So you want to be a public speaker?

Adapted from the DDD Europe “Train the Trainer” webinar · By Gien Verschatse, Curator of DDD Europe

I was asked to give a webinar “train the Trainer” for the speakers of DDD Europe, and I wrote this blogpost with help of AI from the transcript. I am limited in time, but I still want to share what I have learned along the way.

During DDD Europe 2024, a fellow speaker asked me how I stayed so calm before and during my talks because they couldn’t do that. My first instinct was “calm? I am not calm. I am extremely nervous.” But then I started to think about it. The truth is, I am a lot calmer than I was at the beginning. There is a video out there of me talking about F# and Fable and you can just see how nervous I am. I finished 15 min early because I was so nervous and I couldn’t calm myself down during the talk. Safe to say, not one of my best performances. I am not only calmer, I am also better at public speaking in general. I consciously worked on my public speaking skills.

I don’t hold the universal truth. I’ve been giving talks for nine years, somewhere between five and ten per year, plus trainings and hands-on sessions. I’m sharing what I’ve learned from when I started until now. Take what’s useful, leave the rest, and feel free to see things differently.

Part One: Preparation

Know Your Audience

The audience changes everything. A DDD Europe crowd is very different from NDC Oslo or Flowcon. When I know who’s in the room, I can pitch my material correctly. Mixed experience levels are genuinely hard to write for — I struggled with this very webinar because I had beginners, intermediate, and veteran speakers all in the same session.

Your audience is smart — trust them. I’ve seen talks (and probably given a few) that explain things the audience already knows. If you’re at Data Mesh Live, you can assume everyone knows what a data product is. At the DDD Europe main track, ubiquitous language needs no definition. Save definitions for the foundations track, where they actually belong.

Tip: If you’re unsure of the level, do a live check — ask “who here knows what X is?” by show of hands. Have a definition slide ready: if most hands go up, skip it; if they don’t, use it. Ask the positive question (who does know), not the negative one. It’s much easier for people to admit knowledge than ignorance.

They want you to succeed. I spent years thinking that if I made a mistake the audience would turn on me. It took three years and watching a live demo almost go catastrophically wrong — with the entire room clapping and cheering the speaker toward the finish line — before that belief finally broke. The audience is in it with you. This is especially true in hands-on sessions.

Culture shapes reactions. In the UK, audiences are polite and quiet. In Germany, getting interrupted mid-talk with a question is completely normal. Some crowds are visibly enthusiastic; others have minimal facial expressions. That’s culture, not a verdict on your talk. To research an unfamiliar conference culture, I look for people I know who’ve been there, watch a few previous keynotes, and take note of the country’s general reputation for communication style.

Do What You Actually Enjoy

I’ve done panels, talks, hands-on sessions, and live coding demos. My first ever talk had a live demo in it. I will never do that again. I find them too stressful, I’m not having fun, and that bleeds through. I also don’t enjoy panels — the unpredictability isn’t fun for me.

So I stopped doing those things and focused on what I genuinely enjoy. For me that’s hands-on sessions — smaller rooms, more intimate, far less stress. But you can only discover what works for you by trying things.

Tip: If you’re considering submitting to DDD Europe next year: we receive roughly 450 talk submissions against only 50 hands-on session proposals — and we need far more of the latter.

Talk about what you know. Some speakers get a high from submitting a talk on a topic they haven’t mastered yet and figuring it out after acceptance. That is not me. The topics I speak on are things I could walk onto a stage right now and talk about for an hour with zero prep. That comfort is what keeps me calm.

Structure, Narrative & Being Yourself

A talk — and even a hands-on session — needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Think about how books are written or how good stories are told. Study storytelling. A deck recommendation from one of the attendees: Storyteller Tactics by PIP Decks, which uses cards to help you outline and structure stories.

Book recommendation: Do You Talk Funny? by David Nihill. The only book on public speaking I’ve ever read, and it’s excellent — not just for comedy, but for engagement and structure throughout.

No surprises — deliver what the abstract promised. Conferences are professional settings. Don’t try to be mysterious or withhold information for dramatic effect. What you wrote in the abstract is exactly what you should deliver. Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s your story. When I started out, I thought there was a “professional me” and a “real me,” and that the stage demanded the former. Years in, I realised the opposite is true. My sense of humour is strange, not everyone gets it, but it’s mine, and pretending otherwise made me worse on stage. Be yourself. Your personality is not a liability.

Slides: Keep It Minimal

My slides exist to serve me as a speaker, not to serve as a standalone document. A keyword and a beautiful photo (I use Unsplash) is usually enough. If someone can walk away from your slide deck with the same knowledge as if they’d attended your talk, your slides are doing too much work.

Walls of text are the enemy. The moment you put dense text on a slide, people stop listening to you and start reading. You lose the room.

The exception is definitions — and even then, bold the key words you want their eyes to land on, then read the definition aloud together with them. If you give a definition in a non-introductory talk, frame it: “You don’t have to agree with my definition — but for this talk, this is the definition I’m working from.”

You can also give the audience a moment of silence to read a text-heavy slide — but it requires confidence to stand on stage saying nothing for 30 seconds. If you do it, do it deliberately.

No numbering, no clutter. Don’t add slide numbers or progress indicators to the canvas. They’re distracting. Keep it clean.

The one-slide-per-minute rule

Aim for roughly one slide per minute of talk time. My last hour-long talk had 72 slides and I finished with 12 seconds to spare. If you have 172 slides for a 15-minute slot, you are not going to make it.

Managing time

Most conference slots run 45–60 minutes. Always build your talk for a one-hour slot, even if yours is 50 minutes. It is always easier to cut material than to pad it out. Cutting an exercise or giving people slightly less time for it is far simpler than trying to add material on the fly.

Accessibility

High contrast. A dark-on-dark scheme that looks fine on your laptop can become unreadable when projected. Test it.
Colour blindness. Run your slides through a colour blindness checker (there’s a link in the DDD Europe speaker roadbook). Red-green colour blindness is significantly more common in male audiences, and software conferences skew male.
Photosensitive epilepsy. Flickering animated GIFs can trigger seizures. If you need an animation, set it to stop after a short loop — or duplicate the slide and swap to a still image once you’re done talking about it.

Hands-on session slides are different

For exercises, always include: the time available, a clear written description of the exercise, and a visible countdown timer. I use the app Timer — it does exactly what it says. Even when the task is written on the slide, people will still come and ask questions. That’s fine — write it down anyway.

The 25/75 rule: Aim for no more than 25% theory and at least 75% hands-on exercise time. Most workshops I’ve seen still tip toward more theory than practice. Structure it in blocks: a bit of theory, then an exercise, then more theory, then continue the exercise.

Increasing Engagement

A few approaches that work:

Show-of-hands questions during a talk create small, low-friction interaction without the awkwardness of people shouting answers.
QR code word clouds — I’ve seen speakers ask “what word comes to mind when I say X?” and display a live word cloud as people respond. Very effective.
Comedy, used well, increases engagement significantly.
Exercises are the main engagement tool in hands-on sessions — lean into them.

Finding a Sparring Partner and a Stage

My very first talk was terrifying — but I had a mentor who helped me build it, write the abstract, submit it, and rehearse it. That support made an enormous difference.

DDD Europe runs a speaker sparring programme — we match speakers for idea-pitching, feedback, and support. If you’d like to join, email us or check your speaker emails.

Ways to get reps in before a big stage:

Local meetups (DDD meetups exist in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, and virtually via Virtual DDD)
Smaller conferences near you — a good place to test a talk before bringing it somewhere larger
Your living room, with a few friends who’ll give you honest feedback

The only real way to know your timing: run the talk, out loud, with the slides advancing. Everything else is a guess.

Part Two: During the Talk

Reality Check: Not Everyone Will Love It

One third of your audience will dislike you, one third will be neutral, and one third will think you’re great. That’s just how it works. You cannot please everyone. People will be on their phones. People will walk out mid-session or walk in late. The first 10–15 minutes of a conference talk are often logistically chaotic. Be prepared for it and don’t let it throw you.

Mental preparation. I don’t attend talks immediately before I give my own — my head isn’t in the right space and I’m not a good audience member anyway. I need a quiet break before I go on. DDD Europe has a speaker room and a silent room — use them. If you prefer to stay in your hotel room to clear your head, please at least send the organisers a quick message so nobody panics.

Things Will Go Wrong — Roll With It

I once delivered a talk on a Danish laptop with a completely different keyboard layout, set up with five seconds to spare while the room was already full. Technical chaos is not the exception — it’s the occasion. Every conference runs differently. Once you’ve been to a conference you’ll know how it works there; until then, assume nothing.

I’ve seen speakers start their talks without slides while the technical team were still trying to get the laptop to project anything. You do the best you can. Everyone around you is trying to do the same.

Tip — bring your own gear. I bring my own clicker and my own adapter set. DDD Europe provides clickers and a full range of adapters, but if you need something specific — a particular adapter, a whiteboard, post-its, anything — email us ahead of time. What we know about, we can fix. What we don’t know, we can’t.

The 10 Minutes Before You Go On

This is the part nobody warned me about. You’ve prepared, you’re dressed, your mental game is set — and then the sound technician appears and starts touching you. They’ll thread a cable under your shirt, clip a transmitter somewhere, and possibly ask you to remove jewellery that interferes with the kit. They mean well entirely, but it can be jarring, especially if you’ve deliberately dressed for confidence.

Practical things I’ve learned the hard way:

Wear a blazer or two-layer outfit — it gives the technician somewhere to run the cable without going under your shirt.
Make sure your outfit has a pocket for the transmitter; otherwise it ends up hanging around your neck, which is uncomfortable.
If you wear jewellery as part of your “battle gear,” invest in pieces that don’t interfere with radio mics — then you can politely and confidently decline when asked to remove them.

DDD Europe briefs its technical team to ask for permission before touching speakers and to explain what they’re going to do. Some conferences don’t. Be prepared either way.

Take a breath before you begin. When you walk on stage, before you say a word: breathe in, breathe out. Five seconds. It clears the residual stress of that chaotic backstage preparation.

Slides, Notes, and Taking the Stage

Presenter notes are almost never projected for the audience. If you want to move freely across the stage — and you should, the stage is yours — you can’t rely on seeing your notes. That’s why your slides should serve as memory cues for you: a single keyword or a striking image that pulls the right thread of your talk back to mind.

There’s no Q&A by default at DDD Europe and Data Mesh Live. You have your full timebox. If you don’t want a Q&A, you need those minutes completely filled — which is exactly why your timing has to be solid.

Part Three: After the Talk

The Post-Talk Feedback Ambush

The moment the applause ends, someone will walk up and tell you what you got wrong, what you forgot, or what they didn’t enjoy. It is the worst possible moment to receive critical feedback. Be ready for it. If you’re an audience member with a critique, consider waiting a day before approaching the speaker — or use the feedback form.

Getting Better Over Time

Ask a fellow speaker to watch your talk. Not a close friend — someone from the circuit who’ll give you an honest reading.
Watch yourself back. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. You will learn an enormous amount.
Watch speakers you admire — and understand what you’re borrowing. I love Eric Evans and Scott Wlaschin. They both have a slow, deliberate delivery I can’t replicate — it doesn’t suit me. Know what’s transferable and what isn’t.

Think Outside the Box

I’m an amateur belly dancer. I also did a lot of MC work at events. Both made me meaningfully better at public speaking. The hardest part of giving a talk is the first two or three minutes — walking out, doing the opening, setting the room. When you MC, that’s basically all you do, over and over, in short high-stress bursts. It’s very good training. Whatever helps you get comfortable with being watched while you perform — pursue it, even if it seems completely unrelated to speaking.

The Short Version

Know your audience and trust their intelligence. Ask positive questions to gauge what they already know.
Pick a format you genuinely enjoy — you can only discover this by experimenting.
Tell a story with a clear beginning, middle and end. Deliver exactly what the abstract promised.
Be yourself on stage. Your personality is not a liability.
Build talks for one hour; cut from there. One slide per minute is your heuristic.
Keep slides minimal — a keyword and an image. Your slides are for you, not the audience.
Bold your keywords in any definition slide and read it aloud with the room.
Check contrast, colour blindness, and flickering animations before you present.
For workshops: 25% theory, 75% exercises, always show time remaining.
Find a sparring partner, a meetup, a small stage — and rehearse out loud.
The audience wants you to succeed. They are cheering for you, even silently.
Things will go wrong. Roll with it. Bring your own adapters and clicker.
Dress with the sound technician in mind: two layers, pockets, mic-friendly jewellery.
Breathe before you begin. The stage is yours — take it up.
After the talk, watch yourself back. Uncomfortable and invaluable.

Adapted from the DDD Europe “Train the Trainer” webinar, April 2026.

Gien's Blog