Before my friend started helping with the YT series we're doing I tried recording it myself and I kept stuttering and eventually deleted it. That was prerecorded stuff, so I can't imagine what public speaking in person would be like.

Fuck that shit

Pretty decent at it after going through flight school. I tended to fidget with my hands or watch, so I hold my hands behind my back and put my watch on the table or podium in front of me. I also had a lot of "ums" in my speech, so I learned to take a breath or throw in other filler words like "in addition..." or anything else to transition between two thoughts I haven't mentally linked together. I also find that eye contact with a friend or partner works for me, so while I scan the room and try to make eye contact with people routinely, if I start to get uncomfortable I come back to my buddy and stay there for a bit. I'm naturally a formal speaker, which is good for my job, but in your conference it may be more important to throw in jokes, different inflections, hand gestures, etc. I kind of doubt that's the case, but those can be good ways to keep the audience engaged -- i.e., not bored to death.

And of course, rehearse whatever you're saying, and have a bulleted script in front of you to guide you along.

Quote from: WarTurkey on August 18, 2017, 05:57:03 PM

I'm naturally a formal speaker, which is good for my job, but in your conference it may be more important to throw in jokes, different inflections, hand gestures, etc. I kind of doubt that's the case, but those can be good ways to keep the audience engaged -- i.e., not bored to death.

And of course, rehearse whatever you're saying, and have a bulleted script in front of you to guide you along.

I get to use a powerpoint presentation, so that'll help. Formal speaking is also expected, so I should be fine there as well. My main concern is my familiarity with the topic I'm presenting. Much of it is of a colleague of mine who won't be able to attend, so I'm covering his research too. It's the fielding questions in front of cameras and several hundred people on a topic I'm not intimately familiar with that's got me worried.

I'm not sure how appropriate it would be, but since a lot of it is someone else's work, if you don't know an answer, maybe you could respond by saying you will follow up with an email after conferring with your colleague? Otherwise, there's only so much you can anticipate being asked, so have some sort of professional response ready in case you don't know something.

Careful with powerpoint, too. Don't let it be a crutch.

Apparently I'm good at it, but I hate doing it.

I need good preparation beforehand though. Trying to talk about a subject I know I don't know streses me out, then the audience know too, and that makes my jitters worse.

Not great with the eye contact part, but I can the rest of it down if I work at it. I don't know if I fidget in the talks I've done, but most the time I've been pointing towards something on the presentation so I can hide it that way.

I'm good. I used to wing presentations in high school, and given that my school was one of those progressive presentation-based learning institutions, I passed most of my classes with little to no effort.