Here’s my experience working giving a talk at MILA (cognitive AI reading group) on modeling the brain. I worked with Naveen for preparing for the talk, and it turned out much more effective than I initially would have imagined. The slides of the talk are here. The talk was on topics that I’ve mostly self studied, so imposter syndrome was always there.

Sharing some of the feedback I wrote for Naveen here.

Can you please give a brief introduction about yourself?

I’m doing MSc CS at McGill university, completed one year of my study. Briefly where you have used the technique and how did it help? Used it to give a technical talk at a reading group at MILA to audience who have more research experience than me. I was initially quite stressed because I didn’t do this before, and was worried that I might look like an idiot.

The technique helped me quite well, I’m very happy with how it finally came out (wasn’t able to have it recorded due to technical reasons). I did not implement Changavalli Technique though. Doing multiple dry runs was quite helpful.

Can you share more details? (Like a brief of your journey from beginning to end while using the technique)

Beginning: Was quite stressed. Had a bit of impostor syndrome, but was having this internal dialogue that I picked up from a podcast, “maybe I’m a complete idiot and maybe I’ll screw up the talk and was people’s time; but it’s not my problem, it’s the organisers. So I’ll just go ahead and talk with no fear”

Journey: Did a lot of dry runs (1 by myself, 4 to friends) as suggested by Naveen and I was able to quickly pick up my confidence. Was improving on the slides based on the feedback.

Towards the end: Was feeling quite confident by Saturday noon that I decided I wouldn’t spend as much time anymore on the presentation because I was already good at it. Talk was on Monday morning.

Finally: The talk went great and people like it a lot. I realized it was very informative for all of them. I realized the importance of dry runs because people tend to ask very similar questions. I wasn’t able to answer all queries (understandably so, this is a topic I took up recently and had no hands on experience) but the audience was quite supportive and helped me by taking those questions. All in all, I was afraid it’ll be a 2/5 at the beginning and turns out it’s a 4/5 (on my scale). Yay!

Why did you approach Naveen and what were your thoughts when you first heard the technique? I’ve seen Naveen give a great speech at toastmasters, so reached out for his suggestions.

Approach sounded quite promising. Here are my notes while listening to Naveen.

• Prepare as if the talk was on Saturday morning. (the perfect talk!)
• Make a video of whatever you can do right now. (deliver it by tonight) Prepare the talk! (a casual talk where it’s okay to make mistakes)
• Give a talk right now.

3 techniques

• make it basic enough (content takes the highest priority, focus on everything else later) (do this right away)
• do something to differentiate it from the rest of the talks (once you have content, decide on improvising)
• energizer (to energize the talk to the next level)

big picture

• what if the talk goes really well? what if I find collaborators in the process? what if I make a girlfriend in the process?
• clearly it has a long term benefit.

What is your recommendation/advice to anyone who is contemplating to use this?

Worked quite well for me, worth trying out! :)

My timeline

Thu 4.30pm: Watched Naveen’s videos and took notes. Good plan, gonna follow it.

Thu 5.30pm: completed first run. did it even though slides weren’t ready. was opening relevant pages as i was speaking. was fumbling a lot. but it gave me good clarity on how the flow needs to be like. Completing and slides based on the insights I got. Doing next run tomorrow (Fri) morning with a friend.

Thu 8.40pm: Made good progress on the slides, will complete them tonight and sleep. Will do the remaining tomorrow morning.

Fri 11am: Making more and more improvements to the slides, it’s getting in shape. Have my test run at 11.30am with a friend.

Fri 11.30am: Time for the talk. :)

Fri 12.30pm: Talk actually went so much better than I expected. I was afraid I wasn’t prepared before, now I’m much more confident about my talk. yay! It’s important not to be afraid and do your dry runs early, makes sense. (talk was for 50mins with interruptions, so good timings)

Fri 2.30pm: Back to making improvements to the presentation based on feedback

Fri 6.20pm: Making improvement to the presentation. Modifying the slides takes much longer than my estimates. And I don’t think I’m being unproductive either which is quite interesting.

Fri 7.40pm: Slides are looking in good shape. Quite satisfied. Might have to do another run. Finding a person for it. (still a bit afarid if the first run was good because of luck and this might not go as well)

Fri 9.10pm: Did another run, which went well too! Yay! Almost flawless. I’m quite happy. (still afraid it’ll be harder when there are 20 more advanced researchers looking at me; they might ask harder questions)

Sat 8.00am: Making improvement based on yesterday’s talk. Doing another run at 9.45am to a friend.

Sat 11.00am: The dry run went well again. The talk’s getting better and better. I’m happy with the way it is now. Getting more confident, (still afraid, even though lesser now, of giving it to people who know much more than me). I should’ve recorded the talk (I did not). Will do it next time.

Sat 1pm: Had a call with Naveen, got helpful insights. Making changes to the presentation based on that.

Sat 3.30pm: Made more improvements to the slides, looks better now.

Sat 8.30pm: Didn’t work on the slides in the evening, starting to get complacent. Feeling that they’re already quite good and that the time I’m putting in isn’t leading to much improvement. (so no more work on slides till tomorrow morning when)

Sun 11.00am: Another dry run now, I’ve prepared well. I should just repeat what I already did in practice.

Sun 12.30pm: The run went well, found a few places where I need to be more clear. Will fix them and go directly tomorrow. No more dry runs.

Mon 12.30pm: I loved how I presented. Giving enough time for people to ask questions. Limiting the presentation to 30 minutes. It played out very well, I’m quite happy. :D

Tue 9.00am: Recording the talk by myself so that I can upload on YouTube.