The Tip: Before you write a single slide, write the five-second moment. One sentence. “I used to believe X. Then this happened. Now I believe Y.” If you cannot say it, you do not have a talk. You have a tour of your calendar.

Why it Works: Matthew Dicks’ whole method sits on this. A story is not the journey. It is the instant the journey changes the person telling it. Audiences remember the turn, not the ticket stubs. Program committees remember the turn too, because a turn is a promise. A timeline is a risk.

Proof: Dicks built a career on The Moth and in classrooms by hunting tiny moments, not epics. The same pattern showed up on stage last week without anyone citing him. In Asheville, the opening keynote was not “my leadership journey.” It was “The Trust Gap: Why AI Strategy Fails Without Authority Architecture.” Brilliance isn’t enough. That is a five-second moment with a microphone.

Why Now: October is speaker season. Women in Tech Week hits the UK on the 12th. Grace Hopper lands in Anaheim at the end of the month. The women who get the second booking will not be the ones with the longest bio. They will be the ones who can say the turn before the coffee cools.

Storyworthy is Matthew Dicks’ field manual for people who think they have no stories. You do. You have been editing them into case studies so a room full of directors will take you seriously. That edit is why the room forgets you.

Dicks’ rule, stripped of the theater-kid packaging: a story is a five-second moment of change, told by the person who changed, with stakes the listener can feel. Everything else is luggage. Most tech talks are luggage with a logo slide.

Homework for Life, minus the guilt

Every night, Dicks writes a few words about the most story-worthy moment of the day. Not the biggest. The one that brushed against a change. A sentence you almost said. A metric you did not trust. A compliment that landed wrong.

You do not need a journal practice that survives ADHD. You need a note titled “turns.” One line. Date it. “Almost let the intern present the finding I had already verified.” “Heard my idea come back in his voice and smiled.” “Realized the AI demo had no owner.” Do this for seven days and you will have more talk fuel than a year of saving “someday” anecdotes.

Last week’s Lagos forum was a public version of the same hunt. The line was not “women should use AI.” It was “put yourself in the room and have a voice.” That is a turn. Use, then voice. User, then owner. If your story cannot survive that compression, it is still a status report.

The only structure that survives a program committee

Dicks hates “and then.” And then is a résumé. But and therefore is a plot.

Try it on a talk you already have.

And-then version: I led the migration, and then the model drifted, and then we added a review step, and then adoption improved.

But / therefore version: I wanted the model in production by quarter-end. But the number it produced was one I would not sign. Therefore I built a checkpoint with a name on it. But the name was mine, and the credit went upstairs. Therefore I started opening with the missing signature, not the architecture diagram.

That second version can be a 12-minute talk. The first version is a Confluence page.

Three Dicks tools, translated:

You are the protagonist, even when the slide is about the system

Dicks is strict about this, and tech women hate it, because we were trained to make the work the hero. The work can be the evidence. You are the change. If the story is about how your VP grew, you have written his talk. If the story is about how a room interrupted you, and the turn is what you did on the fourth interruption, it is yours.

This is also how you avoid the trauma trap. You do not owe the conference your worst day. You owe them a moment you can stand next to. Small is allowed. Dicks’ best stories are often a car, a kid, a sentence. Yours can be a standup, a redline, a demo that almost shipped.

The opening you keep burying

Start in a place, in action, as close to the end as you can. “The review board is waiting. I have the number. I will not read it.” Not “For the last fifteen years I have been passionate about responsible AI.” Passion is not a location. A review board is.

Then connect the ending to the opening. If you began with a number you would not sign, end with the sentence you now say before anyone opens the dashboard: “Who owns this if it is wrong?” Circle, not sequel.

Write the last line first. Dicks does. You should. If the last line is “And that’s why sponsorship matters,” you have a poster. If the last line is “I stopped asking for a seat and started naming the signature line,” you have a talk.

What you cut

Cut the year-by-year. Cut the tool list unless a tool is the knife. Cut the apology for being technical, or for not being technical enough. Cut the other woman’s triumph unless the five seconds belong to you. Cut any sentence a man could deliver unchanged about “leaning in.” If he can say it, it is not your story.

Keep one physical detail. The unmute hover. The Slack thread with your words and his name. The slide you deleted at 11:40. Detail is proof. Adjectives are perfume.

Monday: Open a note called Turns. Write the five-second moment of the best talk you have ever wanted to give, in one sentence. “I used to believe X. Now I believe Y.” If it takes a paragraph, you are still protecting the résumé.

Tuesday: Mine yesterday. One line only. A meeting, a rewrite, a credit slip. Do not judge it. Homework for Life fails when you wait for a moment worthy of a keynote. The keynote is assembled later.

Wednesday: Rewrite one old talk in but / therefore. Twelve lines max. Read it aloud. Anywhere you hear “and then,” cut. Anywhere you hear a tool name with no stake, cut.

Thursday: Dinner-test it on one woman who will not clap for you out of loyalty. Ask her what changed. If she retells your job title, you told a bio. If she retells the turn, you have a talk.

Friday: Write the first three sentences and the last sentence. Place, action, elephant. Then the circle. Put them in a CFP draft with a title that states the turn. “The Trust Gap” worked because it was a turn. “My Journey in AI Leadership” is a nap.

Bonus move: Send the title and the five-second sentence to one program chair, one sponsor, or the woman you want in the front row at Women in Tech Week. No deck. The sentence is the pitch. The deck is how you hide.

🌞 Keep Shining,

Barkha