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Talk Kata - Repeating Conference Talks

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In the hard business of engaging the audience..


There are many kind of katas in the software world that I've been trying and practicing over the last 4 and odd years. Towards the end of last year, 2012,  I've started applying the concept of Katas in Public Speaking domain and I call it "Talk Katas".

Talk Kata is all about sharing your thoughts by way of talks to different set of groups, again and again and learn the art of public speaking in the process. It is with deliberate practise of public speaking can one hone the art of communication.



Attendees enjoying the talk
"When Agile becomes Fragile" is a topic I've been talking about in all of the recent conferences. It only gets better and better with every talk based on personal conversations, feedback etc. I've with the attendees after my talk.

Come year 2014, I'll again be talking about this in PMI Chennai edition as part of their invited talk series.

For the curious minds, the presentation deck evolution with each conference or invited talk is below:


An invited talk at Honeywell Technologies Solutions Lab, Bangalore India in October 2013. [1.5 hours talk incl. QnA]




A talk at Dev Day SriLanka, in November 2013 [1 hour talk incl. QnA]




A talk at Agile Kerala, in November 2013 [45 minute talk incl. QnA]



I've brought in subtle changes in the order and content in my presentations and was experimenting with different things to see what rings the bell in the minds of attendees to my talk. Learning is continuous and is indeed fun!

And guess what, I tried this with my other talk as well. See the subtle changes of presentation deck in slide-share on the topic of "Standup: Why I hate it and how I started to enjoy it?"

Bottom line: Talk repetition is just fine so long as you've the passion to deliver and the audience group is different and are enjoying your talk.

Moral of the blog post:  Deliberate practice maketh a person better and better in what (s)he does.

Side note: Every speaker has his/her style. I have mine (and you identify yours). I experiment a great deal with tons of zeal in a quest to learn more and more on what aids community learning. For the interested, I'll share some of my base-line techniques in public speaking in an other blog post. There is so much to learn and I'll share as I learn my lessons. Keep visiting..

Some feedback of my talk on this topic are below:











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