Speaking and Facilitation: Tips & Tricks
Part 4: Recovering from sessions
Recovering from sessions
Take a moment to breathe
Congratulations! Your session is over and it’s time to relax a little. Instead of flopping into a heap in the corner or hitting the bar, take steps to look after yourself.
Spending time outside, following-up with interesting people, and eating/drinking the right things are all ways to refresh your mind, body, and soul!
Get some Vitamin D
Some event venues can be very dark inside to improve the effect of lighting and visibility of projector screens. We humans need Vitamin D from sunlight, so even if it’s not a particularly bright sunny day, get outside after your presentation and breathe some fresh air!
Question: Are there spaces outside you can be by yourself for a while? (especially if you’re an introvert)
Go outside!
Eat (and drink!)
You will have a put a lot of physical and mental energy into your session, so it’s time to rebalance your energy levels by eating and drinking. Try to eat something that won’t spike your blood sugar nor drink something that will give you a huge hit of caffeine. A banana or protein bar is good, as is plain old water.
Question: Can you take food and drink into the room you’re running your session?
Rebalance your energy levels
Pat yourself on the back
Congrats! You shouldn’t underestimate how much of an achievement it is to run even a moderately-successful session at an event. It’s normal to have a bunch of “if onlys” and regrets about minor details afterwards, but just take a moment to say well done to yourself. You did it!
Question: What are you going to reward yourself with?
Take a moment to say well done to yourself
Process your outputs
You might have finished ‘performing’ either by presenting or facilitating, but you’re not finished with the session just yet!
You’ve expended a lot of time and effort in preparing for this session, so to have maximum impact, share the outputs far and wide.
Gather your docs into an index
The best time to gather together materials related to your session is as soon after the event as possible. This is particularly true if there have been things created (e.g. sticky notes scribbled on) during the session. Photograph things, and have a folder to dump everything in to sort out later.
Question: How can you make it so that people who find out about the session can almost feel like they participated?
Become a documentarian
Follow-up conversations
If you’ve run a session about something that people care about, they will want to follow-up with you. This could be in person at the event (schedule a time!) or via email or social media. Make sure you’re responsive, although manage expectations if you’re particularly busy
Question: Is it worth putting your out of office autoresponder on during the event?
Have a chat
Write about your session
Once the dust has settled, or even beforehand if you’re feeling motivated, write about your session. Include the materials you used, any outputs, etc. You can potentially do this in two stages by first creating a quick thread on social media, and then writing about it a few days later.
Question: What does a minimum viable blog post look like for you?
Tell the world!