Guide to Writing a Lightning Talk

(image source: https://pxhere.com/)

I co-host a meetup with a crew of agile professional women and we like to run Lightning Talks. We offer speakers mentorship and feedback, ahead of the events, to help them practice and get ready. When I talk to anyone, whether at work or part of a meet-up event, I find myself offering the same presentation tips over and over, as they are the ones I use myself. I know, this is not an original topic, but you might enjoy it as a how-to guide to help get yourself or someone you know started!

What’s a Lightning Talk?

A lightning talk is a very short presentation lasting only a few minutes, given at a conference or similar forum. Several lightning talks will usually be delivered by different speakers in a single session. (wikipedia)

Lightning Talks sessions may or may not have a theme and event organisers will typically tell you what timebox you have available in which to give your talk (5–10 mins max usually).

Professional & Personal Benefits

Lightning Talks can be a really beneficial stepping stone in a learning, up-skilling and confidence journey:

• They are a gentle way to break into public speaking.
• They can help you learn how to deliver a message/information concisely and effectively in a short space of time and really hone your message.
• They help improve how you demo your work to colleagues and stakeholders.
• They are a great way to learn a new topic: if you can teach it to someone else, it usually means you know it!
• They can help you overcome public speaking anxiety and shyness.
• They can grow your general levels of confidence.

How to Write a Lightning Talk

1. Pick a topic: Is there a theme to which you should adhere OR can you talk about anything? Even with technical events, you do not have to talk about a technical subject; we all work with other people and in teams, and team dynamics and sociology or psychology topics are very interesting and relevant to listeners too.
2. Create a first slide (if you are using slides): Action gives you intention; if you create the first slide, you are more likely to write the rest of them and actually create a talk and deliver that talk! If you’re not creating slides, write it on a post-it and keep it visible throughout your who creation process, to act as the reminder of where you want to take your audience.
3. Conclusion First: Sart at the end. What do you want people to feel/ remember at the end of your talk? The time goes by so fast that Recency Bias will kick in for lots of people and the last thing you say will be what they remember, therefore your conclusion is your key message/take away.
4. Main Content: Think about your view point on your topic and think about your tone and logical ordering of thoughts. Will you be telling a story or presenting data? Whatever it is, it needs to be a small, quick thing to convey. Consider for example: Are you trying to prove something? (presenting data or evidence of something to help draw your conclusion). Are you trying to teach something? (what are the exact steps people will need to follow). Are you excited or angry about something? (what tone do you want to set and what tone do you want to use)
5. Challenge your own Ideas: You want to provide a balanced view point so, think about the challenges to your idea/technique/view point and address them, acknowledge both sides of an argument or the places a model
   might be fallible. For example, if you are talking about a new way to implement something, think about how it could go wrong or be limited — this could be worth addressing.
6. Harmonise your main concept and the challenges: Before concluding, tune your opposing view points to help support your conclusion, e.g. Test Driven Development is a great technique for building quality in to your code (main content), but it needs lots of time, practice and discipline to learn to work 3 minute cycles (challenges), however even just 2 weeks of intensive practice, set you up to do it with ease for the rest of your career! (harmonise)
7. Dress up your slides; Keep text light (if you are using slides): Nail your content fIrst, then beautify it! (1) Add some pictures https://pxhere.com/ is a great source for free pictures. One picture per slide can be enough to support the message related to that slide in your talk. Consider maybe using Pecha Kucha format & presentation style. (2) Keep text to a minimum (no more than 3 bullet points per slide, if you have to have text). Don’t go too over the top with gifs. These can be really distracting, so use with caution.
8. Practice A LOT with a Timer. Over and Over and Over. Use a timer too to practice and to help you refine what you want to say.

Having Problems?

If you feel like you are struggling a bit with your content or presentation style or feel like you are wrangling a wild horse — firstly, stop, take a breath and remember that we are not born as experts — secondly, check in with yourself:

• Are you unsure if you are making sense or landing your message? Reach out to a friend of colleague to ask them to listen and give you feedback. They only need to give you 10mins (5 for you to present, 5 for them to feedback and you discuss). They can also tell you if your pace is good, you should not be racing through content, this will be as stressful for your audience to listen to, as it is for you to present it!
• Are you unsure whether you come across well or not? Record yourself in a practice run and watch it back. Yes, this might make you cringe initially, but you will get over it and just get used to working out what you think you did well and what you would like to change, then you are more
  consciously about to work on it.
• Are you struggling to fit your content in to the timebox?(1) Refine your idea against your conclusion: Keep looking at your conclusion to
  help you cut down on your other slides &/ content to make sure everything you say is relevant. (2) It’s not you, it is the format: If you start cutting down slides and start to lose meaning or cannot reach your conclusion, this does not mean your idea or presentation is bad or you are doing anything wrong. This could be feedback that your topic is not suitable for a lightning talk format, in fact, you need a Thunder Talk (a regular/longer presentation), so consider presenting the same content at a different forum, where you can relax into your idea and deliver your content fully.

Give it a Go!

The ultimate takeaway is that you should be enjoying the creation process and the presentation.

Also, remember, you do not need to be confident to be brave :) just put yourself out there….it is only 5 mins and it whooshes past in the blink of an eye. Lightning Talks are fast paced, even between the handover between presenters, and they force audiences to context switch heavily, so audiences will rarely or never notice your mistakes, even if you are dying inside about them!

Try this out and let me know how it went in the comments — even better: post a video link, so I can see for myself :)