Pirate Talks – How to prepare and deliver excellent presentations

Abstract

Pirates famously say “AARRR.” In a Pirate Talk, AARRR is a mnemonic for A udience, A ction, R emember, R oute, and R eflection. Every speaker wants their audience to remember something, even if only that they have been entertained; better, they want their audience — or at least some of them — to go on to do and achieve new things, to act and take forward their inspiration from the talk. Put bluntly, if a talk does not have an effect, what was the point? To achieve an effective outcome, the route from where the audience starts from to where the speaker wants to lead them needs planning and mapping out. Pirate Talks help systematically work out the route. The last R of AARRR is less often emphasised: Pirate Talks aim to get better. A key insight is that what the audience needs to be able to do to learn from a talk is closely aligned to what a speaker needs to do to continually improve the quality of their own talks. Many poor talks happen because the speaker has not tried to improve over a period of giving previous talks — their talks have become routine and dull, with the speaker perhaps confusing comfortable habit for effectiveness. Pirate Talks are a memorable way to be effective, to not only set higher standards but also to help speakers aim at excellence, to aim at continual improvement. The simple mnemonic AARRR also helps chairs and other audience members to facilitate speakers to do better.