Lessons Learned from Speaking in a Virtual Conference
TLDR: The virtual format makes humor difficult, have a fallback plan for internet/power outages, and you don’t need a fully completed presentation to enter a submission to a conference.
Doing my best to avoid letting 2020 hold me back, I achieved one of my personal goals and presented a talk at a infosec conference this year! My preference would have been to do something local and in-person but because of COVID, those hopes were dashed. I was fortunate enough to make it on the schedule for the virtual Bsides Idaho and had an absolute blast.
You can find the talk here: Suspect Last Seen Wearing Admin Creds
I learned a ton from working with the amazing staff at Bsides Idaho and finalizing my presentation. Presenting virtually is much different than in-person and I’ve highlighted a few lessons I learned the along the way.
JOKES CAN’T LAND
While preparing for my talk, I came across some ridiculous clip art that worked well with my presentation. As crazy as it may sound, the set of clip art altered the entire mood of my talk for the better.
When the “World’s Happiest Robber” made his debut, I took a few seconds to point out how ridiculously happy he was and made a joke about my next talk being about “doing what you love”. This quick diversion broke the momentum of my talk and fell FLAT. In hindsight, it really couldn’t have gone any other way as the streaming platform did not provide viewers with a way to respond with voice chat.
Take away: If you consider a portion of your presentation to be humorous, let the material speak for itself. If you feel like you have to point something out, make it subtle and work it into your main narrative without letting it detract from your message.
CONSIDER CONTINGENCY PLANS
Less than five minutes into the first conference talk of my infosec career, my house lost power. I was devastated, but luckily the power came back on after a few seconds. The only issue was that I had been presenting on my desktop, and it had to boot back up from zero. All told, I was off the stream for 3 minutes, and I was able to awkwardly limp back into rhythm and finish out the talk.
What would I do differently next time? Honestly, I’ll still have a Plan A of streaming my talk from my desktop for wired network connectivity and comfort. BUT I’ll also have a hotspot-connected laptop ready for the switch over in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
Take away: Consider the possibility of power or internet outages and make backup plans for a quick change over.
DON’T WAIT FOR A POLISHED PRESENTATION TO SUBMIT FOR A CONFERENCE
I had an idea for a talk for almost a year but didn’t want to submit anything until I had a polished presentation ready. I had convinced myself that the people judging the submissions only wanted to see an idea’s perfect execution in its final form and acted as guardians to keep out imperfect talks. That assumption couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Someone gave me the advice that if I wanted to present that, I should submit it as an abstract, and everything else would fall into place. So I gave it a shot and applied my abstract to BSides Idaho. A few weeks later, one of the organizers reached out to better understand my proposal. We spent an hour discussing the core message of my talk and how to structure it to fit into the allotted time. With the structure and a deadline in place, sitting down and building the final presentation became much more manageable.
Take away: Start building a blog without all the content created or submit a talk without a completed presentation. Don’t let the fear of an incomplete idea keep you from pursuing a project.
With all of this said, I hope you learn from my mistakes and find inspiration to develop your own presentation. The silver-lining of 2020 (and probably at least a part of 2021) is that you can apply to any conference without having to worry about travel expenses. Dust the cobwebs off those ideas bouncing around in your head and submit a talk for a conference!