How to instantly elevate your conference speech
Whether you like to wing it, work from a script, or just vibe with your slides, your talks need a structure.
A trap I see a lot of people fall into at a conference, especially with technical talks, is to just go linearly through the topic without a clear structure or narrative. When the content is interesting, this is fine and doesn’t necessarily lead to a bad talk.
But it could be so much stronger.
We recently worked with an automotive business to create a speech for one of its executives to deliver at a conference. We spent time diving into the subject with the speaker and gathering interesting anecdotes about the work they do, their clients, and their history.
We structured the talk around a few key concepts with one clear narrative thread running through the whole thing. This gave the talk an engaging hook, a promise of what people would learn, and numerous opportunities to bring the topic back to that narrative.
The other talks during that session had lots of great technical information, but they lacked a narrative to really hook the audience. And many of the speakers simply read from the slides behind them.
If you’ve been asked to deliver a talk at a conference, technical or otherwise, here are some things to keep in mind.
Women in Motorsport talk at Hot Source, Norwich
What’s your hook?
You need to immediately hook your audience. A good way to do this is by asking a rhetorical question. In a recent talk, I opened with: “What do you think a woman in motorsport looks like?”
This meant the audience had to do a little work as I was asking them to engage with the topic. I then asked them to challenge their own views on women in the industry, which led to some nice talking points following the session.
To hook your audience, you might make a startling statement, grab their attention with a contrarian approach, or reference something they already know as familiar such as something from history or a well known quote.
The typical structure
The typical talk structure is actually very simple:
Introduction: Your hook needs to make up part of your introduction, which is perhaps the most important part of your talk as it sets the stage for what’s to come.
Body: The body of your talk should have its own structure that covers your main points. Typically, for a short talk, you’ll want two or three main points with up to five for longer speeches.
Key point 1
Key point 2
Key point 3
Conclusion: The conclusion of your talk should focus on wrapping up your main points and bringing it all back to the narrative thread you introduced at the beginning.
Telling the story
As humans, we like to connect with a story. In your introduction, it’s important to lay the groundwork for the story you’re going to tell. This is the narrative thread you’ll come back to throughout the talk.
For example:
Intro - Would you let a robot drive you around the city?
Body of the article - Automotive software, advanced driver assist systems, fully autonomous vehicles.
Conclusion - The robots aren’t to be feared, they’re already present in our vehicles in driver-assist systems…
Throughout the talk, you might even make science fiction references to put the topic into a context that’s interesting to a lot of people and shed new light on the key points you’re covering.
Start small
Even if you’re still broadly referring to your slides during the body of the talk, simply tweaking how you introduce and close out the topic can instantly elevate the experience for the audience. This is especially true if you’re covering a dry topic – by linking it to a story, contrarian idea, or thought-provoking question, you can keep the audience hooked and engaged.