Last Updated: 1 Dec 2025
You have a presentation to give. You’ve been asked to speak to a group of your peers. You’re giving a conference session. The previous presenter just finished – you’re up as the next speaker. You have fifteen minutes. What do you need to do?
This isn’t the checklist for what to do after you’ve just found out you have a presentation to give, or you were just accepted to speak at a conference. There are plenty of such checklists elsewhere. This checklist is for literally the last few minutes as you prepare to speak. I’m open to suggestions for things to adjust from others – just leave them in the comments. I’d like this to be a useful resource for many speakers and conference presenters, and if nothing else I’m sure I’ll use it.
A few of these are for a bit before the last minute, but can come in super-handy if something goes wrong in those last minutes, so I’ve included them here.
An Hour Before
- Verify your laptop works and the presentation itself (and any demos you may have) work.
- Make sure the presentation files are accessible online (DropBox, OneDrive, etc.) and/or on a USB drive in case your machine dies (it happens for sometimes odd reasons).
- Make a Gist or blog post with any resources/links folks will find useful from your talk (that you can link to at the end)
- Make a QR Code that points to the URL of your resources Gist/post. I’m a fan of QR Code Monkey (unaffiliated - they’re free and let you add a logo and change colors)
- Add the QR code and resources link to your final slide that will be up while you take questions
- Schedule a post for immediately after your talk with the link to download the slides/demos/resources.
- Make a PDF of your slides; add a link to the PDF to your resources page.
- Post on social media that you’ll be presenting on X in room Y at #conference at TIME-WITH-TIMEZONE N minutes from now. Include a link if it’s streaming.
- Have fallbacks for demo failures. These can be recordings of the demo (or even animated GIFs of the demo) or just slides and screenshots. Especially for anything in the cloud or using AI.
- Wardrobe check. Make sure you look good and you’re wearing what you want to wear on stage. A collar is often useful for lav mics if they don’t use a headset mic.
15 Minutes Before
- Use the restroom. Ideally before going to your room and getting mic’d up, but in any case make sure any wireless microphone on you is turned off.
- Verify your laptop works with the A/V in your room. Ideally you have an opportunity to check this ahead of time, but in any case it should be the first thing you do once you’re getting set up so there’s time to troubleshoot any issues.
- (For Remote and Streaming) Verify remote meeting and/or screen-casting software is working. You probably checked it before; check it again now.
- Verify your clicker/slide advancer has working batteries/charge and connects with your system.
- Plug in your laptop. Make sure it is actually charging (and the power strip it’s plugged into is “on” etc.)
- Turn off all desktop notifications (system tray icons, browser-based alerts like Google Calendar, etc.):
- Turn off your phone’s notifications (except any you want to exclude, such as time-based notifications to let you know when you’re halfway, etc.)
- Turn off Wi-Fi (unless you’ll need it for a demo). This will stop most notifications coming from the outside world, in case you missed any in the previous step.
- Set your phone timer for your session’s length. You can have it silently notify you when you have X minutes left if you don’t have other mechanisms in place.
- Empty your pockets and take off your lanyard/badge. These can be distracting and the lanyard can get in the way of your mic. If you don’t have a good shirt, you can clip the mic to the lanyard in a pinch, though (see next point).
- Get your microphone set up. The AV team will usually assist.
- Make sure you have water available. Open the bottle; have a sip.
- Want to post a photo of the audience or your setup to social media? Now’s the time.
- Chat (unmic’d) with people in the front rows of the audience. Avoid just standing there if you can.
- “How was the last session?”
- “How was lunch?”
- “How was the keynote?”
- “What are you hoping to get out of today’s talk?”
- “How much experience do you have with (technology talk uses)?”
- Take a deep breath.
- Smile. You’ve got this.
- Turn on your mic.
- Welcome everyone to your session and let them know what they’re going to learn from you today.
More Things to Consider
Are you there promoting your company or your services? Do you have business cards, coupons for free stuff, stickers, or other swag? Don’t forget to mention it.
When You’re Done
As you wrap up, try to have audience members hoping to speak with you afterward follow you into the hall so the next presenter can get set up. Be courteous and be quick.
- Close your laptop
- Unplug from power and put your adapter in your bag
- Unplug from A/V
- Store your phone
- Store your clicker/slide advancer
- Store any A/V dongles/adapters
- Store any remaining business cards, stickers, swag you brought
- Ask any attendees waiting to speak with you to please join you in the hall so the next speaker can get set up
More Resources
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If you found this helpful, please share it on social media, especially your LinkedIn or BlueSky account.
If you have ideas you’d like to add to this list, please leave them in a comment and I’ll try to incorporate them into the checklist, with attribution. Thanks!