My first conference talk

I was lucky enough to be selected to speak at the 2026 Gleam Gathering, which was my first conference talk ever. As you'd expect, I was nervous. You won't see it in the video, but I blanked out for a whole minute at the start of my presentation. Thankfully, the crowd was being patient, and once I found my first few words, I was on straight tracks.

I've learned a lot from this initial experience. Some things I did right, some things I wasn't prepared for, and I was very lucky to have such a good audience.

Public speaking is hard

... And it takes time to get right. Knowing your audience, reading them, pacing, intonation, not to mention preparing all of that ahead of time... It all sounds like so much work, so much guesswork.

Thankfully, just like everything, it takes practice, and it's easier than you think. Like we say in French, "It's more fright than hurt".

Capturing your audience is 30% content, 70% showmanship

I remember learning about Big Jay McNeely a few years ago, a legendary sax player who became famous by making some seemingly unappealing noises with his saxophone, honking and squealing. However, he played with such fervor, he was a real showman. He could've made drying paint feel exciting.

He's a great example of what capturing an audience is about: it's a show. If you go on stage and perform with confidence, you will naturally capture your audience, regardless of what you're actually doing.

With that said, my first advice would be to prepare a talk about the simplest topic, and focus your efforts on putting on a fun show. My first talk was about a little Eve Online web tool I'd made. Not a trivial project, but nothing ground-breaking either. However, that gave me plenty of room to focus on the performance instead.

Confidence is earned, not wished

You've for sure heard this advice before, "just be confident", whether relating to dating, job interviews, or public speaking like I did earlier. Sadly, you cannot just wish confidence into being, no matter how hard you try. Confidence is built off of defeating your fears. There are no shortcuts, but there can be smaller steps.

If being in front of a crowd is a problem, practicing in front of a crowd is the only solution, but you get to pick the crowd. There are ways to practice this, open mic nights in local bars, open presentations in university or professional settings, karaoke, music jams, busking, and I'm sure many others. Pick your poison, based on what you do and what you like. I'm a singer and musician, and so jams and karaoke are my picks, but there's got to be something that'll fit what you like. And, you get to pick a crowd that'll be patient. Some gatherings are specifically for people to practice public speaking.

Remember, no shortcuts, only smaller steps.

Preparing well ahead of time

When preparing for my Gleam Gathering talk, I had everything ready over a month in advance, the project itself, slides, script, jokes, intonation, timing, everything was practiced to death. I had a rock-solid foundation, reliable enough that I could always land on my feet. And this came in real handy when I froze at the start and forgot my opening lines, because when I finally remembered them, the rest was just a matter of following the rails I'd practiced for weeks before.

You can't know exactly how things will go when you go up on stage and present your work. However, you can make sure that push comes to shove, you can always get back on your feet. This is another reason why you should present something small and simple at first, so you don't have the added pressure of finishing the project shortly before the talk and having to update and remember your script last minute.

Storytelling of technical details

A few years ago, I was working as a Cisco networking instructor. I loved my job, and I was good at it. Students were captured by the course, and I think a lot of it was due to a framework I'd inadventantly stumbled upon. It can be summed up like this:

        /\
       /  \
      /what\
     /------\
    /  how   \
   /----------\
  /    why     \
 /--------------\

The lower layers are more important to get right than the top ones, so it's actually read from bottom to top. I would apply this structure for every single concept I wanted to present. Here's what it means:

• "Why": This is storytelling, the most important step. You show your audience why they should care about what you're about to say. In the context of me teaching networking, I would usually present a problem which would arise from a previous slide.
• "How": This is guiding the audience through the problem. If they were to solve this, how would they go about it? We're talking broad strokes, general notions, not implementation.
• "What": This is the technical implementation, and often can be partially or entirely skipped. At this point, you're just reciting documentation.

Here's a practical example: Let's say I just presented how to set an admin password on Cisco equipment. Before showing the next slide, I would ask "But what happens when someone leaves the admin team?"

• Why: "Then the password risks being leaked!"

• How: "We can instead have a separate login/password account for each member of the admin team, and clear their credentials when needed"

• What: RTFM

It's a simple framework that ensures your presentation is guiding the audience through technical reasoning without going too deep into the technical details they can just look up. Your goal is often to give them the tools to read the docs, not to read the docs to them.

Accept the nerves

No amount of preparation, confidence, good writing and helpful feedback can wholly eliminate nerves. You will be nervous, you will have stage fright. But the good news is we can use this to our advantage.

Stress and excitement are chemically almost the same thing (as far as I know, I'm not a neurologist). This is examplified by this scene of The Office where Michael plans to jump off the roof onto a bouncy castle, and to certain death. He is obviously terrified (as he should be), but Dwight is trying to "amp him up" by turning his stress and fear into excitement. This is precisely what you can do before doing your leap of faith and going on stage. You can't beat the nerves, but you can divert some of them to work for you instead.

Am I saying you should do some air guitar right before talking? Not necessarily (though it's really cool and awesome and you should totally do that), just do whatever gets you amped up.

Just get started

This one is straightforward. The first few words are hardest to get out. That's especially true if you've prepared well ahead of time and have mastered your script. Once you gain momentum, the nerves settle very quickly.

Defeating the imposter syndrome

Public speaking attracts confident people, not competent people. This is what happens with lousy executives and fraudsters. Not every comfortable presenter is a fraud, of course, but it illustrates that technical skill is not a hard prerequisite to get on stage. Every conference needs a mix of fun, in-depth and esoteric talks. You absolutely have a place on stage, regardless of what you're itching to talk about.

Are you ready?

What's left to say but go out there and geddem', champ

If you still feel unsure, or you need more guidance, feel free to reach out to me on Bluesky.

AI disclosure

LLMs were used in this post to:

• generate the Why-How-What ASCII pyramid
• proofread for typos