You’re a new technical speaker and you’re looking for new ways to grow platform skills and possibly create more content for your website/blog. Here’s how you can do both at the same time. Video record your live presentations.
Why? Two reasons.
- Video recording your presentation offers three ways to get constructive feedback ↓
- Video recording your presentation offers three forms of content creation ↓
T-SQL Tuesday is the monthly blog party started by Adam Machanic (blog | twitter).
For T-SQL Tuesday #84, Andy Yun (blog | twitter) is encouraging experienced speakers to post something to help grow new speakers. Here’s my take on the subject.
Video recording your presentation offers three ways to get constructive feedback.
1. Watch & listen to the original video to learn: “What happened and to get a general feel for how well you delivered your message/content”.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Were you able to make a connection with the audience?
- Was the audience responsive and engaged? What specifically kept the audience engaged or detracted from their engagement?
- Did you involve the audience?
- Did you use humor and/or stories?
2. Listen to the audio (without video) to learn: “How your voice sounds, what you stated and what noises you made”.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Was their variety in your pitch, pace and volume? How did this support or detract from your delivery?
- Were your words clear, to the point and appropriate?
- What were the vocal reactions from the audience vocal reactions from the audience to your stories and/or jokes?
3. Watch the video (without audio) to learn: “How you used your body and the stage”.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Did you maximize the use of the entire platform area or stand in one location? How did this enhance or detract from your delivery?
- Were you visible to the audience or were you hidden behind something like a podium or computer screen?
- How did you utilize your hands and did the use of your hands support or detract from your delivery?
Ready to take it one step further. Keep reading.
Video recording your presentation offers three forms of content creation.
1. Vlog: Video Blogging.
Sometimes people don’t feel like reading an article. In those instances having a video is a great alternative. If you really like the video from your speech then you can upload it to your website/blog as a new form of content to showcase your topic and your excellent platform skills. Alternatively, you can upload it to your favorite video hosting website like YouTube or Vimeo and then embed the video into your website/blog.
2. Podcast: Podcasting.
People like to consume information while they’re on the move – at the gym, on the train, driving, etc. In those instances listening to your podcast is a great option. Utilizing your video recorded presentation, you can easily extract the audio from the video and “BAM” you have a podcast episode. There are a lot of free and paid tools that will aid you in extracting the audio from the video. Next, you can upload the audio file to your site or upload it to your favorite podcast hosting website like iTunes, Libsyn and SoundCloud – then embed it in your website/blog.
3. Blog: Blogging.
Written text is probably the most widely used medium on the web. Get your video recorded presentation transcribed and now “DOUBLE BAM” you can use the transcribed text (or a portion of the text) as content for your blog post. Again there are free and paid options for transcribing the text in your video into a downloadable file. Alternatively, some of the video hosting sites will transcribe the text of your video for you. All you have to do is download the transcribed text, edit it and then post it to your site. Currently, YouTube has options for automatically transcribing the text of your YouTube video.
As you continue to speak to audiences, video record each speech/presentation and follow the advice above, you’ll quickly find that your skills as a technical speaker are rapidly improving and your web content is quickly growing.