How to design and develop a conference presentation

A complete step-by-step breakdown of how I built (and booked) a session at a globally-renowned conference

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at CMX Summit, running a session on the power of storytelling.

Afterwards, I was exhausted but elated: there were over 300 people in the room; the live chat fizzed with activity; and my Twitter mentions went a little wild. According to a bunch of the attendees, TED should be booking me to speak (I assume they mean the conference, rather than Ted Lasso at AFC Richmond — although frankly I’m down for either).

But beyond my not-so-humblebrag, I was struck by something far more important.

A couple of people had asked how I’d gone about building this workshop/keynote hybrid. While there are plenty of people talking about their speaking gigs, I realized there’s remarkably little shared about how the presentations themselves come together.

So, in appropriately meta style, here’s the full story of how I made this story session. And to add one more meta layer, this post follows the same story structure I shared in the session itself.

So you can easily apply it to your own projects, I’ve split the process into 11 bitesize parts (plus a bonus):

1. Topic & Outcomes