Coco posted this on Bluesky yesterday;

Already written an outline on the train 😅(My talk building process: write key messages/overall narrative; then build a few visuals; then talk out loud through the slides and edit/rearrange as I go; rehearse and refine)

— Coco (@cocochan.bsky.social) 2025-05-29T17:11:43.540Z

…and as I am deep into putting together my Camp Digital talk I thought I would try and unpick my ‘process’ (or lack thereof).

I’d had the germ of an idea for this talk for a couple of years and that idea was always closely coupled with the thought that it should be my ‘last’ talk. ‘Last’ has evolved to mean my final talk at a big, paid for, conference (in the UK – if I get the chance to speak internationally I suspect I’ll find a way 😆). I think as long as I am working I’ll be doing presentations for Communities of Practice etc and I will probably still say yes to any local meet-ups who are hard up for a speaker.

Anyway I had an idea. Then I had a lovely time at Camp Digital last year and after a couple of wines I suggested to Shaun I might be interested in speaking. He remembered and here we are.

It is a 40 minute slot with the title – The power, peril and privilege of working in the open – and despite it being related to things I have spoken about before the goal was/is for it to be a totally fresh, and more personal, take on the topic than I have managed in the past. 

So the process?

I spent a lot of time thinking about what it should be. On buses, trains, while getting my daily steps. I visualised it, dreamed about it and obsessed over it. For months.

I wrote nothing down. Saw it unfolding a dozen different ways in my head and then, finally, the visions started to be more consistent. Somewhat anyway.

I started popping snippets into my Notes app on my phone – just reminders of fleeting thoughts and then, in Amsterdam for a conference, I found myself spending hours scribbling an outline down in the cahier notebook I always carry.

Those phone notes and handwritten scribbles were translated into a Google Doc where I tried to flesh things out. It is a mess of fully scripted sections, bullet points of speaking points for others, ideas for slides, a couple of jokes and the voices in my head debating what the hell I was thinking for other parts.

…but it starts to make some sense and a structure – or at least a beginning and end – emerges.

At some point I get stuck so I procrastinate by designing stickers to give away and to find a new slidedeck template.

Back to the talk I decide to try and translate the messy Google Doc into a set of slides. This is hard…and slow…but worth it. Eventually.

I follow the advice from Russell and Giles et al closely – my slides are clear and sparse and I think a lot about the ending.

I settle on a thread and a…format…it is structured more like a stand-up special than a conference talk? I shuffle and reshuffle the slides to find a flow and a rhythm. Each (of the 81!) slides gains an index card with the big idea for that slide – but no other details. Then I do a couple of run throughs outloud, recording the sessions and getting the transcript to see what I said (after a bit of help from Claude to tidy it up and a fair bit of manual copy editing).

I tweak accordingly – mainly to get the timings and any sections I stumble on (I can write better than I can speak) but not really any major content changes.

Then I go into Broadway style previews – giving the presentation to a couple of private audiences. One online (where I will again take and tidy up a version of the transcript – but this time it will become the published, shared version of the talk on my blog eventually) and one in person to a small group of folks – to see what bits work and what doesn’t in person. Getting the performance aspect under control – minimise my tendency to look like Madonna Vogueing. This one will almost certainly lead to some tweaks.

Then on July 3rd at about 3.30 I will be sick in my mouth a bit,  walk out on stage, blackout for a bit and then an hour later go and get drunk. Very drunk I suspect.

Oh and I have spent HOURS deciding what to wear – especially what trainers.

Ella once wrote about the time it takes to do presentations well being a diversity issue and I agree 100% – if I had ANYTHING in my life outside of work (and even that isn’t as all-consuming as days past) there is no way I could have done all of this. Or maybe I am doing all of this because I don’t have anything else to do 🤔.

So that is my process. YMMV.