Anxiety in oral presentations

I recently came across young colleagues concerned about how to manage their anxiety when giving oral presentations.

I remember the first time I did a talk at a conference. It was during my Ph.D and at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute, in Vienna. Bless the organizers, they had put me on the first day - the last talk in the afternoon. I was not able to listen to any of the talks before mine. I was that nervous. The first day of the conference was lost to me. If I had talked on the last day, I would have been nervous for the whole week. To make things worse, the room was full - I had never been to a conference with so many participants - and the work I was going to present was a continuation of something initiated by two researchers that were there. 

The only thing that I was capable of before my talk was to count away the time left for my onstage execution.

How to deal with nerves? In the long run, I think the best is to just keep giving talks - in different contexts, to different people, on different subjects. With this, you will gain familiarity. Familiarity reduces anxiety because it reduces uncertainty: first, you realize that nobody really cares about your talk, and second, you start to realize that after each talk you did not actually die - as awful as it may have felt.

I still get a bit nervous before each talk, which I think is good: to give a talk I need a higher level of energy and a bit of stress helps me to get there.