public speaking
polycount lvl 666
have any of you guys ben a speaker at a game conference . I have been kind of invited to speak at one and TBH I think that would be rather scary to say the least.
I have been asked to chat about the character creation pipeline, but yeah I have never given a talk like this before.
I suppose lots of slides and notes is the key
brickin it
I have been asked to chat about the character creation pipeline, but yeah I have never given a talk like this before.
I suppose lots of slides and notes is the key
brickin it
Replies
and a few more while you're on stage.
and a few more after.
If you decide to loosen up a bit with some brew just make sure the front rows aren't too populated. No telling what nervousness and alcohol will do in combination.
How hard it is to end really depends on your audience, if they've never done this type of work, you'll have easier time to impress them and probably won't be stumped by hard questions. If they're pros. well, I don't know.
Make a video, narrate it, then just go up and put the video on a projector and let them watch that! Then have Q&A, and you're set!
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Make a video, narrate it, then just go and watch it. Flinch at your nervous tics, cower at your re-use of "kind of", "like", uh...", and actuallY.
Then have a second pass at it. You'll be fine.
lolol
If anything dude, think of something you'd like to see if you went to a talk on the character creation pipeline. Demo some stuff! Slides are BORING! Bring in a lappy and show people while commenting on what you're doing and why you're doing it, basically a realtime VTM.
Make sure you include some really sweet tips and tricks that you use to speed up workflow, technical stuff (topology, deformation, texture density, poly distribution, strong silhouettes, REF! - these are basic i know, but are generally the first thing people forget to address), anything and everything that seems really important to character creation.
I remember going to the AGDC a few years ago and most of the talks were people pimping their folio and not actually sharing anything of value. Did get some sweet nerf slingshot darts and 3DSMAX tees, so it wasn't a total loss.
But with any sort of public speaking, just be confident with what you're going to say or present. Make sure you time your presentation so you don't finish too early and so you don't run out of time. Most importantly, just relax.
-caseyjones
AFter that
"Profit"
If you print off a lot of notes and go in with that you'll end up leafing through, sounding like your reading, constantly staring at your notes instead of your audience, etc...
Same with the slides, just key points. People aren't going to your thing to read, they want to hear what you have to say. Use your slides for visual aids primarily, maybe some videos or whatever else you want, but keep text to a minimum.
Then just go over what you are going to say on your own many times. Talk into a mirror or whatever, and just say your spiel enough that when you get up there you have it in memory for the most part.
That said, remember that you are not giving some speach. If you are comfortable then your audience is, and everyone has a good time. An easy way I find to do this is to act like I'm having a conversation with my audience. It may help to pick out a member at a time and pretend you are just having a normal talk about this stuff with that person.
Last thing, jokes and stuff are good, but don't worry about that stuff. Just do what you are comfortable with. If you aren't used to speaking and you move outside your comfort zone it could get awkward. If you are comfortable withs ome silliness and jokes, go for it, if not don't.
Anyways, hope that helped. Awesome to hear you've been asked to speak on this stuff!
Listen to Tulkamir; the best speeches are given by people who use no slides...what they say is so interesting that they don't need props. Mussolini and Hitler were amazing speakers, and never used slides
Of course, use pics/vids for any point where it actually suits (the pipeline diagram is an obvious one, as are other zoomed in workflow diagrams), but the idea is not to lipsyncs a powerpoint slideshow.
Talk to the crowd, look at them (have bulletpoint notes and nothing more; DONT PRINT OUT YOUR SPEECH WORD FOR WORD AND READ IT! You won't even be able to find where you were anyway in that mass of words if you lose your place)
Posture makes up 80% of how your speech goes over:
-don't lean on the lectern
-don't put your hands in your pockets and/or jiggle change/keys
-preferable stance is leant ever so slightly forwards, shoulders slightly forwards, hands/arms loosely to the sides, palms pointed slightly to the crowd.
-don't gesture wildly, but do use handgestures. Practise those hand gestures. Get feedback for them from your live practise audience.
-look into the crowd. Use whatever trick you need to: imagine them naked, focus on three different people and give the speech to them, use the trick above of thinking of it as a conversation, glaze over and defocus, look into the whol room as if it were one single person...whatever: look into that room and let your gaze look into that crowd. That one single thing will connect with the audience and let them know their attention is being reciprocated. It's very odd, but this single thing has a huge impact versus looking down at your notes/computer/bare desk.
Ditto with caseyjones: a speech needs substance. What surprised you, what would you have liked to have known before you went into the project? Quickly go over the obvious points (in setting up the pipeline, maintaining it), lift out the problems/pittfals/things which surprised.
Make it usefull...after you've given your speach, consider yourself x years ago: would you have wanted to hear that or did it contain no information?
actually i was at a gnomon conference and one of the big name guys whose name escapes me at the moment (really big zbrush supporter... really messing with me that I forgot his name), had about 3 beers during the course of his lecture. Kinda funny.
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Haha, that was Meats Meier, and it was probably the best demo that weekend. I'll echo the rest of these guys and say have a beer before the talk to loosen up in front of the crowd. Don't get hammered, but one or two beers will usually help your presentation so long as your notes are detailed enough that you don't forget your material and start telling bar jokes
yeah its for the london games festival.
http://www.londongamesfestival.co.uk/Home.aspx
anybody going BTW?
Btw, a beer bottle (or something) will give you something to do with your hands. That's all I focus on when watching someone stand and talk, it can get very frustrating when they don't know what to do with their hands, like crap actresses in neighbours