Zach’s ugly mug (his face) Zach Leatherman

A Hypocrite’s Guide to Public Speaking

September 06, 2015 Watch in 17 minutes 🇺🇸 USA

Speaking at Barcamp in Omaha has turned into something of a tradition for me. Even though we’ve been busy with a new baby and getting our house ready to sell, I made the foolhardy decision to keep the tradition alive this year.

I love Barcamp because there is a palpable, scrappy energy to the unconference format, and you can experiment with things you wouldn’t do at a more traditional conference. In that vein, I decided to take a risk—instead of giving a normal talk with normal slides and normal speaking, I thought that it would be fun to experiment in something that was almost performance art.

I crafted a presentation about public speaking in which I didn't say a single word aloud. In fact, I purposefully did the opposite of many of the best practices I knew about public speaking, including but not limited to the 10 tips outlined in the talk. Thus, the title "A Hypocrite’s Guide to Public Speaking."

The web-based presentation tool I used was created explicitly for this talk (you may recognize BigText) and it allowed me to do a few special things (break the rules) in a way that would have been much more difficult with traditional presentation software like Apple’s Keynote. I don't think I'll give away any more than that, have a look at the video below.

Watch on YouTube: A Hypocrite’s Guide to Public Speaking
Barcamp Omaha 2015 — Zach Leatherman on A Hypocrite’s Guide to Public Speaking.

There is an additional separate video that contains the Q&A from the talk. Sorry—some of the questions may be inaudible.


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Zach Leatherman IndieWeb Avatar for https://zachleat.com/is a builder for the web at IndieWeb Avatar for https://cloudcannon.com/CloudCannon. He is the creator and maintainer of IndieWeb Avatar for https://www.11ty.devEleventy (11ty), an award-winning open source site generator. At one point he became entirely too fixated on web fonts. He has given 79 talks in nine different countries at events like Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, Jamstack Conf, CSSConf, and The White House. Formerly part of Netlify, Filament Group, NEJS CONF, and NebraskaJS. Learn more about Zach »

1 Repost

Phil Hawksworth

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Cameron Woodmanseechantastic is trying real hard to stay awayJouni KantolaRyan No Seriously Wear a Mask BooneMike Aparicio
10 Comments
  1. Sara Soueidan

    @SaraSoueidan

    Thank you, Zach <3

  2. Ryan No Seriously Wear a Mask Boone

    @therealboone

    That is pretty freaking amazing, and inspirational to a noob speaker like myself.

  3. Zach Leatherman

    @zachleat

    Well, dang, thanks again. 😊

  4. chantastic is trying real hard to stay away

    @chantastic

    sooooo good. imma watch it again

  5. Zach Leatherman

    @zachleat

    aW YIss—WAIt LeMmE moNETIZe IT FIRst

  6. chantastic is trying real hard to stay away

    @chantastic

    put this on your onlyfans for me

  7. Zach Leatherman

    @zachleat

    booting up this old macbook pro is basically an onlyfans AMIRITE ha ha we have fun

  8. chantastic is trying real hard to stay away

    @chantastic

    😂 😂 😂

  9. ༼ ◕_◕ ༽

    @benschac

    I'm your biggest fan.

  1. Alessandra Pereyra Disqus

    11 Sep 2015
    I'd love to have access to that custom built presentation tool. And would pay for it as well :)
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