My colleagues and I frequently give talks at community and industry events. While some of us are experienced speakers, a little practice can make a big impact. For the extra edge, we schedule talk rehearsals for those who would like to practice presenting in front of an internal audience.
The why
The idea behind talk rehearsals is that people hopefully do them anyway, but it’s difficult to objectively review your own work. We’re often overcritical and forget to have fun with our presentations. It’s also hard to spot typos or information gaps when you’ve been staring at the same set of slides for hours. I organized talk dry-runs at other companies, and brought learnings to my role at EDB. Now we’ve been running this program for 3 months, and the response has been very positive. Here’s real feedback from some of our participants:
We just finished reviewing the feedback we got from our rehearsal earlier today and it's really good. The presentation is going to be much better next week. Thanks for the really valuable feedback. This has been a great idea. Thank you!
Boriss Mejias (Global Solution Architect)
I just finished that rehearsal and I'm very happy that I did it, because the feedback I got was great. It does mean I have a little more work to do in terms of presentation structure, but it's a lot better to know this now rather than after I give it "for real" next week. I encourage other speakers to take the opportunity to rehearse here. It's well worth the time.
Alvaro Herrera (Esteemed Senior Principal Engineer)
The what and how
Every Monday morning, I post a list of open Call for Papers/Speakers (CfP) in a dedicated Slack channel (#edb-speakers). The channel predates my joining the company and was previously used by people to announce when their talk proposal had been selected for a conference. Now whenever that happens, I get in touch with the person to:
- Schedule a rehearsal
- Add it to our internal event engagement list(s)
- Update our events page
Talk rehearsals are then announced via the same Slack channel and added in a shared Google calendar. They’re usually planned a week out from the event. This gives the presenter enough time to plan out their talk and make adjustments, while balancing customer engagements and other daily responsibilities. Talk rehearsals are live and remote (ours are done over Zoom). Feedback is collected in a Google Doc in a Drive folder. If the presenter agrees, we record the rehearsal so that colleagues can watch the rehearsal at a time that they don’t have conflicts.
Should one rehearse their talk?
For some people the value of talk rehearsals is not immediately clear. Below are conversations I’ve had since introducing the program:
- “But this is an existing talk!”
Even if you’ve presented the talk before, there’s always room for improvement. A band doesn’t stop rehearsing because they’ve played a song once. - “I’m an experienced speaker, I don’t need to practice!”
Everyone benefits from rehearsing. If you have a slot at an event, that means people are dedicating their time to listen to you. It’s best to be respectful to your audience by making sure your presentation is the best it can be and is an effective use of everyone’s time. - “My slides won’t be ready until the evening before the event!”
Your slides don’t need to be finished or pretty for the rehearsal, but you should make sure there’s enough to provide feedback on. Even if you’re still sketching out diagrams, colleagues can help you make sure your idea is clear. Postponing working on your talk until the last moment is not respectful of your audience. We’re no rockstars, and even rockstars can’t afford that behavior. Waiting until the last moment also leaves no time for review, and can put you in a precarious situation if something unforeseen happens the day before the event.
To help make sure participants are getting the most out of the experience, I ask them to think about and verbalize what exactly they’d like feedback on - is it the slides, storytelling, or do they want colleagues to challenge them in the Q&A?
What else?
People that join rehearsals help their colleagues catch typos, question assumptions, keep time, and troubleshoot demos. In return they get to learn from their peers and strengthen relationships without ever having to leave the comfort of their home office, which is especially important in a remote work environment. A great side effect of the program: our peers who can’t travel to attend a lot of conferences still get to learn new things all the time! If your team is investing time and expertise into public speaking—whether at conferences, meetups, or webinars—running internal talk rehearsals is one of the most effective ways to elevate your external presence. We’ve seen the benefits firsthand, and we strongly encourage other companies to adopt this practice—I may not officially represent the entire Postgres community, but I’ll say it anyway: thanks in advance for making the event experience better for everyone!