There is no cure for presentation stage fright. You can reduce the symptoms with beta blockers, but when the drugs wear off, you’re still… you. You’re still up there with a cracking voice, runaway heart rate, and nauseating dread.

So what do you do? You read posts with titles like “Ten Tips For Better Presentations”, “Kick-ass With PowerPoint”, and “Public Speaking Secrets of Martin Luther King”. You read excellent books like “Resonate”, “Presentation Zen”, and “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” You Level Up Your Presentation Skills.

You practice practice practice.

You work on your 12-17 seconds of eye contact. You work on your posture, hand-gestures, and VOICE PROJECTION. You watch a thousand hours of TED talks.

You work on your Opening With Humour, your 3-Act Narrative, and your Emotional Hooks.

And since the bar has gone up for even the geekiest conferences today, you work on your evocative-yet-not-cliche graphics, your designer-but-not-default-theme layout, and your clever-yet-clean typography.

But because you are a human, your stage fright now–after working on it so very very hard–is worse.

Nothing cuts stage fright like focusing on the million ways you’re doin’ it wrong.

If you have severe stage fright, the worst way to improve your presentation is to focus on your presentation skills.

Presentation skills are all about YOU. What YOU do. What YOU say. How YOU say it. Stage fright is all about YOU. What they think about YOU. What they tweet about YOU. What they tell everyone in your professional community about YOU.

The Big Problem is… YOU.

Or rather, the problem is thinking that what matters in your presentation is you. Because unless you’re a paid performer – musician, comedian, motivational speaker – you are not the reason they came to the conference. They are sitting in your session because of someone that matters far more to them than you: themselves. They are there for their own experiences, and “watching you present” is not one of those experiences.

My path to coping with heart-stopping stage-fright is to focus NOT on what I do but on what they experience. And since I’m a software developer, I’ll think of the audience as my users.

And if they’re my users, then this presentation is a user experience.

And if it’s a user experience, then what am I?

Ah… now we’re at the place where stage fright starts to dissolve.

Because if the presentation is a user experience, than I am just a UI.

That’s it.

I am a UI.

Nothing more.

And what’s a key attribute of a good UI?

It disappears.

It does not draw attention to itself.

It enables the user experience, but is not itself the experience.

And the moment I remember this is the moment I exhale and my pulse slows. Because I am not important. What is important is the experience they have. My job is to provide a context in which something happens for them.

When you design for a user experience, you quit focusing on your skills and start focusing on their skills. What experience can you help them have? Can you give them a more powerful perspective? Can you give them a new idea with immediate implementation steps they can’t wait to work on? Can you give them a clear way to finally explain something to others that they’ve been feeling but could not articulate? Can you give them a new tip or trick that has such a high-payoff it feels like a superpower? Can you give them knowledge and insight into a tough topic, so they can have more interesting, high-resolution conversations in the hallway?

And now we’re truly at the heart of what matters most in a presentation. Look at the previous paragraph of experiences you can help them have. What’s the common thread? It’s not really about the user experience they have during your presentation. Like your presentation, their experience of it is also just the enabler for something bigger. Because what matters most is NOT the UX but the POST-UX UX. What happens after and as a result of the user experience? The best software and product designers know this. The best game designers know this. The best authors know this. The best filmmakers know this. What happens after what happens happens?

When they walk away from the user experience, then what? Are they different? Are they a little smarter? Are they a little more energized? Are they a little more capable? Are they a little more likely to talk to others about it?

This is no different from the goals we have for any other product/service/tool/book we create for others to use. It is always about the post-UX-UX. Otherwise, we have wasted their precious time and scarce cognitive resources. And when that happens, they will care about our non-optimal presentation skills.