Speaking at a conference or meetup comes with an unglamorous logistics problem: attendees want slides, a way to reach you afterward, and maybe links to the tools or repos you mentioned — and “I’ll email them to whoever asks” doesn’t scale past about the third person who asks. A one-page site solves this cleanly, but it’s easy to either skip it entirely or over-invest in something more elaborate than the moment calls for.
This is about what a speaker page actually needs, and getting it live before your talk instead of scrambling to answer “can you send me those slides” for the next two weeks.
Why this is worth having at all
A talk generates a burst of interest that fades fast — someone in the audience wants to follow up while it’s fresh, but by the next day the intent has usually cooled. A page you can point to during the talk itself (“everything’s at this URL”) captures that interest at its peak, instead of relying on people remembering to email you later, which most won’t.
It also means you’re not fielding the same five questions individually after every talk — the page answers them once, for everyone, indefinitely.
What the page actually needs
- The slides, linked or embedded, available immediately — not “I’ll upload them later.”
- A short abstract or summary of the talk, for anyone who wants the gist without watching a recording.
- Links mentioned during the talk — tools, repos, articles — collected in one place instead of scattered across your memory of what you said.
- A way to reach you, if you’re open to follow-up questions or opportunities from it.
Why a one-page site beats a slide-sharing link alone
A bare link to a slide deck on a hosting service technically covers “here are the slides,” but it misses everything else people actually want after a talk — the context, the extra links, a way to say “great talk, I have a follow-up question.” Carrd works well here because you can build this once and reuse the same structure for every talk going forward — swap the abstract, the slides link, and the resource list each time, without rebuilding the page from scratch.
Structuring it so it’s useful during and after the talk
Put the URL on your last slide, large
The page only works if people actually see the URL. A short, easy-to-type link on your final slide, held up long enough for people to actually type it in, gets meaningfully more traffic than one buried in your bio slide at the start that nobody remembers by the end.
Keep the resource list scannable
A bulleted list of links with one-line descriptions beats prose explaining each one — someone scanning the page after the talk wants to quickly find the specific thing they remember you mentioning, not read a paragraph to locate it.
Reuse the same URL across talks, or a new one each time
Both are reasonable — a single evergreen page you update per-talk is simpler to remember and share; a fresh page per talk keeps each one’s resources cleanly separated if the talks are on very different topics. Pick based on how similar your talks tend to be to each other.
Sharing it before the talk, not just after
The page doesn’t have to wait until after you’ve spoken — publishing it a day or two ahead and mentioning the URL in your own pre-talk posts gives people a reason to check it out beforehand too, and means it’s already indexed and shareable the moment the talk ends rather than something you’re rushing to put together backstage.
What to skip
Skip a full speaker bio with headshot, past talks, and a long professional history — that’s what a portfolio or personal site is for. This page has one job: serve the people who just watched this specific talk. Keep it scoped to that.
Quick checklist
- Have the slides live and linked before the talk starts, not after.
- Include a short abstract for anyone skimming rather than attending live.
- Collect every link mentioned during the talk in one scannable list.
- Put the page’s URL on your closing slide, large enough to actually read.
- Keep the page scoped to this talk — save the full bio for your main site.
The page takes less time to build than the talk itself did to prepare, and it’s the difference between a burst of interest that fades by tomorrow and one that actually turns into follow-up conversations.
Tested firsthand
