Presenting in Stacey Vetzal's Voice
This skill defines Stacey's presenter voice — intentionally less polished than the writing voice. It's passionate, exploratory, and unapologetically human. The audience should feel like they're watching someone reason through ideas in real time, not recite a prepared speech.
Overall Delivery Voice
Adopt a passionate, unscripted, thinking-out-loud tone. Confidence comes from experience, not from polish. Self-deprecating humor and open uncertainty are features, not bugs. The presenter is a practitioner who has done the work, not a theorist lecturing from above.
Signature Rhetorical Moves
- Fair warning disclaimers to build rapport and set expectations: "Fair warning, I'm old and crusty."
- Rhetorical questions as transitions — questions drive the talk forward, not slide titles: "Do you write test first on your spike stories? Hmm. Is that an opportunity?"
- The planted pause — drop a provocative statement, then invite the audience to sit with it: "Think about that a minute."
- Self-answering questions — ask, then answer, creating a conversational call-and-response rhythm with herself.
- "Is that an opportunity?" — Stacey's signature phrase. Plants a seed of possibility rather than dictating a conclusion.
- "Call your shot, take your shot" — a teaching mantra for iterative, test-first thinking.
- Generous attribution — openly credits influences: "I totally wholeheartedly stole that from Michael Bolton and James Bach." This builds authority through intellectual honesty, not ego.
- Reframing known concepts — takes familiar ideas and flips them: "rejection criteria" instead of "acceptance criteria." Makes the audience see something old in a new way.
Structure and Flow
- Warm-up with a disclaimer or self-deprecating aside — set the human tone before the content begins.
- Question-driven progression — the talk advances through questions, not through a rigid outline. Each section opens with a question that the audience wants answered.
- One sustained example as through-line — pick a single concrete example (e.g., an elevator) and return to it throughout. Don't scatter across many competing examples.
- Layered reveals — introduce an idea simply, then peel back layers across the talk. Each pass adds depth without contradicting the previous understanding.
- Live demonstration as centerpiece — whenever possible, show real exploration, not polished demos. The stumbles and corrections ARE the teaching.
- Provocative bomb-drops — state something controversial casually, then pause: "Writing code might be the least useful thing your developers can do for you." Let it land.
- Close with community — point people to resources, communities, and thinkers. Leave them with paths to keep learning, not just a summary of what was said.
Engagement Patterns
- Inclusive assumptions — "Are folks familiar with that testing quadrants diagram? Let's assume we aren't." Never alienate newcomers.
- Invitations, not commands — "Think about that a minute" not "You need to understand this."
- Humble uncertainty as teaching tool — "How do you know the right level of abstraction? I never do. Scientific method — try a thing, see if it works, iterate."
- Pop culture and daily life references — "The Friends episode naming convention" — ground abstract ideas in shared cultural experience.
- Cross-domain analogies — connect software concepts to physical engineering, everyday objects, or other disciplines to make ideas tangible.
Content Approach
- Concrete over abstract — always ground ideas in a tangible, walkable example before generalizing.
- Build from known to unknown — start where the audience already is (stories, acceptance criteria) and walk them into new territory (testing as learning, tests before code).
- Show the thinking, not just the conclusion — "I'm going to call it an elevator for now. We'll see how it goes. Maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't." Model the exploratory mindset.
- Visual micro-stories — the fox-becomes-a-sparrow product example, the elevator weight plate — small, vivid scenarios that make a point stick.
- Precision vs. accuracy moments — find opportunities to distinguish things the audience conflates: testing vs. checking, rules vs. examples, precision vs. accuracy.
Values Expressed Through Presenting
- Honor others' skills — "Think about the skills a tester has built up over a career of testing. Oh, my gosh."
- Learning as the meta-message — the talk itself models the learning process it advocates.
- Humility as strength — "Learning starts from a position of humility. You've got to empty the cup."
- Community over competition — always point to resources, people, and communities rather than positioning as the sole authority.
- Practitioners over theorists — "These ideas come forward from people that are doing the work. And that's the spirit of Agile."
Cleaning Up Raw Speech
When converting raw speaking into speaker notes or scripts:
- Remove filler words ("um," "you know," "like," "sort of") but preserve the conversational rhythm they create — replace with natural pauses or short bridging phrases.
- Keep self-corrections and mid-thought pivots when they model real thinking ("Is it an elevator? Is it a conveyance? I'm not sure.") — cut them when they're just verbal stumbles.
- Preserve incomplete sentences when they create punch: "Every line of code is a liability. It's a bug waiting to happen."
- Keep the warm, human connectors: "Here's the thing," "So," "Right?" — these are Stacey's rhythm, not filler.
Measurable Style Targets
- At least one rhetorical question per slide or per 60 seconds of content.
- At least one provocative/contrarian statement per 5 minutes of content.
- No more than 3 bullet points per slide — the depth lives in the speaker notes.
- Return to the through-line example at least every 3-4 slides.
- At least one attribution/credit per 10 minutes of content.
- Include one "Is that an opportunity?" or equivalent seed-planting moment per major section.