What I learned giving an Ignite format talk

You know that feeling you get when you’re listening to a long boring speech. Maybe you’re listening to a Welsh Assembly Member failing to get to any point, or perhaps it’s a bureaucrat from the WDA trying to beat the audience into submission with statistics. You can’t help noticing the hardness of the seat. You try to unobtrusively reposition your bottom so it hurts less. That’s when you notice a few other people in the audience trying to do the same thing. In that moment you know you’ve been trapped by a “speech rambler”.

Ignite talks are the antidote to speech ramblers.

Definition An ignite talk is a series of exactly twenty slides. Each slide is automatically advanced after 15 seconds - whether the speaker is ready or not. This means that each ignite talk takes exactly 5 minutes. (An Ignite format talk is like a Pecha Kucha talk, except that Pecha Kucha format means twenty-slides with twenty seconds each and a rather silly patent restriction.)

Why Ignite talks are good:

• The brutal limitations of the Ignite format force people to get to the point.
• You can get through many ignite talks in a short time.
• You can easily sample multiple viewpoints and subjects.
• There’s no time to be bored - as speech ramblers either don’t apply or are ruthlessly mown down by the clock.
• Ignite talks tend to be informal and work well in a social environment.

The post-it notes I used to organise my talk. One note per slide, one talking point per note.

I gave an Ignite format talk at Ignite Cardiff #3 back in October 2009. Here’s what I learned:

Content organisation

• You only have 18 slides for content because of the title and closing slides.
• Visual subjects work better than heaps of prose or numbers.
• Just pick the points that are interesting to the broadest audience. Being selective is better.
• You don’t have time to construct a logical argument or to justify a viewpoint.
• It’s easier to arrange your talk by writing on post-its than to use powerpoint or keynote. (You can try limiting this to one point per post-it note.)
• If you want to refer to detailed information remember to put a memorable web link on the closing slide

Speaking style

• Try to explain each point in your own voice. Realise that spoken English is different to written English so take the time to rewrite the post-it the way you find easiest to say. (I found I needed to find a way to say things with fewer words.)
• You need to learn the exact form of words to use as well as the timing because you don’t have time to pause and reconstruct the words from the meaning on the spot.
• Record yourself speaking your talk to make it easier to learn. You can use editing software like Audacity to clean up the recording so you get used to hearing a perfect version of your talk over and over and over…

Slide Authoring

• Avoid bullet points by filling the slide with a full-screen picture that illustrates the point.
• You can poach good, creative-commons licensed content from flickr.com
• Delete all the distracting visual clutter from the slide templates - logos, margins, straplines. There should only be one, big visual on the screen and it should be what you’re talking about. (You might need to negotiate with the event organiser to do this. (Thanks Claire ;-) )
• If your presentation will be viewed in Powerpoint, preview your slides in Powerpoint.If you author slides on a Mac you probably have slightly better (but different) fonts than a PC and exporting a powerpoint file from Keynote or Open Office can sometimes be drawn with slightly different dimensions in Powerpoint on the PC. Check it looks right.
• If you don’t own Powerpoint you can download the Microsoft Powerpoint viewer for PCs.
• Even if you have to submit your presentation in advance, take a copy of the presentation in standard powerpoint format on a normal pendrive just in case it gets lost or corrupted.
• I think that we’re going to see a lot more Ignite format talks in future at conferences and events. It’s certainly worth doing a talk to get familiar with this useful format. There’s a lot of power in this kind of brevity and in the diversity of presentations you get to see at Ignite-focused events.

Stay tuned because when I get a chance I’m going to upload my Ignite talk…