Performance DevRel

Amelia teaches how to connect with your audience, communicate clearly, and embrace your fear as a form of energy that will enhance your performance.

Summary:

  • What are the various types of performances?

  • What are those “tips and tricks” for each kind?

  • Live stage performance

    • You may need to memorize a script.

    • Warming up or cooling down before going on stage.

    • Connect with the audience.

  • Vocal performance

    • Practise tongue twisters.

    • Drink water.

    • Try out different registers.

  • Performance for camera

    • That could be TV, a tutorial , a pre-recorded talk.

    • Live camera with a teleprompter.

    • Get help from a friend.

  • Performance for a camera with a live audience

    • Important to know your cameras are

    • Make eye contact with the audience and look at them but you really got to keep an eye on your cameras.

  • Other types of performance

    • For an audience that’s non-technical -- avoid a lot of buzzwords.

    • There’s performing through a translator.

    • Performing with an interpreter for the deaf community.

    • Performing on camera live, like for TV for interviews.

    • Performing on the radio live.

Scribbles:

Live stage performance

  • You may need to memorize a script.

    • Very frequently we perform using improvisation, bullet points, notes.

    • Take a tape recorder and say your entire script into the tape recorder, and then you can play that back almost like hypnotism to learn the script over time.

    • Take out chunks from that so that you almost have prompt words.

    • Speak back to the tape recorder.

      • Helps you get a way of rehearsing your lines with yourself and a tape recorder.

  • Warming up or cooling down before going on stage.

    • Some people need to warm up

      • Getting really hyped, doing push-ups, jumping jacks, yelling with your teammates, screaming backstage in the green room.

    • Other people need to cool down

      • They need to take a deep breath, they need to have a little bit of yoga or meditation.

  • Connect with the audience.

    • It really helps you calm your nerves and it also helps your audience feel more connected to you.

    • Making eye contact with an audience member

    • Asking a question seeing those hands raised in the back.

    • Any time you get stuck or you get trapped or you start like, “I forgot what I was going to say,” look out into the audience, make eye contact, smile at someone.

Vocal performance

  • Podcast, voiceovers for tutorials, calls, sale calls, pitching over a deck, studio recordings.

  • Practise tongue twisters.

    • Helps you not stumble on your words as much.

    • Exercises those vocal muscles.

  • If you need to do a quick introduction, you can make sure that you know about how long that takes.

  • Drink water.

  • Try out different registers.

    • Experiment with what voice you want to give your audience with pre-recording.

    • You could try something really high energy, or you could go down to something that is very calming and a question that is very slow.

Performance for camera

  • That could be TV, a tutorial , a pre-recorded talk.

  • Live camera with a teleprompter.

    • LED screens that can actually sit over a camera.

    • You can actually see the words and not break contact with the direct lens.

    • Might be something you want to invest in.

    • Helpful for things with live data.

  • Get help from a friend.

    • Some people feel a lot more comfortable, it can be read as more realistic, can feel more connected to the audience if there’s a person on the other side of the camera.

Performance for a camera with a live audience.

  • It’s a webinar, a TED Talk.

  • Sometimes where your primary audience may or may not be the audience that’s sitting physically in the room with you today.

  • Important to know your cameras.

    • Giving a TED Talk -- they generally have two cameras.

    • Rehearse it with the studio ahead of time, so you know exactly which one to switch to.

  • Make eye contact with the audience and look at them but you really got to keep an eye on your cameras.

Other types of performance

  • For an audience that’s non-technical -- avoid a lot of buzzwords.

  • If you do have acronyms, contextualize them rather than just say what this means.

  • There’s performing through a translator.

    • Speaking in your own native language and then you kind of have to wait for the translator to speak for the audience and then it’s your turn to speak again.

    • Rehearsing with that translator can be really important.

  • Performing with an interpreter for the deaf community.

  • Performing on camera live, like for TV for interviews.

  • Performing on the radio live.

Stage fright?

  • Everyone should get a little bit of stage fright.

  • Embrace that fear as a type of excitement and energy because at the end of the day, that is what keeps us connected.

  • Nerves can really be a fire that drives us. .

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