Wrapping Up Your Talk

Then you wrap it up and come to a conclusion. A couple of things to keep in mind here.

First, come back to your takeaways. The conclusion is a good place to remind people of the one thing you want them to remember. It can be the same thing you said at the start, just repeat it at the end. That fixes it in people’s minds.

Second, if you’ve got more information for them, this is where you point to it (I’ll come back to why you’d want the detail elsewhere when we talk about slide decks). QR codes are good here.. Everyone’s been in a talk where people hold their phones up at the end to catch the links — a QR code takes them straight to your website or other materials, which is a lot easier than getting them to photograph a URL and type it in.

You might also want to include contact details if you’d like people to reach out about the topic, “I’d love to talk more about this if we get a chance.” That’s where the contact info and QR code go, and then you close with your conclusion, which can be as simple as repeating your takeaways.

Next we need to talk about the details of how you’ll deliver your talk, the slides!