Record your presentation and listen to yourself

I’ve been fortunate that in the last couple of years, I was invited to do some podcasts. I listened back to each of them afterwards.

Yup, it was not fun. I became more aware of some of my speech patterns. Some I knew. Tendency towards tangents: check! But some were new. I would often pause in mid-sentence while I tried to work out how to end the sentence. I didn’t know I did that before.

You might not be able to get yourself invited to a podcast, but you probably have a smart phone, and it probably has an app like “Voice memos” or something similar.

So before you present your poster at the conference, turn on the voice recorder while you are talking through your poster. Give that 3-4 minute summary out loud while you are looking at your poster.

I know, I know. Few people like to hear the sound of their own voice played back to them. It sounds weird and unfamiliar, even though you know it’s what you just said.

But in a noisy environment where people only want to spend a few minutes with you at your poster, you want to deliver a crisp walk through if you’re asked.