Last Tuesday, January 14th, I had the delightful honour to co-host the premiere of Eno, the documentary by Gary Hustwit and Brendan Dawes.

My task was to welcome people after picking their seats and introducing Gary to the stage to say hi. Later after the film has been shown, and that was the real fun, I lead a 30-minute Q&A with Gary and Brendan, chatting about the creation process, the idea and the technology of how this film was made.

I absolutely enjoyed this and next to co-hosting this, meeting with friends like Keir, Tobi or Brendan and Gary was a great start to the event year.

On the way to Berlin for the Eno premiere with Gary Huswit, Brendan Dawes and also looking forward to seeing Keir Whitaker. 🙌 #firsttripin25

Note: This article was originally posted on 18 January 2020, but I updated it several times and last on 18 December 2024 again.

I collected these links to write a blog post at some point, but did not get to the point writing it, yet. Now, to make use of my list already, before getting to the point finally writing a blog post about public speaking, I have sorted my notes and list them here in no specific order. And I am going to let you know as soon as the actual blog post is done. Plus I am, of course, adding new resources any time I find something new.

Writing a Proposal

• Conference Proposals that Don’t Suck by Russ Unger for A List Apart
• How to Write a Compelling Proposal at the WAAA Blog
• Is Your Conference Proposal Good Enough? by Raquel Vélez
• An Addendum About Conference Proposals at Voodoo Tiki God
• What Your Conference Proposal Is Missing by Sarah Mei
• Sample Proposals by O'Reilly

Writing About Yourself aka Writing Your Bio

• A video by Danielle Barnes about Crafting Your Biography
• Writing a Personal Bio
• 11 tips on how to write your personal bio on BrandYourself
• How to Write a Short Professional Bio on TutsPlus

Writing and Preparing a Talk

• How To Give the Killer Tech Talk — A Pamphlet by Jan Lehnardt
• How to prepare and write a tech conference talk by Lena Reinhard
• A video by Saron Yitbarek about "Your Perfect Tech Talk"
• 7 best practices for giving a conference talk by Vicky Brasseur
• The Exhaustive Guide to Preparing Conference Presentations by Angie Arriesgad
• “How I write conference talks” by Ethan Marcotte.
• “Preparing a Conference Talk” by Jeremy Keith

Creating Slides

• The Art of Slide Design: Make Important Information Stand Out by Melinda Seckington
• The Art of Slide Design: Maximise Signal, Minimise Noise by Melinda Seckington
• A white-label slide deck by Alice Bartlett
• Preparing slides by Lale Byquist
• Top Ten Slide Tips by Garr Reynolds
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea on the TED blog

General Public Speaking Tips (covering the above often as well):

• Tips for giving talks online by Juha-Matti Santala
• Shy introvert's (short) guide to speaking in conferences by Juha-Matti Santala
• How to Discover Conferences To Speak At by Melinda Seckington
• The Importance of Using White Space... In Your Talks by Melinda Seckington on her blog
• 10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills by Marjorie North on the Harvard website
• How To Become A Better Speaker At Conferences – an article by Andy Budd for Smashing Magazine
• How to Become a Public Speaker in 1 Year – a lovely 10-step guide, covering a lot of topics. By Catt Small
• Public speaking – no one likes it at first! a short video by Karen Catlin
• Seb Lee-Delisle created a blog post in 2014 in which he states his way of dealing with and asking for an honorarium for a talk.
• What I wish I knew when I first started speaking internationally – a Medium post by Amber Case
• 9 tips to help you rock your first (or next) conference presentation – a post on Inside Design by Jennifer Aldrich
• What You Need to Know About Speaking at Conferences – a pretty complete post by Ashe Dryden
• The Best Advice on Public Speaking – a podcast with a variety of guests giving tips on public speaking
• Public Speaking Articles on Ladies in Tech
• Public Speaking Podcast on Ladies in Tech
• A website dedicated to Thoughts on public speaking by Zach Holman
• Des Traynor on How to get started at conference speaking
• An article at the Guardian titled How to crush stage fright and become a master in public speaking
• Presentation Skills is a website with many tips by Lale Byquist
• Breaking into the speaker circuit is a blog post by Andy Budd
• The Rectangle Behind You is a series of posts by Marcin Wichary about public speaking and presentations
• Getting Started In Public Speaking: Global Diversity CFP Day – a post on Smashing Magazine by Rachel Andrew
• Rebecca Murphey has written down her Speaker Notes with a lot of insightful help about public speaking
• The Ultimate Guide To Memorable Tech Talk – a Medium post by Nina Zakharenko
• Dave Rupert writes about a bad experience with public speaking and how to deal with problem (he had) in When Public Speaking Goes Wrong
• Oliver Schöndorfer has written (in German) about what he can – and has to – do to get more female speakers on stage.
• In this two-part post in German, Oliver Schöndorfer writes about his experience of finding a topic and proposing this to an event. He writes about the process of asking himself why he has not and if he wants to get on stage, his first steps when he decided he wants to get on stage and common pitfalls. Spiced with a lot of General help and useful tips. This way, please: Part 1 and Part 2.
• It also is important to show the organiser that you did your homework and are prepared. Next to knowing the name of the person you are writing and at least having had a look at the event’s website this means to make up your mind what kind of event you want to speak at. Ethan Marcotte has written this blog post in which he lists his questions he asks any organiser when being contacted.

Books

• Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan (links to A Book Apart, no affiliate link)
• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds by Carmine Gallo (links to German Amazon site, no affiliate link)
• Public Speaking for Success by Gale Carnegie (links to German Amazon site, no affiliate link)
• Medium post with 7 book recommendations
• Good article by Chris Heilmann about pitfalls and how to avoid them amongst many other good points

That's it for now, but I am pretty sure I gonna update it regularly. It would be wonderful, if you send me an email in case you have more links, books or anything that completes this list to learn about public speaking and presenting on stage.