Category Archives: Toastmasters

“why are you even here?”

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I went to part of the Toastmasters conference last week. At one of the sessions, I was on my tablet and the lady next to me said “why are you even here if you aren’t going to pay attention”. I was doing a mix of:

I obviously didn’t get into this with the woman who said this. But I did email myself that the answer would be a good blog post. I use a computer/tablet during conferences in two scenarios.

Scenario 1: I want to be fully immersed in the material

As noted in the presentation she was hassling me in, humans have a short attention span. Live blogging prevents me from being distracted. I’m *very* focused on what is going on because I’m listening and processing to write. This only leaves me with a tiny bit of spare brain power. Which I use for scanning comments from others ex: twitter.  And it prevents me from having enough brain power to attempt doing something that has the potential to steal my focus like email.

Now granted, I wasn’t live blogging at the Toastmasters conference. But it is common for me to do so at tech conferences. For example, see my QCon blog posts. Hard to argue I wasn’t paying attention there!

Scenario 2: Only listening some

Sometimes you are only interested in part of a session or the speaker isn’t great. Not bad enough to get up and leave. But not enough to want to pay full attention. (If I’m at a session after work on the weekend or on a vacation day, it’s completely up to me how much attention I pay.) And there’s an advantage to this. Paying partial attention, you might learn something. Leaving you guarantee you’ll learn nothing.

This Toastmasters event was on my vacation time and I paid the entrance fee. There were plenty of the empty chairs in the room so I wasn’t taking a seat away from someone who would pay full attention. And I didn’t sit in the front so I wasn’t taking up a “good seat”. So completely up to me what I wanted to do in the room. At least I wasn’t bothering anyone. I sat next to another person at this event (not this lady) who took notes by repeating what the speaker said into their phone.

As far as why did I come – I wanted to see what the semifinals and world championships of public speaking were like. And I wanted to go on vacation to Vancouver. So I combined the two. You can’t pay for just the speaking part; the educational sessions are bundled. So I went to most of them. They were good. But mainly inspirational or facts we’ve been exposed to. I don’t need to pay full attention to get what I’m going to out of that.

Conferences encourage this

The Toastmasters conference encouraged people to post in the activity stream of their app. (Like a poor man’s twitter.) They incentivized posting pictures rather than having discussions so the stream wasn’t comment rich. But they clearly didn’t discourage having your phone/tablet out. And they supplied internet. [By comparison there was a no phone/tablet policy during the world championships of public speaking at night.]

Now for the speaker’s side

My first public presentation was in 2011 at The Java Server Side Symposium. (Scott and I live blogged there too). I knew it is common at tech conferences for people to be doing other things while in a session – tweeting, email, coding, whatever. So I gave a presentation at my Toastmasters club called “The Case of the Distracted Audience”. I gave people specific annoying things to do and practiced reacting to them. It helped a lot.

 

 

why do i speak as a programmer

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I was at Toastmasters officer training and someone in my group asked if being a DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster) has helped professionally. The trainer for our group doesn’t work in a field where she speaks so not really. I mentioned that it has helped me. I joined Toastmasters to get better at presenting technical content in a humorous and engaging way. I’m definitely better at that than when I started. I’m also more comfortable dealing with unexpected events while speaking.

But what really surprised me was the sharp decrease in the time it takes me to prepare for a presentation. That alone has helped me professionally. I had an opportunity to speak to between 100 and 200 people at the NY Java User Group. I joke that I was the “opening act” for Maurice Naftalin. People registered to hear him speak about Java. He wasn’t able to arrive at the start of the meeting so the group needed someone to speak for 30 minutes. On three days notice, I was able to do it and do a good job. (And I spent most of that three days doing other things.) That decreased preparation time is something that Toastmasters has helped me with!

The person with the question asked why I speak as a programmer. He commented that it makes sense for business analysts. But implied us programmers only talk to computers. So why speak do I as a programmer?

  • Teaching and mentoring – Whether it is a short training session and work or speaking at a conference, being a more effective speaker helps people learn better.
  • Audits – I work for a bank which means we have regular audits. Being able to explain what we do (without being nervous) is a useful skill.
  • Work presentations – Pitching an idea, design meetings, etc.
  • Writing – Scott and I have written three books and this blog. Yes, I know writing isn’t speaking. But some of the skills translate. Like organizing your material.
  • Networking – It’s useful when people google you that they find stuff :).

technical speaking – getting better over time

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I recently needed to find a video of myself speaking. This caused me to notice that I’ve gotten much better (and more comfortable) speaking since 2007.

2007 – Google Test Automation Conference

In 2007, I attended the Google Test Automation Conference. They had 5 minute lightning talks and I signed up. This mean that I “wrote” what I was going to say that day and wasn’t prepared. More importantly, at that point, I’d only spoken once or twice before in front of a large audience and only internally at work. I remember being scared and worried about going over time (if you went over, they threw stuff at you)

That said, I was substantially better in 2007 then I was in 2002! I remember having to give a presentation in 2003 or so at work. I memorized every word I was going to say!

What I noticed rewatching the video

  • I didn’t sound confident in the intro
  • I fiddled with my hands a lot at the beginning
  • Once I got into the tech content, I started looking around and gesturing more
  • I stuck to that podium like glue
  • I didn’t know to hold my fingers up when listing points yet

2009

In 2009, I joined Toastmasters. I realized I wanted to get better at engaging the audience. My focus was improving at “humorous technical content”. Because if you can make someone laugh, you get their attention!

2014

In 2014, I gave a presentation about Java to high school students and they were kind enough to record it. This time I was prepared. And more importantly, I had skills to draw from. In addition to Toastmasters, I had given many more presentations at work.

This time I noticed:

  • I looked at my laptop less
  • I moved around and engaged the audience more
  • I was able to make impromptu jokes
  • I looked more confident

2015

In 2015, I gave a 10 minute talk about Agile. Again, I was prepared. And again, I noticed many of the same skills. I was comfortable and able to make jokes. For this one, I was involving the audience, so I can really see how well I was adapting to what was going on around me.

(not sure what happened to the video)