At the beginning of March I had the great opportunity to speak at GDG Boulder’s celebration for Women Techmakers. The event was Lightning Talks by women in the tech industry, and it was a total blast!
When I was invited to give a talk a month ago, I immediately said yes. I really enjoy public speaking, and was really excited to speak at Google’s office; what a treat! However, I was a little nervous about the format. I had never given a lighting talk before. What on earth was I going to say in just 5 minutes?
This was really hard! I wanted it to be somewhat technical, since this was a tech event. But I didn’t want it to be too Android specific, since attendees would be from many different backgrounds. The best lightning talks I’ve heard revolve around telling a story, so I wanted to do that, too. I was stumped.
I decided to make a big list of every possible tech-related thing I could talk about. Then, I also started watching every tech-related lightning talk I could find on YouTube, and reading every blog post I could find on how to give a successful lightning talk.
I learned that a good tactic is to make your point at the beginning of the talk, and then spend your talk explaining your point. I also learned that my favorite lightning talks were the ones that used a good story as a way to explain their points. The topic on my list that had the best story was definitely “my first hackathon,” and it was also tech-related enough for a the event.
GDG Boulder leader Chiu-Ki Chan gave the speakers good deadlines for when we needed to pick a topic, and when we needed our slides submitted to her. I was really grateful she did that, so I wasn’t leaving anything to the last minute. Slides were submitted a week before the event, so there was plenty of time to practice and perfect my talk.
I think a 5 minute talk is the hardest talk to give, because you have to be so well practiced. There is no time for detours! No ums! No forgetting anything! The good thing about a 5 minute talk, is that it is easy to practice it over and over since it is only 5 minutes. 🙂 I gave the talk a few times each night leading up to the event. The practice was crucial; I was surprised how many kinks I had to work out. By the time the event came around I was giving a pretty consistent talk, just a few seconds over 5 min.
The actual event was so much fun! We spoke at the Google Boulder office in their great auditorium. It was a packed house and the audience really seemed to enjoy my talk. I was also glad I got to speak towards the beginning, so I could relax and enjoy the other speakers, who were all phenomenal.
Thanks for having me, GDG Boulder!