Speak and repeat
Rachel and Drew are starting a new service called Notist. It’s going to be a place where conference speakers can collate their materials. They’ve also got a blog.
The latest blog post, by Rachel, is called Do I need to write a brand new talk every time?
New presenters often feel that they need to write a brand-new talk for each conference they are invited to. Unless your job is giving presentations, or you are being paid very well for each talk you give, it is unlikely that you will be able to keep this up if you do more than a couple of talks per year.
It’s true. When I first started giving talks, I felt really guilty at the thought of “recycling” a talk I had already given. “Those people have paid money to be here—they deserve a brand new talk”, I thought. But then someone pointed out to me, “Y’know, it’s actually really arrogant to think that anyone would’ve seen any previous talk of yours.” Good point.
I explain it to people like a band touring an album. Lots of work goes into the album, and the tour puts those ideas on display. To expect a band to write a brand new album’s worth of music in between Pittsburgh and Chicago is absurd.
— Brad Frost (@brad_frost) October 30, 2017
Giving the same talk more than once also allows me to put in the extra effort into the talk prep. If I’m going through the hair-tearing-out hell of trying to wrestle a talk into shape, I’m inevitably going to ask, “Why am I putting myself through this‽” If the answer to that question is “So you can give this talk just once”, I’d probably give up in frustration. But if I know that I’ll have an opportunity to present it more than once, improving it each time, then that gives me the encouragement to keep going.
I do occasionally give a one-off specially-commissioned talk, but those are the exceptions. My talk on the A element at CSS Day’s HTML Special was one of those. Same with my dConstruct talk back in 2008. I just gave a new talk on indie web building blocks at Mozilla’s View Source event, but I’d quite like to give that one again (if you’re running an event, get in touch if that sounds like something you’d like).
My most recent talk isEvaluating Technology. I first gave it at An Event Apart in San Francisco exactly a year ago. I’ll present it for the final time at An Event Apart in Denver in a few weeks. Then it will be retired; taken out to the woodshed; pivoted to video.
I’m already starting to think about my next talk. The process of writing a talk is something else that Rachel has written about. She’s far more together than me. My process involves lots more procrastination, worry, panic, and pacing. Some of the half-baked ideas will probably leak out as blog posts here. It’s a tortuous process, but in the end, I find the satisfaction of delivering the final talk to be very rewarding.
Here’s the thing, though: until I deliver the talk for the first time in front of an audience—no matter how much I might have practiced it—I have literally no idea if it’s any good. I honestly can’t tell whether what I’ve got is gold dust or dog shit (and during the talk prep, my opinion of it can vacillate within the space of five minutes). And so, even though I’ve been giving talks for many years now, if it’s brand new material, I get very nervous.
That’s one more reason to give the same talk more than once instead of creating a fresh hell each time.
