Stage Presence

You’re up, you’ve started, it’s going great, and the audience is looking at you. “Oh no, people are looking at me.” That’s not the most natural feeling.

If you’re speaking, try to face the audience. When I was nervous doing talks, my instinct was to look at my slides or my laptop. It’s better if you can look at the audience.

If you haven’t done much of this and you’re uncomfortable, pick a neutral spot roughly the middle of the room where no one is and look there. Everyone will roughly feel you’re looking in their direction without you having to look at anyone in particular.

If you know people in the audience, look at them they’re probably used to the idea you might look at them :)

Once you’ve done a few talks and got more comfortable, you can start looking around the audience, and that’s genuinely useful because you can read the room.

Is everyone on their laptops after the first slide? Are people smiling? Frowning? Depending on the talk, you might even pause and ask, “Am I missing something?” although that’s a more advanced technique. Either way, you get a sense of how the audience is taking the talk.

Think of it a bit like being an actor in a play. Here I am, with set lines, standing in front of people saying my lines. The difference between that and an actor isn’t much. The idea is to talk to the audience, so present yourself, and talk to them.