Oscar Santolalla: [00:00:00] Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Brian. And for leading this amazing community and welcome everybody. It’s a pleasure having this talk with you and sharing us all the secrets having I’m here now in hel sinking fin. From Helsinki here. I am. I work at company called UB secure is in the data identity and industry.

I work as science engineer and at the same time, I am author of book called rogue, the tech stage. I’m going tell you a bit more about that. Yeah, and that’s what I’m going to talk about. Few things about my book. Being already 15 years here in Finland. I’m on journey from Peru. So I’m trying to remember one specific moment the year before coming from Peru to Finland.

One specific moment. I remember pretty well was when I was walking down the stairs of a building [00:01:00] for four floors, carrying my desktop computer, my keyboard later, some of furnitures in the same couple of friends. That was the beginning of the end of my very first entrepreneurial adventure. It was a startup.

And what was happening that we were quitting the the building, because we run enough money, how to pay the rent for that. And. In retrospective seeing that many years later, the main reason why we failed at that moment is because none of us were able to communicate our ideas clearly to talk about our products of services, our technology, in a way that convince customers and other people who will help us investors, et cetera, et cetera, partner.

So later I moved Finland and I started making a career here. I study a master in computer science and actually most of my [00:02:00] jobs since then, until now have been in several companies and through different roles. At some point when the first video video internet side appears such as a daily motion YouTube, all this start up here.

Was, it was of course, abundant of information that you can find in video, very nicely consumable format. And when I pay attention, I consume a lot were videos of talks, presentations, keynote product launches of the best speakers in the technology arena. I was fascinated with that. I watched many, but at some point also I decided to analyze them.

Okay. Why they are so interesting. So good. I like to listen to them, how they managed to have that success for their products, for their technologies, et cetera, and proud that I wrote first one book called create and deliver a killer product demo. [00:03:00] That was mostly inspired by watching those product demonstrations in product launches mostly.

So I wrote that book and two years later I wrote a second book that came actually in 2020, very end of 2020. And that is the book called rogue, the text stage, the main book that I’m going to talk today, and this book rock, the text stage was published by. It’s structure 10 secrets, 10 secrets of these best communicators in the technology industry.

And as you say, there are, these are these secrets or tools, stories, metaphors interactions, staging, et cetera. There are many of those I’m sure many of you have seen and used them. But I’ve been asked, of course, since I published his book. Okay, there are 10, 10 secrets. Of course all of them are valuable because they are widely use different speaker use different tools.

But if you can tell me the top, [00:04:00] the most essential, and that’s what I’m going to show you now in this first time, the first part of this talk, I’m going to show three of them, but to me are the most essential, so let’s get started the first one. Ignite us with passion, actually, when I is about passion, that’s the secret.

When I send my book proposal to a press, I send a document description. My plan, I had a tentative list of 10 of these secrets. Passion was not there because I didn’t feel at that moment. But when I started doing the research. Checking deeper, more presentations of famous people and interviewing super interesting people, like just had a while make a opponent.

He super interesting people I notice in during all this research and work that yeah, definitely passion was in the best figures. Passion is there, you’re going to see a couple of example. [00:05:00] So you have to ignite people, your passion is contagious. You cannot ignore a person who speaks with passion.

You might not like his hair ideas, product company, but it’s very difficult to ignore this person. Passion is really contagious. It’s a powerful tool, actually. This is this is very interesting. This this is from today. There’s a news from today. If you have checked the news earlier, The, this is the photo of the very first black hole found in our galaxy in the Milky way.

This photo found today quite a coincidence because the example that comes now is related to the project that makes possible creating these images, these amazing images. So in 2019, that was this very amazing science breakthrough. When this was the first photo of a [00:06:00] black hole, another black hole, not in our galaxy somewhere else harder.

And this achievement was possible. Thanks to first of all, joint effort of the best of observator around the world, the best telescopes joined efforts, but it was also needed a team of computer scientists that process, the separate images that all these of celebrator capture and that was done that was led by a lady called Katie bow.

Who two years before the achievement, two years before 2019 she went to the red carpet. She went to TEDx to explain the vision of all this project and what they were doing. So she was talking about space. She was talking about astronomy. She was talking about image processing, which are topics, quite technical, quite difficult to understand, of course, a lot of new things, but she [00:07:00] made it in such a.

Interesting way using stories, using analogies. Good examples. But especially she use, she speaks so much enthusiasm, so much passion about talks that it’s extremely contagious. When I watched this talk, I was like super fascinated. And I want definitely, I wanted to learn more about astronomy. I want to learn more about the algorithms, et cetera.

That’s exactly what you want. You want to that your passion is contagious. People get really enthused about your research, your product, your algorithms, anything that you want to share. So passion is powerful tool. Now how often we see people that is praised in public for being passionate. Actually, I just did it.

I just did it, Katie Bowman. But truly, if you try to answer this question to yourself it’s quite rare. It’s not common. It’s very rare that you found that I’ll show you [00:08:00] one more example. And this is from the computer world. This person. You may have seen him. He’s from Microsoft is Mr. Pano pane, who is the vice president of devices.

So mostly the hardware of Microsoft and especially the surface products, no laptops, tablets, et cetera. And yeah, you, it keeps one of the best presenters to me in the tech industry at this moment. Especially the product launches when he has a new service product that really inspiring, super interesting.

Nice to watch them. And you have seen, there are two tweets, two tweets here in which they are telling how passionate he’s as a presenter and as a executive in the industry. Just give you a couple more examples. Other people also saying passionate, and passionate. So that is rare. You don’t see so many people who are praised publicly about being passionate and yeah, that’s what we need.

[00:09:00] That’s what you need. Now how to ignite your audience with your passion. I’ll give you a very simple answer. And it’s it actually details a lot it’s should speaking topics that you are really passionate about. So talk about things that you are really passionate about, which sounds very obvious. Yeah.

Might sound very obvious, but many people don’t. Don’t follow this. You have to speak about topics you’re passionate about because if you had a passion about something, you will find the stories easily. You have the stories already, because you have been talking about this with your colleagues, friends, you already have stories to tell about it.

You will find the motivation to spend hours preparing for a presentation or sending a, an application called pro proposal. So passion will help you to succeed a lot. No. What I was selling also is that sometimes, and it’s it’s a mistake that myself have done in the past. Not likely, but you have done in the [00:10:00] past is that sometimes I don’t follow this.

Sometimes I try to speak topics that I don’t really, I don’t really care so much. I have all some interests, but not a passion. And what happens. You have to avoid the trendy topics because I fell into that trap before trying to speak about is what is trendy? What is because if you speak about something is trendy, okay.

People will, you will sound important. You will sound the, the latest, etc, right? It’s like a, it’s a trap. You can stumble you. You can definitely fall down because it’s quite risky. For instance, today, one, one trendy topic is web three. If you know the topics pretty well, they have ideas.

Fabulous. If you don’t, you can just talk about something that is relatively old, but you can bring your own perspective, your own specific experience, and that is valuable. Don’t fall into the trap to go to [00:11:00] trendy topics. Second one. The second of these secrets is humanized technology with stories.

We’re talking about stories. And here, I would like to ask you, even though I’m not going to see your answers, but put chat so I can review a bit later in a chat specific reasons. Why you should tell stories when you have. Presentations talks, values, suggest story. So just spend some time put in a chat.

I will not see right now about a bit later, so please put it for there.

Okay. I will read a bit later what you wrote here or right. Maybe can tell me later, but for now, I will move. I will show a couple of reasons with examples, why we should [00:12:00] tell stories. First of all, probably some of you have answered this stories. Stick in people’s mind. They are memorable.

They’re easy to remember. And one good example that story, that many people who have heard the story, remember it is from Steve jobs, his commencement speech at Stanford. The structure of this speech was three stories, three personal stories. That was it. That was a speech, three personal stories.

And the story that most people remember is the first one. The first one is when Steve jobs was still very young, he was actually just finished the school. And he went to the college, to, to the Reed college, a liberal arts college, quite expensive one in California. So he started starting there.

He moved to the campus, but he didn’t know what to do with his life at that moment. He really didn’t [00:13:00] know. So that’s why at some point he said I don’t know what I’m doing here. Not completely clear. And my parents are spending a lot of money on this education. It’s not worth, so I will quit.

So he quit it, but he didn’t come back home immediately. He stay on the campus. He stay on the campus. And attending also some of the courses. And he went to the courses that he was really interested in that. And one of these courses was calligraphy, which there was excellent courses about calligraphy in that college.

And he learned about aesthetics, about handwriting and all the Tys, the all history, the mechanics of these type phones. And he went really deep into that. He would really deep into that learning very. Many years later, around eight years later, he was already a successful entrepreneur apple computer existed that have launched the first products.

And at that moment he had the vision of having [00:14:00] a personal computer. That was way beyond the competition about a user interface interface, never seen before. And at that moment, everything that he learned in calligraphy helped him to create that very beautiful and nicely done, and a breakthrough of user interface when they launched the Macintosh, the very first Macintosh in 1984.

So that was a product. And in the speech, he said that if I hadn’t quit to a university, I would have never went to that telegraphic course. Therefore I would have never created Macintosh. And the moral story was about connecting the dots, many things that happened in your life. And why you, this, you made these decisions in your.

Second reason to tell stories for me. It’s one of the strongest, especially in the technology world is the stories humanize. Technology stories, [00:15:00] humanize technology. He, this is Jane Chen. She is entrepreneur CEO of a startup called embrace innovation. And I will just jump and tell you, show you how she have started.

Many of her talks, she start exactly this way. She said, just close your eyes and open your hands. Now, imagine. What you can put in your hands, like an apple, a wallet, your keys now, open your eyes. What about alive? And she shows exactly this photo in which there’s a premature baby, very tiny, which is actually striving to survive.

And that is the problem that happens in thousands. Especially in. Poorest and most remote locations in the world. And [00:16:00] that’s how she shows a problem, a big problem very, that touches us. And only after that is that she says, okay, now our company is creating incubators that are portable, that are way more affordable that conventional incubator and that don’t require electricity.

So a great solution for this problem, and that’s how she brilliantly connects technology with a human side of a story of a problem. So that’s an excellent way how she doesn’t start with technology. She start with a human side of a problem. So a brilliant way to, to use the stories.

Now stories are. I would say without clue without any doubt, it’s the most powerful tool for persuasion and it’s really heavily needed, especially in the technology area arena. As you see we to [00:17:00] humanize many problems that exist today. So people will will understand them. Not only understand it, but also be in touch and find the human sign on that.

Now you have good tools, you have passion you use stories, excellent tools. But now in these current times, which like today we are having a, this series of talks are remote virtual presentations. So our time have changed even though right now, actually they are more and more face to face.

Face to face conference events, but still the remote presentation are here to stay. And one of the things that are needed is the interaction with your audience is super important. The interaction in your audience, especially in this remote environment, that’s what I call it. Tele transporters to your living room.

So make a feel I speaker I should make you feel. You are not in the other continent. You are in front of me. [00:18:00] We are here. We are in the same place. That’s the fact that we have to achieve as speaker, especially not only, but in remote presentation, but especially in remote presentation. So how can I tele transport you to my living room?

And I can give you two tactics here, very simple tactics, right? You will see quite useful. They are. The first of all is ask questions. Very simple. Ask questions. I will show you one example. This is a very interesting talk actually for developers. If you haven’t watched it is by Greg young, the art of destroying.

So where he talks about refactoring. Really since later refactoring. So it’s super interesting talk, but what like, like from this talk is, as you see him in this picture, he is not in the podium. He is at that moment sitting, but he’s at the edge of the stage, very close to the audience, like having a conversation with the audience, having a conversation with the audience.

[00:19:00] And he barely used slides. He was just talking and his dynamic was like this. At the beginning, he said, how many of you have been in a talk about writing code? And of course, some people raise hands. Some people say yes, right after he said, how many of you have been a talk about refactoring code and similar?

Some people, yes, no. Saying something.

And that’s how he used a interaction with the audience now. He followed that dynamic, asking questions, bringing a new point, asking questions, bringing some new points, some question, et cetera. Later he, he asks a different kind of question that pay attention to this different type of question he asks.

Now, what if you were optimized from the very beginning to be able to delete.

What if, and in this type of [00:20:00] questions, he didn’t expect an answer. Yes, no raising hands. No. He expected. This is the type of question, the rhetorical questions in rhetorical questions. When you raise one of these questions, you expect that the audience reflects on the questions, things about the question.

and because of that the audience is going to be more immersed into your topic, into your, into what you are saying. So as you seen two different type of questions, Call and response. And the last one is a rhetorical question, both type of question, very simple to use in any talk different parts when it’s suitable and really powerful to keep the interaction with the audience.

So now second tactic here now. I’m sure. When you give presentations, you spend good times, couple of weeks, at least to, to prepare your material to have PowerPoint or anything you [00:21:00] want some rehearsal pro hopefully you rehearse with your colleagues, friends, that preparation, but something that you can do at a last minute, like adding a piece that you are last minute is to do this.

And I put a post note. PostIt note that shows PostIt note symbolizes actually the present moment there, the last minute you are adding some pieces of information in this piece of information, you have to include something that’s happening today or now. What is the current event happening what’s happening in this current event?

Mostly if it’s a conference, the place where you are, the moment what’s happening now, some anecdotes in the corridor, these kind of things. So the best thing is to use a posted note, a sticky note, like this one, you just put a sticky note in which two, two hours before the presentation you write down something that happened recently or today, for instance I mentioned.

[00:22:00] That the black hole news that happened just few hours ago of funding. I’m sharing with, you mentioned the previous speaker, the next speaker. If there are several speakers in the, in in the program, an anecdote of the event, something that is happening now, if you have access to chat, check the chat and you can share something.

So these kind of things are a bit rich because that makes your audience feel that I am. This is not a record. This is not prerecorded. I’m not really in front of you in the same moment we are having a conversation almost. So that helps a lot with the with the interaction. So those worry three secrets I want to share with you just to summarize.

Passion ignite us with your passion human analogy, with stories and the third one, tele transport us to your living room, the importance of interaction with the audience. Now something I know you’re interested, especially the ones who are not super active yet. Like [00:23:00] the rising stars of the speaking in the tech industry, how to get started in tech events and I’m sharing some of.

Peace advisor might help you. The first thing is find your topic. That’s the most important thing to get started? How find some clarity to find your first topic or topics? Yeah, passion, remember something passion. So I’ll give you two few hints, how you find your first topic that will make you interesting for event organizers, because event organizers are really hungry for interesting people for interesting ideas for interests.

If you show something, a proposal that is really interesting, they will tell you, please come to my event. So a few ways to find your topic. First of all, think of knowledge that you. And others don’t. And that’s mostly specific projects that you have worked specific projects that are unique orders. [00:24:00] Haven’t think on that.

Think about that. I will give you a few example, right after this line, too, to illustrate now you are genuine interest is no it’s related to passion, both the professional side. So you might be really passionate about our programming language in particular, some technology. Can be accessibility, security, something in particular, you are interested and something personal, something in personal is always useful.

What are your hobbies? Other interests outside the development can be, anything, can be sports, can be movies can be environment. So any other genuine interest you. Write it down and then we’ll try to find the connection. So when you mix together, you’ll find an interesting topic.

And the last one is special opinion about something it’s actually, this is related to the example of the art of destroying software. He was talking about refactoring, how the agile was [00:25:00] created. Waterfall was created, was giving his opinion about in making people reflect about this waste of refactoring and deleting code.

So special opinion about something that can be all can be, as I said, many people have talked about that topic, but bring you specific opinion. That’s really valuable. That is interesting few examples. I just want to put you from 2021, some comp some conferences. I just copy past some titles, some titles of the talks.

Container falls are a hacker’s best. This is quite technical. Talk a container with the touch of the security side. This is also technical. Identity access management, how we went from on-prem to the cloud, and this took a specific experience, right? So this team went from on-prem to cloud, so they are describing his, their specific experience they have.

And that’s interesting. That sounds interesting to me, programming for [00:26:00] accessibility. No, you have genome learning interest about accessibility and you talk about that. Coach investment, what different this is related to this is beyond the technical side, whether it’s something that anybody needs Mentoring and coaching is super helpful in for many, also many professionals many functions that, that we do, including developments, all of these are from development or or digital identity conferences.

All of them are taken from. These type of events and one more made the most out of your GI app profile this a bit more towards the branding as a person who have GI hub profile, how to get more people to use your tools or to use your software as well as companies, not companies that have GI have profile and want to.

Yeah. Make the most out of that. So you see very varieties, different types of potential topic, not only technical, not only information, not only formative, but it’s opinion. And, but [00:27:00] combine the tips that I just give you, you can find, you can make very interesting topics. And now finally few actions for applying when you have already one idea of a topic, how to apply for conferences.

Something very useful in don’t be shy to do it, especially if you are early in your career, most, most likely there’s someone, at least one person in the company who had been already a good experience of speaking in, in conference. Talk with this person or a friend who is, has experience similar experience.

What are the benefits of that? First of all, you will get insider information that you don’t find search. You can search. Of course you will search call for proposal. You will find confidence inform. But there’s insider information that only the ones who have given talks have been in the events can tell you.

They can tell you for instance, oh, there is a in your time, there is a conferences. There are comfort about accessibility. Now in September, they can tell [00:28:00] you and you go and search. You don’t find anything doesn’t mean that he’s lying. You it’s that he has insider information. The organizers are still.

Getting ready and soon they will publish something, but you can have the advantage of contacting source. You can be one of the first to contact the event organizers and that give you some advantage. So it’s very helpful to do this. The second one Make a list of the speakers that you like, especially if it’s geographically in your city or your country or in your specific field can be, for instance, in data, identity can be in accessibility, make a list of interesting speakers and then search on for instance, YouTube or anywhere you want.

Where they have given talks, and that will give you a list of potential events, potential conferences. You will discover many that you have never heard. And that was going to be also very helpful. You have many more possibilities, and finally, of course, you have to pitch yourself. You have to [00:29:00] show the words, send applications.

And for that, it’s important that in the applications tell what is your motivation? The organizers want to know why you want to speak, what is your real motivation? That’s something that will convince they all want to hear. What is your motivation and always a personal touch. If I said, talk, mention something about, you, mention something about what you do professionally, your interest professionally, also outside a professional world.

Yeah. You geek high profile for instance, enhance it. Et cetera. And this is also one example related to that. There are some developers, this is one, one lady who I interviewed for the book ADE she’s Spanish lives in UK. She has had for many years a blog in a website and this website, she has very links to hook her projects so people can see her latest former talks.

Blog, et [00:30:00] cetera. Since it’s super interesting is that when I interview her, I learned that many years before she started to speak very actively, just at some point was super active in giving talks and confidences in troubling years before she was blogging a lot things that she found interesting about programming, something.

She brought an article in putting on her blog. She has been doing that for several years and that helped her. First of all, to get some. Write these ideas in a simple way, write some stories and have content that you can reuse for creating talks. So this is the path that I saw from few other speakers.

They start as bloggers and have they gain the content and also the credibility. And that helps them a lot to become speakers. Good speaker, definitely. You can switch from blogger to, to speak to good, really good speaker, much more easily. This is what I wanted to show you. [00:31:00] So I really wish you that gave you good ideas and also the motivation for applying for conferences and bring your best ideas to the war.

Because particular also really happy when I see people speaking with passion, being interesting stories, and of course solving the biggest problems that AIA have. So if you want to learn more, you can read my book, rock the text stage, fund me on Twitter. Link it in. And the last thing I end with this.

There’s one gift for all of you. There’s one free ebook that is on my website. If you go to that page rock, text, stage.com on my website, you find a free book with seven ways, seven tactics to start your talk, you can start like with story with a prop, you showing a prop, you can start with a quote tactic like that.

And each of them has there’s a video one example. So from the best speakers in the, in, in the tech arena. So I hope you enjoy. That I’ll leave it to you, Brian. Thank you.[00:32:00]

Great

Brian Rinaldi: Oscar. Excellent. Actually, I’m gonna leave that back up in case people want the URL. I did post it in the chat, but that way, if anybody wants to see it there that was really good. I agree with everything you said, and as somebody who speaks often and I don’t feel like speaking is my biggest skill to be quite honest, but as somebody who, but who had spoken a lot over the past, like decade plus I’d say I know those things, and yet they’re also sometimes harder to implement than you think, especially. I don’t know if you find this, I find when I’m dealing with a talk on a very technical topic, it’s very easy to get to dive deep into technical stuff.

And I feel like the best talks I’ve given, keep in mind that I can’t teach you every how to do. Whatever it is, I’m there to, like I can’t, [00:33:00] you’re not gonna learn it in 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever I have to give a talk. What I’m really gonna be able to do is help you to find the interest in doing this after you leave the talk.

So it’s easy to get lost in like providing them too much detail and losing some of these tools that you recommend. I is that in your experience?

Oscar Santolalla: Yeah. That’s correct. That’s correct. It’s explaining heavy topics. Technical topic is always a challenge. It’s always a challenge.

I had always challenge to putting in a easy way, right? Because at least you want that people remember something about that, that as you said, they spark the, their interest to learn more, but they should remember something particular and that is done with, for instance, stories or. Some metaphors some tools like that.

Yeah. Or using a probe. It depends. It’s always takes some work to achieve that.

Brian Rinaldi: Absolutely. I think I’d say I, in my own speaking [00:34:00] experience, I’ve never done all three things you mentioned in there except maybe once. And I do recall that once was the one time I felt the best about the presentation.

Everybody who was there was like, that was really good, which is, I mean is I usually get positive feedback, but not a lot. So yeah, that’s I think those things are definitely good. So Ember asks, do you have any tips on how to create interesting slides?

Oscar Santolalla: Yes. Yeah, that’s quite wide question. Interesting slides. Whoa. There are many things, but when slide we talk about slides, the first thing is that we recommend not starting your presentation with a blank PowerPoint or keynote slides. So that’s the mistake. It’s better to first of all, Pen and paper or the way you want put your main ideas, your main, your key [00:35:00] ideas.

Your storyline organize the way you feel comfortable and only then go to the PowerPoint. When you have clear, what are the subsection of your talk? What is the beginning? The main points and the closing going to PowerPoint. That’s one of the main things I would tell you, if you ask me about presentation software then.

There are a lot of things. Of course the aesthetics is important. So try to use templates, try to use templates for default, that will help you a lot use templates that have a modern appearance. So don’t use the default for the PowerPoint has some default templates that are there.

Those are those look very outdated. Fun. Even Microsoft has their own free templates that look much smaller. So going fun then that’s one thing. Learn about how to use templates. That’s important. You need some tutorials to to get that, but yeah, spend time learning bit more beyond the basics, right?

Because it’s very easy to open PowerPoint. Just copy [00:36:00] paste and that’s it, but it is better to spend some time, learn a bit more than the basics, a bit more than functionalities. And that will help you a lot. Yeah,

Brian Rinaldi: That’s good advice. I think, I personally always, like I find even recently I was doing a presentation and I started working on the slides right away off of a blank deck.

And it wasn’t working out. And then I went back and I said, you know what, I’m gonna just scratch that, go back. And I made myself a little just in a text notepad, like a little. Of what it was I wanted to like, because it helped me craft a story out of it, as opposed to just a bunch of slides, like in a sequence, like I was like, it made me think about like how does this kind of progress and make it into something interesting.

As opposed to like just the series of points that I was making and for, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this book, but I read it. It’s not that new, but I found it really good. There’s a book by so three different authors who were well known for their [00:37:00] presentations in tech world. And so they, they took this concept of like design patterns and made a book about presentation patterns.

It is, that’s the name of the book it’s called presentation patterns. It was one that I found useful. I will say just like with your tips to speaking often their tips I fail at doing, but it did help me a lot. I think, improve my slides. Like I think prior to reading that I was throwing too much information on them.

And it turns out that very little information is really needed there. UN unless you’re reinforcing a point. Which when your slides did that, you didn’t have a ton of text and none of.

Oscar Santolalla: Exactly. That’s why I aim to put very little text minimal, just like sign, post, very little text.

And that’s important. Yeah. I’m not aware of that book, but yeah, definitely. Yeah. Any book you can read because I have read for learning a lot of things. Also, I read many other books from. Yeah. People about storytelling about presentations. So yeah, [00:38:00] so good to keep reading interesting books.

Brian Rinaldi: So for this book you said you researched like people’s presentations, but you also interviewed the people that you felt were some of the best and tell me more about like some of the people that you interviewed, cuz that’s fascinating to me as an approach to doing this.

Oscar Santolalla: Let’s see. Yeah, one, one very we can start maybe from

yeah, for instance Heather, while she, I think she’s lives in Las Vegas. So in us starter she work in ever not one of the first employees in ever not. And she talks many stories. Stories is one on. Her and yeah, her best ES she, your very interesting story, personal stories. And she talks about a lot about, for instance, that coaching and mentoring differences, she talks about these topics.

So yeah her one of the main strengths is is a story. And also what the, yeah the purpose, how you find a purpose for sharing your idea. Another interesting person is he’s. He’s an author also about programming. He’s [00:39:00] called cabling, he name, and he’s also, he’s a UK. He’s given a talk this week, for instance, in, in a conference called DevOps UK, but both that are gonna be a DevOps.

Yeah, exactly. These days I check there both. They are actually in London giving conference, he talks, he has about for instance, how to use PowerPoint to, to check the speed of your presentation how to he has many tricks about PowerPoint. Actually, share a lot on, on, on my book, many tricks about how you to use PowerPoint.

And so yeah every person is, has their own interesting stuff. So then in Finland we have miChip on and he is a cyber security expert and he has many tricks about storytelling, about how to rehearse. He hides, he uses a lot of props. He uses props So different people, you use different of these [00:40:00] secrets or tools that sometimes the right tool makes a huge difference is the things that people would remember on your top.

Just choosing the right tool, the right prop. It’s what people who remember. So it’s right.

Brian Rinaldi: Yeah. I, yeah, I’ve had, I think my colleagues who were always the best presenters remembered it’s partly. the presentation is not just like the information and not just to hopefully inspire you to go learn more about a topic, but it’s also entertainment, right?

Like they you’re there. You wanna enjoy it and be enter entertained in a way, even if it’s informative, entertaining. And so I feel like, the colleagues I’ve had who I’m like were just naturally gifted speakers just seemed to have a natural understanding of making it fun in a way.

So using, like using props for instance, would be something like, just make it more entertaining, make it more fun. So excellent. What’s [00:41:00] just all excellent advice. And I’m really hoping that personally I start to. You said more and I wanna see what the rest of the advice you have in that book is because, I feel like I even having spoken for a long time it’s a, it’s definitely a skill that, you have to work on.

It doesn’t for some of us, I sit there in the audience. I remember sitting in the audience of somebody once who was like giving their first talk at a conference, like first talk anywhere. And they were. Amazing. And I was like, God, I like I, part of me loves you. And part of me is like really hating you right now.

out of jealousy, purely jealousy. So anyway, yeah, I think, it, some of us like really like myself needed need to work every day, like every time at doing these kinds of things. So

Oscar Santolalla: excellent. Mostly everybody actually. Yeah I was a really bad presenter. Many years ago. I’ve been learning and[00:42:00] different techniques and principles and everything.

Most of the speakers who are good now, they have been lousy speakers in the past, the vast majority, for sure. Yeah. Everybody

Brian Rinaldi: learned the other thing I learned from some of my colleagues who are really good speakers, is that. The a lot of them make it seem like they just up their chit chatting. Like they, they just wing in it and they rehearse that thing endlessly.

But you don’t know it. You don’t know when you’re sitting there watching it, but they would be the ones who like rehearsed and rehearsed but somehow made it feel natural. Like they were like unrehearsed. It’s not, yeah, it’s not, it took a lot of practice.