TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

Presentation literacy isn’t an optional extra for the few. It’s a core skill for the twenty-first century.

Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.

It doesn’t have to be a scientific breakthrough, a genius invention, or a complex legal theory. It can be a simple how-to. Or a human insight illustrated with the power of a story. Or a beautiful image that has meaning. Or an event you wish might happen in the future. Or perhaps just a reminder of what matters most in life.

You can only use the tools that your audience has access to. If you start only with your language, your concepts, your assumptions, your values, you will fail. So instead, start with theirs. It’s only from that common ground that they can begin to build your idea inside their minds.

You want to build a reputation as a generous person, bringing something wonderful to your audiences, not as a tedious self-promoter.

Inspiration can’t be performed. It’s an audience response to authenticity, courage, selfless work, and genuine wisdom. Bring those qualities to your talk, and you may be amazed at what happens.

throughline, the connecting theme that ties together each narrative element.

A good exercise is to try to encapsulate your throughline in no more than fifteen words. And those fifteen words need to provide robust content.

What is the precise idea you want to build inside your listeners? What is their takeaway?

But when the audience knows where you’re headed, it’s much easier for them to follow.

The first step is to find out as much as you can about the audience. Who are they? How knowledgeable are they? What are their expectations? What do they care about? What have past speakers there spoken about? You can only gift an idea to minds that are ready to receive that type of idea. If you’re going to speak to an audience of taxi drivers in London about the amazingness of a digitally powered sharing economy, it would be helpful to know in advance that their livelihood is being destroyed by Uber.

To say something interesting you have to take the time to do at least two things: Show why it matters . . . what’s the question you’re trying to answer, the problem you’re trying to solve, the experience you’re trying to share? Flesh out each point you make with real examples, stories, facts.

A. Introduction—getting settled, what will be covered B. Context—why this issue matters C. Main Concepts D. Practical Implications E. Conclusion

My former colleague June Cohen framed the difference this way: An issue-based talk leads with morality. An idea-based talk leads with curiosity. An issue exposes a problem. An idea proposes a solution. An issue says, “Isn’t this terrible?” An idea says, “Isn’t this interesting?”

eye contact with audience members and smile a little.

If you’re going to tell a story, make sure you know why you’re telling it, and try to edit out all the details that are not needed to make your point, while still leaving enough in for people to vividly imagine what happened.

Step 1. He started right where we were.

Step 2. He lit a fire called curiosity.

Step 3. He brought in concepts one by one.

Step 4. He used metaphors.

Step 5. He used examples.

If the core of your talk is explaining a powerful new idea, it is helpful to ask: What do you assume your audience already knows? What will be your connecting theme? What are the concepts necessary to build your explanation? And what metaphors and examples will you use to reveal those concepts?

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,

What do I mean by priming? The philosopher Daniel Dennett explains it best. He coined the term intuition pump to refer to any metaphor or linguistic device that intuitively makes a conclusion seem more plausible. This is priming. It is not a rigorous argument; it is simply a way of nudging someone in your direction.

most demos: An initial tease Necessary background, context, and/or the invention story The demo itself (the more visual and dramatic the better, so long as you’re not faking it) The implications of the technology

The key is to set the context, prime the audience, and then . . . BAM! Let the visuals work their magic. Run them full-screen, with minimal adornment.

If you want to really explain something new, often the simplest, most powerful way is to show and tell.

Just go to a blank, black slide and then the audience will get a vacation from images and pay more attention to your words.

The point is there is no value in simply repeating in text what you are saying on stage. Conceivably, if you are developing a point over a couple of minutes, it may be worth having a word or a phrase onscreen to remind people of the topic at hand. But otherwise, words on the screen are fighting your presentation, not enhancing it. Even when a text slide is simple, it may be indirectly stealing your thunder. Instead of a slide that reads: A black hole is an object so massive that no light can escape from it, you’d do better with one that reads: How black is a black hole? Then you’d give the information from that original slide in spoken form. That way, the slide teases the audience’s curiosity and makes your words more interesting, not less.

With images, a 5-second viewing, even without any accompanying words, can have impact.

I recommend you start with a totally blank slide. If you’re showing a lot of photos, use black as the background—it will disappear and your photos will pop.

We usually recommend medium-weight sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial.

Use 24 points or larger in most cases. Use at most three sizes of your chosen typeface per presentation, and there should be a reason for each size. Large size is for titles/headlines; medium size is for your main ideas; small size is for supporting ideas.

Black on white, a dark color on white, and white or yellow on black all look good because they have great contrast

Bullets belong in The Godfather. Avoid them at all costs. Dashes belong at the Olympics, not at the beginning of text. Resist underlining and italics—they’re too hard to read. Bold typefaces are OK. Drop shadows can occasionally be useful to improve legibility, especially for type on top of photos, but use the effect sparingly. Don’t use multiple type effects in the same line. It just looks terrible.

Use builds—add words and images to a slide through a series of clicks—to focus people’s attention on one idea at a time. Give your audience enough time to absorb each step. Don’t feed too much of the slide at a time or people will get overwhelmed.

None (or cut) is great when you want an instant response to your clicker, and dissolve looks natural if it’s set to a time interval of less than half a second. Cut and dissolve even have two subconscious meanings: With cut you’re shifting to a new idea, and with dissolve the two slides are related in some way. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s valid.

You want an opening that grabs people from the first moment. A surprising statement. An intriguing question. A short story. An incredible image.

1. Deliver a dose of drama

2. Ignite curiosity

How do you spark curiosity? The obvious way is to ask a question. But not just any question. A surprising question. How do we build a better future for all? Too broad. Too much of a cliché. I’m bored already. How did this fourteen-year-old girl, with less than $200 in her bank account, give her whole town a giant leap into the future? Now we’re talking.

3. Show a compelling slide, video, or object Sometimes the best opening hook is a glorious, impactful, or intriguing picture or video.

“Let me show you something.”

4. Tease, but don’t give it away

Camera pull-back You’ve spent the talk explaining a particular piece of work. At the end, why not show us the bigger picture, a broader set of possibilities implied by your work?

Call to action If you’ve given your audience a powerful idea, why not end by nudging them to act on it?

Personal commitment It’s one thing to call on the audience to act, but sometimes speakers score by making a giant commitment of their own. The most dramatic example of this at TED was when Bill Stone spoke of the possibilities of humans returning to the moon, and his conviction that an expedition could create a massive new industry and open up space exploration for a new generation.

Values and vision Can you turn what you’ve discussed into an inspiring or hopeful vision of what might be?

Satisfying encapsulation Sometimes speakers find a way to neatly reframe the case they’ve been making.

Narrative symmetry A talk built carefully on a throughline can deliver a pleasing conclusion by linking back to its opening.