Confessions of a Public Speaker

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:1) "Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That's all they want. They're not judging as much ass you link, because they don't care as much as you think. Knowing this helps enormously. If some disaster happens, something explodes or I trip and fall, I'll have more attention from the audience than I probably had 30 seconds before. And if I don't care that much about my disaster, I can use the attention I've earned and do letting good with it—whatever I say next, they are sure to remember. And if nothing else, my tragedy will give everyone in the audience a funny story to share. The laughter from that story will do more good for the world than anything my presentation,or any other that day, probably would have done anyway."2) "If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection. Every time I get up to the front of the room, 1 know I will make mistakes. And this is OK. If you examine how we talk to one another every day, including people giving presentations, you'll find that even the best speakers make tons of mistakes...If you listen to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Winston Churchill, and then read the unedited transcripts of those same speeches, you'll find mistakes. However, they're mistakes we commonly ignore because we're incredibly forgiving of spoken language."3) "If anything, making some mistakes or stumbling in a couple of places reminds everyone of how hard it is to stand up at the front of the room in the first place. Mistakes will happen—what matters more is how you frame your mistakes, and there are two ways to do this: I. Avoid the mistake of trying to make no mistakes. You should work hard to know your material, but also know you won't be perfect. This way, you won't be devastated when small things go wrong. 2. Know that your response to a mistake defines the audience's response. If I respond to spilling water on my pants as if it were the sinking of the Titanic, the audience will see it, and me, as a tragedy. But if I'm cool, or better yet, find it funny, the audience will do the same."4) "And it's often the case that the things speakers obsess about are the opposite of what the audience cares about. They want to be entertained. They want to learn. And most of all, they want you to do well. Many mistakes you can make while performing do not prevent those things from happening. It's the mistakes you make before you even say a word that matter more. These include the mistakes of not having an interesting opinion, of not thinking clearly about your points, and of not planning ways to make those points relevant to your audience. Those are the ones that make the difference. If you can figure out how to get those right, not much else will matter."5) "f you pretend to have no fears of public speaking, you deny yourself the natural energy your body is giving you. Anxiety creates a kind of energy you can use, just as excitement does. Ian Tyson, a stand-up comedian and motivational speaker, offered this gem of advice: "The body's reaction to fear and excitement is the same...so it becomes a mental decision: am I afraid or am I excited.^" If the body can't tell the difference, it's up to you to use your instincts to help rather than hurt you. The best way to do this is to plan before you speak. When you are actually giving a presentation, there are many variables out of your control—it's OK and normal to have some fear of them. But in the days or hours beforehand, you can do many things to prepare yourself and take control of the factors you can do something about."6) "When I practice, especially with a draft of new material, I run into many issues. And when I stumble or get confused, I stop and make a choice: Can I make this work if I try it again? Does this slide or the previous one need to change? Can a photograph and a story replace all this text? Is there a better lead-in to this point from the previous point? Will things improve if I just rip this point/slide/idea out completely?"7) "The solution to this, and to many other tough room problems, rests on the density theory of public speaking, a theory I discovered one day after repeating the Dallas experience in some other city, with some other embarrassingly small crowd in a ridiculously large room. I realized that the crowd size is irrelevant what matters is having a dense crowd. If ever you face a sparsely populated audience, do whatever you have to do to get them to move together. You want to create a packed crowd located as close as possible to the front of the room. This goes against most speakers' instincts, which push them to just go on with the show and pretend not to notice it feels like they're speaking at the Greyhound bus station at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning."8) "No matter what kind of speaking you are doing, there are only a few reasons people will be there. As you plan your talk, start with the goal of satisfying the things listed below. People come because they: Want to learn something Wish to be inspired 3- Hope to be entertained 4- Have a need they hope you will satisfy 5. Desire to meet other people interested in the subject 6. Seek a positive experience they can share with others 7- Are forced to be there by their bosses, parents, professors, or spouses 8. Have been handcuffed to their chairs and haven't left the room for days. "9) "To prepare well, you must do four things: Take a strong position in the title. All talks and presentations have a point of view, and you need to know what yours is...Think carefully about your specific audience. Know why they are there, what their needs are, what background knowledge they have, the pet theories they believe in, and how they hope their world will be different after your lecture is over...3. Make your specific points as concise as possible. If it takes 10 minutes to explain what your point is, something is very wrong...4. Know the likely counterarguments from an intelligent, expert audience."10) "I usually present with slides. I love using images and movies to make points, but I never worry that these things won't work. Having thought clearly through my points, even if 1 lose the specific way I had hoped to present them, 1 can still offer them to my audience. If I'm fluent in my research, I can offer those anecdotes naturally. In effect, by working hard on a clear, strong, well-reasoned outline, I've already built three versions of the talk: an elevator pitch (the title), a five-minute version (saying each point and a brief summary), and the full version (with slides, movies, and whatever else strengthens each point)."11) "But there's a solution. The answer to most attention problems is POWER...The setup for public speaking is beyond republican—in the political science sense of the word—it's tyrannical. Only one person is on stage, only one person is given an introductory round of applause, and only one person gets the microphone. If the aliens landed during the TED Conference, they'd obviously assume the guy standing on stage holding the microphone was supreme overlord of the planet. For much of the history of civilization, the only ic speakers were chiefs, kings, and pharaohs. But few speakers use the enormous potential of this power. Most speakers are so afraid to do anything out of the ordinary that they squander the very power the audience hopes they will use."12) "There are three things my brother did that anyone trying to teach must do, and it's no surprise that they're easier to do with a smaller number of students: 1. Make it active and interesting. 2. Start with an insight that interests the student. 3. Adapt to how the student responds to #1 and #2. The bad news: applying these rules always takes more time. The good news: any time at all you spend pays off."13) "Finding and simplifying insights requires humility, something rarely attributed to experts and public speakers. Keep your hard-earned knowledge in mind, but simultaneously remember how it felt to be a complete novice. It's rare to achieve this balance, but it's what makes a teacher great. It turns out, my brother learned to drive stick the difficult, old-school way. Instead of passing on that misery to me, instead of projecting his own suffering onto me as a : of passage all drivers should endure, he chose to convert his misery into my delight. Teaching is a compassionate act. It transforms the confusing into the clear, the bad into the good. When it's done well, and the insights are experienced not just by the teacher but by the students as well, everyone should feel good about what's happened. It's amazing how rare it is from many systems for the experience of learning to be a pleasurable thing."14) "Silence establishes a baseline of energy in the room. Sometimes when a room is silent, people pay more attention than when you are speaking (a fact many don't know since they work so hard to prevent any silence when speaking). If y If you constantly fill the air with sounds, the audience members' ears and minds never get a break."15) "Learning to stop saying "umm" requires only one thing: practice. People who sneak without saying "umm" weren't born that way. They used to do it and have worked their way out of the habit. If you're not sure whether or not you do it, you most likely do. And you're probably in good company. Many famous politicians. celebrities, and executives are hard to listen to because of their annoying filler sounds. It's an easy problem to have, since fixing it is a simple, fail-safe way to make all of your presentations better."16) "Medium list of little things: Umms and uhhs. Distractions and tics. Putting the audience behind you. Repetition. No eye contact. Discomfort. Dispassionate. Referenced data. Inappropriate for this audience."

Scott Berkun's "Confessions of a Public Speaker" is a refreshingly old-school book on presentation skills, if that's possible. He doesn't spend a lot of time offering tips on how to use the latest versions of PowerPoint or trying to teach you how to design slides that look slick and professional. If that's the kind of information you're searching for, you should probably look elsewhere. But if you need advice about how to construct a presentation around an effective argument and deliver it in a way that engages your audience rather than puts them to sleep, "Confessions of a Public Speaker" is a great place to get some help.As Berkun points out, the problem with most presentations isn't "the speaking, the slides, the visuals, or any of the things people obsess about. Instead, it's the lack of thinking." Rather than sitting down at the computer and creating slides at the first whiff of a public speaking opportunity, Berkun suggests that presenters first consider the needs of the audience. Who are they? What are they interested in? What do they want to learn? How are you going to keep them entertained? This step in creating a presentation may seem obvious, but it's amazing how many presenters (and people teaching presentation skills) don't spend enough time thinking about what's important to the audience. Once you've got that figured out, Berkun's next step is straight out of the way we used to teach students to write basic essays in Composition class-- get out a piece of paper and come up with an outline that includes a strong argument and evidence to back up your claims. This may seem like the plan of a Luddite in our age of software and slide-driven presentations, but it really is an effective strategy for creating a focused talk. As a bonus, if you ever find yourself having to give an "unplugged" version of your talk when your projector has died or you've forgotten to bring your slides along, your outline can be an invaluable resource.But you're not done yet! The other main theme of "Confessions of a Public Speaker" is that after you've written your presentation you still need to work hard to make sure that you engage your audience and keep them from getting bored. Because-- no matter what they say they want-- what audiences enjoy most of all is being entertained. Keep them entertained and they'll forgive all kinds of other mistakes. The good news is that audiences really want speakers to succeed and keeping their attention is mainly about not boring them. If you entertain them and give them something to think about, you're well on your way to a successful presentation. A few of the important suggestions Berkun offers for the delivery of your presentation include:Making sure you know your presentation inside and out. If you know your topic well enough you should be able to improvise when you find yourself without your slides, the technology you're relying on breaks down, or you have to deal with a difficult crowd. Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes you better.Maintaining enthusiasm and a high energy level throughout your talk. Your audience is much more likely to be excited about your topic if you are. They're also less likely to fall asleep.Dividing up you talk into 10 minute chunks to keep the attention of your audience. That's about the limit of our attention spans, so you need to switch gears frequently. This is even more important for webinars, teleconferences and other situations where you're speaking to people who aren't in the same room with you.Planning frequent interactions with you audience. Ask them questions, have them work in small groups or give them a demo. Mix it up so that they don't know what's coming next and don't have time to get bored. Keep your audience entertained and they'll usually see your presentation as a success even if you don't really have anything to say. Bore them with valuable information and they may hate you.If "Confessions of a Public Speaker" has a drawback it's that the audience for the book isn't totally clear. Is it for people who are new to public speaking and need basic suggestions for how to build an argument, or for the veterans who would be most interested in Berkun's discussion of the realities of life as a professional speaker? No book is going to be able to teach everything about presentation skills to every audience but, by focusing on the basics of creating a good argument and delivering it with enthusiasm, Berkun makes a good go at it. Some people, especially beginners, will object to the lack of software tips. Others to how much time he uses telling personal stories and talking about himself. But those are the things I like best about the book. What he's doing is following his own advice, reaching out to his audience on a personal level and keeping readers engaged by breaking the book into easy-to-consume chunks. Early in "Confessions of a Public Speaker", Berkun says that he'd rather have a conversation over beers with the people whose ideas interest him than attend one of their lectures. I wound up feeling that sharing a drink with him would be fun and informative-- just how you want your talks to be.

I'm terrified of public speaking and so, in an effort to find a way of reducing this fear, I've read A LOT of books on the topic. Confessions of A Public Speaker is definitely one of the better ones.It's less of a 'how to' and more of a description of the author's experiences (positive and negative) with some hints, tips and guidance thrown in.I really liked this format. I found it interesting and a refreshing change from the 'feel the fear and do it anyway' approach taken by quite a few of the books in this genre. The chatty, informal and humorous style in which it's written makes it an extremely easy and engaging read, and I thought that the photos which show venues from a the view of the speaker were a nice touch.Definitely worth a look if public speaking's something you struggle with.

Highly entertaining and inspiring romp through Scott Berkun's career (so far) as a public speaker.Scott Berkun was a project manager for years at Microsoft, then left to make a life as a freelance writer and speaker. He states that one of his ambitions is "to be a great thinker someday". Looks like he is well on his way.One of the good things about this books is that it is experience-based - an amalgam of personal memoir and tips he wants to pass on about how others can learn from his successes and failures to become better public speakers themselves. As a result, the book has a personal, story-telling feel to it.Another good thing about this book is that it's hilarious. I chuckled all the way through.Thoroughly recommended, even if you don't have ambitions to be a public speaker.

Scott - via this book - helped me get through my first public speaking gig alive, in tact and having done a reasonable job, firstly with practical tips on how to put together an interesting talk, secondly by helping me realise there is nothing to be afraid of (it's actually a very safe profession!) and thirdly by making it all very normal and funny. And now there is a wealth of knowledge, advice, further reading recommendations and links I can go back to to further my learning and speaking. This book was recommended to me and I highly recommend it to you.

Easy book to read with a lot of examples and tips to become a better public speaker. The part that I've liked the most is the large number of sources the author drew from when writing this book.

Enjoyable, entertaining and very informative - this book is highly recommended for anyone who does public speaking. Hundreds of tips and pointers chip away at any shortcomings you think you might have. Terrific stuff.