SpeakHQ Blog
Paul Graham wrote recently on his perspectives on the written vs. spoken word. Graham admits he’s more confident as a writer than a speaker. This biases his comparisons and his essay. He’d have benefited from talking to people who he thinks are both good speakers and good thinkers (and perhaps good writers) as they’d have…
Read MoreI get many emails asking about writing, in response to the popular posts I’ve written about writing. Recently Shawnee M. Deck wrote in asking about writing ones life story. I was immediately appalled by my lack of ability to put down on paper the words that seem to make everyone laugh whenever I tell my stories. This…
Read MoreIt is foolish to confuse a moment of forgetting with stupidity. All people who speak make mistakes. We forget things. We confuse words. We lose our train of thought. And if you listen to a recording of yourself for even an hour in your daily life you’ll notice all sorts of gaffs, odd pauses, and…
Read MoreThere is a moment in bad product demos when everyone knows the speaker is in trouble. We watch them move their mouse, and click a button, and see the uncertainty in their eyes. Will it work? And when it fails, they fall into the downward spiral of live troubleshooting in front of a crowd. How…
Read MoreGreat post on AndyBudd.com on why conferences costs so much: Let’s assume that this $1000 a ticket conference happens over 3 days with 3 tracks and attracts 300 people. That would indicate an income of $300,000. However once you’ve taken off transaction fees you looking at closer to $275,000. Let us assume that the venue…
Read MoreTo follow up on my open letter to conference organizers, here’s an open letter for speakers. Dear Speaker: Most events and conferences are boring. And since events primarily consist of people giving lectures, who is to blame for all the boredom? It’s the speakers. Most organizers realize most speakers don’t do a very good job.…
Read MoreJoão Adolfo Lutz asked me recently about noting time progressed / remaining in slides: I’d like to know what do you think about printing kind of a “timeline” in the slides, lightening the topic that is being shown at the particularly moment. One teacher of mine says it’s very important for the crowd to know…
Read MoreOne famous speech in public speaking history is the Dr. Fox lecture. Researchers hired an actor to pose as an expert, and he gave a meaningless, but complex sounding, jargon filled speech to a group of true experts. The result? The majority of them were fooled into thinking they’d learned something, despite there being no…
Read MoreDear Conference Organizer: For centuries you and your peers have helped spread good ideas. For that, I like you. Events are important and organizing them is a thankless job. I’ve run my share of events, so I know. But there is an unspoken, often forgotten, problem I’m compelled to bring to your attention: most speakers…
Read MoreTo help celebrate the recent release of the paperback edition of Confessions of a Public Speaker, as well as it’s 100th review on amazon.com, here’s a checklist you can use to help make sure things go well at your next presentation. You can download a nice printable PDF of the checklist: Before the event Questions…
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