This repository contains an ever-growing and -evolving list of resources for public speaking. The primary focus is presenting at technical conferences, but many of the lessons here can be applied to many different public speaking events & audiences.
Have a public speaking resource you'd like to contribute? Thank you! We love contributors!
Please have a look at CONTRIBUTING.md for all your contributing needs. :-)
All contributors to and participants in this project (including the IRC channel) agree to abide by the Code of Conduct.
Please contact us if you have any questions about the project or contributing to it.
Browse below or click here to jump directly to a section:
- General
- Finding a Conference
- Proposing Talks
- Rejections
- Writing presentations
- Presenting talks
- Other
- VIDEO: A 10 Step Program for Great Tech Talks by VM Brasseur
- speaking.io: Thoughts on public speaking by Zach Holman
- Why you should give technical talks by Daphne Rouw
- The art of the keynote by Guy Kawasaki
- A collection of awesome resources about public speaking by Matteo Figus
- 5 Ways to Leave Your Fears Behind and Learn to Love Public Speaking by Kathryn Minshew
- Propose, Prepare, Present by Alistair Croll
- Helpful talk tips! by Paul Ford
- Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story by Tim Urban
- How to start speaking (in tech conferences) by Karen Meep
- An Open Letter To Speakers by Scott Berkun
- How to Become a Public Speaker in 1 Year: Gain the confidence to engage audiences on and offstage by Catt Small
- VIDEO: How to get started with technical public speaking! by Scott Hanselman, Kendra Havens, Maria Naggaga Nakanwagi, Kasey Uhlenhuth, and Donovan Brown
- The Three Things I’ve Learned From Eighteen Years of Public Speaking by Jer Thorpe
- BOOK: Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan
- 5 years behind the mic by Heidi Waterhouse
- Preparing Talks is Scary by Helen V. Holmes
- PODCAST: The Michael Jordan of Tech Talks by Kim Crayton
- On Conference Speaking by Hynek Schlawack
Tech conferences are not the only way to do public speaking. You can find local users groups on Meetup and similar sites that might be interested in hearing your talks, as well!
A CFP is a "Call For Papers", "Call For Proposals", or "Call For Participation" depending on the conference.
- Papercall.io, tech with a DevOps focus
- WikiCFP, primarily academic and industry * conferences
- DevOps Conferences
- Opensource.com Events Calendar
- Technically Speaking, emphasizes inclusive conferences with stipends
- Proposing a Compelling Fluent Talk by Simon St. Laurent
- Sample Proposals for O'Reilly Conferences By O'Reilly Media
- 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations video by Matthew McCullough
- How to craft a successful OpenStack Summit proposal by Nicole Martinelli
- How to Write a Conference Talk Proposal by Rikki Endsley
- Three tips for getting a talk accepted at Fluent… or any other technology conference, tbh. by Ben Vinegar
- Writing Winning Abstracts by Macy Sutton
- How to Write a Successful Conference Proposal by Karolina Szczur
- How to write a good submission by CodeMash (scroll down to the relevant & very helpful section of the page)
- Writing winning abstracts by Marcy Sutton
- How to Write a Personal Biography for a Conference by Elle Smith
- How to Write an Academic Bio for Conferences by Sophie Shorland (most tips here apply to technical conferences as well as academic)
- Why Your Excellent Conference Talk Was Rejected by Sarah Gray
- WHY YOU SHOULD AIM FOR 100 REJECTIONS A YEAR by Kim Liao
- On conference proposal rejections by Tracy Osborn
- On collecting no's by Katie McLaughlin
- Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns by Troy Hunt
- 10 Quick Tips for More Effective Conference Submissions and Presentations video by Matthew McCullough
- The Secret Structure of Great Talks by Nancy Duarte
- 3 Steps to Better Presentation Visuals by Harvard Business Review
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
- The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut
- A white-label slide deck by Alice Bartlett
- Your slides do matter by Davey Shafik
- Experienced speakers discuss how they prepare their talks by Neil Bowers
- A Checklist for More Persuasive Presentations by Dorie Clark
- How to prepare and write a tech conference talk by Lena Reinhard
- A Public Speaking Experiment: Blank Slides by Florina Muntenescu
- How I Create Talks by Michele Titolo
- How to give a great talk, the lazy way by Donnie Berkholz
- Give a Great Tech Talk 2 by Josh Berkus
- How To Give a Great Ignite Talk by Scott Berkun
- Women Who Code panel discussion on preparing for and speaking at technical conferences (video)
- 4 Secrets to Giving a Speech Worthy of a Standing Ovation by Baron Schwartz
- 10 things you should NEVER say during presentations by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
- Let's stop tormenting speakers about these four normal qualities by Denise Graveline
- 7 tips for learning how to give a technical talk by Ala Hino
- Speech Anxiety for Game Developers by Brie Code
- Preparing For Your First Talk by Yash Prabhu, presented at ElaConf 2015
- How do conference speakers get compensated by Curtis "Ovid" Poe
- 10 ways for a conference to upset their speakers by Troy Hunt
- Strategies For Attracting More of the “Underrepresented” Onto the Conference Stage by Kim Crayton
- LADY SPEAKER SMALL TALK by Heidi Waterhouse
This collection of resources started as a bibliography for a public speaking tutorial written & presented by VM (Vicky) Brasseur and Josh Berkus.
Since that tutorial, the collection continued to grow as Vicky located new resources to add to the list. While the collection was public, it was buried. This repository brings it out into the light and makes it easy for everyone to locate, use, and contribute to it.
Immense thanks due to Josh for helping build the initial collection of resources. Thank you, Josh!
While the individual works in this list each have their own copyright and licensing, this work itself is copyright VM Brasseur. All contributors retain copyright to their contributions to the work.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Please see LICENSE.md for more information.