| name | presentation-stacey-voice |
| description | Stacey Vetzal's presentation and speaker voice guide. Use this skill whenever writing speaker notes, slide content, presentation scripts, or talk outlines for Stacey Vetzal. Also use when converting blog posts to presentations, creating conference talks, preparing lightning talks, or writing any content Stacey will speak aloud. If you're writing words Stacey will say on stage or in a video, this skill applies. Complements the slidev-presentation skill for slide creation.
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| metadata | {"version":"1.0.0","author":"Stacey Vetzal"} |
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.
