
15. Helpful Talk Tips! by Paul Ford
16. How public speaking made me a better leader (and vice-versa) by Yash Prabhu
17. How To Get Speaking Engagements by Sam Jarman
18. How to get started with technical public speaking! by Scott Hanselman, Kendra Havens, Maria Naggaga Nakanwagi, Kasey Uhlenhuth, and Donovan Brown
19. How To Prepare And Write A Tech Conference Talk by Lena Reinhard
20. How to Start Speaking (In Tech Conferences) by Karen Meep
21. Introduction to Public Speaking by Matt McGarrity
22. Nine Secrets to Powerful Public Speaking by Julian Treasure
23. On Conference Speaking by Hynek Schlawack
24. Presenting is Performance by Christina Wodtke
25. Some Thoughts On Doing Conference Sessions by Derick Bailey
26. Speaker Style Bingo: 10 Presentation Anti-Patterns by Troy Hunt
27. Speaker Training Workshop by VM Brasseur
28. Technical Speaker Starter Kit by Cory House
29. The Art of the Keynote by Guy Kawasaki
30. The Michael Jordan of Tech Talks by Kim Crayton
31. The Portland Experience; Confessions of a First Time Speaker @DevOpsDaysPDX by Jason Grimes
32. The Three Things I’ve Learned From Eighteen Years of Public Speaking by Jer Thorpe
33. Thoughts on public speaking by Zach Holman
34. Three things you don’t need to become a speaker by Karolina Szczur
35. What I’ve learned after giving 100 talks by Zeno Rocha
36. What You Need to Know About Speaking at Conferences by Ashe Dryden
37. Who am I to give this talk by Thomas Ballinger
38. Why I Speak at Developer Conferences by Heidi Waterhouse
39. Why You Should Give Technical Talks by Daphne Rouw
40. Why You Should Pursue Public Speaking and How to Get There by Yenny Cheung
41. Propose, Prepare, Present by Alistair Croll
42. How to Become a Public Speaker in 1 Year: Gain the confidence to engage audiences on and offstage by Catt Small
43. Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan

Aggregators of CFPs and Conferences

A CFP is a “Call For Papers”, “Call For Proposals”, or “Call For Participation” depending on the conference.

1. CFP Land – Get out of the audience and onto the stage.
2. CFP Time – Call For Papers for security conferences.
3. Conference Radar – Keep track of conference cancellations.
4. David Giard – Central US Community Tech Events
5. IT CFP List – List of IT conferences Call For Papers, changes are also published via Twitter (@ItCfpList)
6. KDNuggets – Primarily data-focused conferences
7. Papercall.io – Tech with a DevOps focus
8. Techmeme – Techmeme events list.
9. WikiCFP – Primarily academic and industry conferences

Proposing Talks

1. 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations by Matthew McCullough
2. A Process for Writing an Abstract by Cate Huston
3. Addendum About Conference Proposals by Chris Williams
4. CFP Advice by Raquel Vélez and Sarah Mei
5. Community Pulse: How to Submit the Best CFP of Your Life (And What to Do When It Gets Accepted) by VM Brasseur and the Community Pulse Podcast Team
6. Don’t Fear the CFP by Matt Stratton
7. How to come up with conference proposal ideas by Lucy Bain
8. How to craft a successful OpenStack Summit proposal by Nicole Martinelli
9. How to write a compelling proposal by We Are All Awesome Blog authors
10. How to Write a Conference Proposal by Chiu-Ki Chan
11. How to Write a Conference Talk Proposal by Rikki Endsley
12. How to write a good submission by CodeMash
13. How to Write a Successful Conference Proposal by Karolina Szczur
14. Is Your Conference Proposal Good Enough? by Raquel Vélez
15. Preparing a Talk: Before you Start by Julia Ferraioli
16. Proposing a Compelling Fluent Talk by Simon St. Laurent
17. Sample Proposals for O’Reilly Conferences by O’Reilly Media
18. SpeakerLine by Nadia Odunayo to showcase speakers’ proposals and timelines to demystify the CFP process and help new speakers get started.
19. Three tips for getting a talk accepted at Fluent… or any other technology conference, tbh. by Ben Vinegar
20. What Your Conference Proposal Is Missing by Sarah Mei
21. Writing a great conference talk submission by VM Brasseur
22. Writing winning abstracts by Marcy Sutton
23. Your Abstract Sucks by Clark Sell

Writing A Bio

1. Crafting Your Biography by Danielle Barnes
2. How to Write a Personal Biography for a Conference by Elle Smith
3. How to Write an Academic Bio for Conferences by Sophie Shorland

Rejections

1. Lightning Talk by John Anderson
2. On conference proposal rejections by Tracy Osborn
3. Rejection & Revision: On Improving Conference Proposals by Alaina Kafkes
4. Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year by Kim Liao
5. Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected by Sarah Gray

Writing Presentations

1. 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations by Matthew McCullough
2. 3 Steps to Better Presentation Visuals by Harvard Business Review
3. A Checklist for More Persuasive Presentations by Dorie Clark
4. A Public Speaking Experiment: Blank Slides by Florina Muntenescu
5. A white-label slide deck by Alice Bartlett
6. Choosing Colors for Data Visualization by Maureen Stone
7. Experienced speakers discuss how they prepare their talks by Neil Bowers
8. How I Create Talks by Michele Titolo
9. How to prepare and write a tech conference talk by Lena Reinhard
10. My presentation workflow and challenges by Lara Hogan
11. Preparing a Talk: Writing your Talk by Julia Ferraioli
12. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
13. Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns by Troy Hunt
14. The Art of Slide Design by Melinda Seckington
15. The Secret Structure of Great Talks by Nancy Duarte
16. The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut
17. Top Tips for Terrible Tech Talks by Chet Haase
18. Your slides do matter by Davey Shafik

Presenting Talks

1. 10 things you should NEVER say during presentations by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
2. 4 Secrets to Giving a Speech Worthy of a Standing Ovation by Baron Schwartz
3. 7 tips for learning how to give a technical talk by Ala Hino
4. Give a Great Tech Talk 2 by Josh Berkus
5. How To Give a Great Ignite Talk by Scott Berkun
6. How to give a great talk, the lazy way by Donnie Berkholz
7. How to make your OpenStack Summit talk a big success by Anne Bertucio
8. In which the Floor is open by David Malki
9. Intro to Public Speaking: The day of your talk by Jessica Rose
10. Let’s stop tormenting speakers about these four normal qualities by Denise Graveline
11. Preparing a talk: presenting by Julia Ferraioli
12. Presenting presenting by Chet Haase
13. Public Speaking for Nerds by Barbara Shaurette
14. Public Speaking without Barfing on Your Shoes by David Neal
15. Speaking and Nerves by Cate Huston
16. Speech Anxiety for Game Developers by Brie Code
17. Tradecraft of Public Speaking by Alex Moundalexis
18. Women Who Code panel discussion on preparing for and speaking at technical conferences by Sarah Mei, Pamela Fox, etc.
19. Your Perfect Tech Talk by Saron Yitbarek

Slides

1. 4 Markdown-powered slide generators – These simple slide creation tools work seamlessly with Markdown, letting you add pizzazz to your next presentation.
2. Ask HN – What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there?
3. Deckset – Write down your thoughts in your favourite text editor, and Deckset will turn them into beautiful presentations.
4. Sent – Simple plaintext presentation tool.

Demos

1. DemoShell – A simplified shell for live demonstrations. It always shows the command prompt at the top of the screen and pushes command output down instead of letting iscroll up.

Code

1. carbon.now.sh – A tool for generating images of pleasantly sized and highlighted code for slides.

Websites

1. HelpMeAbstract – Get feedback from veteran speakers before you submit your talk.
2. Irongeek – A collection of information security talks.
3. Speaking.io – Tips for preparing your talk and get ready to deliver it.
4. We Are All Awesome! – a collection of interesting posts about speaking, preparing, motivation, etc.
5. Words to Time – Calculates how long a speech will take to present based on the number of words.

Other

1. 10 Ways for a Conference to Upset Their Speakers by Troy Hunt
2. A Formula For Speaking Fees by Jenn Lukas
3. Carrying On: Tech Travel Lessons by Kara Sowles
4. How do Conference Speakers get Compensated by Curtis Poe
5. How To Ask To Get Paid To Speak by Seb Lee-Delisle
6. How to Land Your First Paid Speaking Gig by Dorie Clark
7. Lady Speaker Small Talk by Heidi Waterhouse
8. Strategies For Attracting More of the “Underrepresented” Onto the Conference Stage by Kim Crayton