Prepare

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Transcript

So we move on to prepare the second P. Now the difference here is preparing is for a specific talk, you've got something to do, you have an engagement. If you're a professional speaker, it's an engagement where you have a contract and you're probably being paid or there is some sort of quid pro quo for turning up and talking to a group of people. If it's work, then you might have an appointment, somebody says, I'd like you to present on this, that and the other or we have a new business thing. We're meeting these potential clients, or whatever it may be, you know, you've got a thing, that's when you start to prepare. Now we've covered content. And we know the importance of asking the questions about who are you going to be talking to, and defining the intentions, your intentions for them, your intentions for you and get as best you can, their intentions for them, so that you have them all covered, and you're going to be speaking into the right listening.

That is incredibly important. And as a professional speaker, I asked a lot of questions generally about the audience. What are their main concerns? Where's the pain? Where's the thing that they're feeling worried about? How can I help them?

What gift Can I actually give them, it's also sometimes useful to know the demographics of the audience, the age range, the gender split, you know, these things can also affect the listening you're speaking into. So how you design your content to be most effective. Also important to check where you're going to be speaking the venue itself, whether that's a classroom, a humble classroom like this, and you're standing in front of 30 school kids or whether it's an impressive auditorium as on the right hand side where you might be speaking to two or 3000 people on a proper stage. whichever one it is, check it find out as much as you can about it. When I get a speaking engagement, I look up the venue on the internet. And if I can the actual room I'm going to be speaking and so I get a feel for it.

And certainly when I get to the physical venue, I will go to the room as early as possible to get a feel for the room, the acoustics of the room, you can get that from simply walking in and clapping your hands that will inform you about the acoustics you're going to be helped or hindered by hinder unfortunately, very often hindered and context as we have discussed is very important. Also, if you can, you need to talk to the tech crew. So there may be people there is a biggish gig, there might be a sound system, there might be people running that sound system, and if they've been hired in, it's very important to make contact with them because they can make or break your talk. Do you have sound you're going to play? Do you have video you're going to play I often start with a blank slide.

I tell them that because if I hadn't told them that they would panic, when they go from the holding slide of the gig to my first slide, and it's all black. It can really upset them. So as long as they know these things, and you're careful and professional with them, Hello, I am Bubba bar, what's your name? Are you doing sound you're doing video Nice to meet you, you know, get on with them, treat them nicely, and they will look after you very, very well. And I also go up afterwards, always to the tech crew, if I can, and say thank you, and the other people I very much like to connect with before I speak if I'm speaking anywhere, with a multinational audience with translators, it's the translators. And I use a fair bit of unusual language in my in my talks, things like soundscape.

I go up and talk to them beforehand, if I can run through what I'm going to say thank them very much for what they do, because I think it's an incredible job. So that's checking it out. Is there a green room or a backstage room where you can be before where are you going to come on from where you're going to go off to expect anything to go wrong that can go wrong and have fall backs if you can. If you're using slides your presentation on a USB stick is a very good idea. Make sure that you've covered all the tech that you know what's happening and do a soundcheck very important to check and do a run through of your presentation so you feel comfortable with all the tech they feel comfortable with what you're doing, and all as well. Now, it's also a good idea to know what aids you should use.

Obviously, if you're speaking in a really small place, maybe to a dozen people, you won't want a microphone, you probably won't want to use a big screen and a projector. If it's just two or three people around the table. You might just use your laptop to show them anything. You want to Show them. So decide what aids you're going to use. And in particular, given that memory is not my strong point, I need aids in order to know what I'm saying next and the way that the talk is going to go.

I never memorize. Never try to memorize the whole thing. I do know it pretty well because I've practiced and practiced beforehand. However, AIDS can help enormously. Now this is a TED talk. Quite a daunting thing to do.

In the TED talk, you have two boxes in front of you. One is showing Presenter View, which is to say your next slide, and any notes that you've got. The other one is a countdown clock, which is showing you how many minutes you have left in your talk. They don't like people running over in fact, they don't let people run over and they will they they will Chris Anderson will absolutely come on stage and hike people off if they're clearly halfway through their talk and their time is up. So comfort monitor is the channel Typical name for that screen that's showing you what's on next. If you're using slides, you just glance down from time to time and check where you are and what's coming up next.

It's a very comfortable way to operate, and it's not intrusive or irritating to the people who are watching you. And a timer, of course, is crucial. There must be a timer, you can put it on your Presenter View as well, whether you're using PowerPoint or Keynote or Prezi or anything else. And it's vital to know how long you've got left. So you can judge how fast you should be going. You should know how long your talk is, you've practiced it and practiced it, of course, and so you know how long it is.

Nevertheless, we can get carried away I often do when I'm excited about talking about something and spend too long on one area. So that means I have to hurry up in other areas in order to bring myself in on time and it is just rude to run over. So aids can be very useful. This is one I don't necessarily recommend. This was the great author Jared Diamond. His first book guns, germs and steel absolutely adored.

And I was in the audience at this Ted watching him speak. And it was, I have to say somewhat disappointing that he came on, put his script down and read from the podium. Because reading writing is not the same as speaking. It's a different thing. Now, oratory in the past has been reading, writing, and it has been accepted as such. These days, it tends to sound a little bit stiff, and it too formal.

The writing is different from the way you would actually speak most of the time, unless you're reading an autocue, or a teleprompter. Now that you can do if you're extremely proficient at it, without it appearing to be an obstruction at all, if you've written the speech extremely well, then it can work. The problem with reading off the podium, as Mr. Diamond is doing here is that you're looking down at the text most of the time Which means that you have no eye contact with the audience and that connection is broken. And that's certainly how I felt when he was he was speaking at that particular Ted. I can give you another example from the very same Ted. And you can look it up online, if you like Bono was there talking about aid to the third world, as he often is, and helping to alleviate the problems of poverty, and starvation.

Now, that stage had an enormous extension on it. And he was standing at the front of the extension. I was in seats that were right next to the original stage and I was actually therefore, behind him, I had to turn around and look at his back and see was speaking to the rest of the audience because the spur he was on went out a long way, so I could see which the audience couldn't that there was a huge autocue at the back of the room from which he was reading. He didn't use a teleprompter screen it was a big auto cue. on big screen at the back. He read every single word Did that speech, but if you watch him on ted.com, you would never know that he was so good at it.

It sounded natural. And if you can do that, that's a wonderful way. So as you can be bothered to write down every word, you're going to say it's a wonderful way of delivering a great talk with absolutely no concern at all. It can, however, be a bit fraught, if the technology will obviously if the technologies are not, not there, you can't do it. But if the technology doesn't support you, there was another Ted I went to where there was a lady who gave a talk, and was using teleprompters there were teleprompters arrayed around the red.so. whichever direction she was looking in, she could see a teleprompter and she was reading every word of her talk.

The teleprompter broke, it stopped. And if you're reading a talk and the teleprompter stops, you are somewhat stuffed, actually, to use an English vernacular expression. That's not good, is it? Because there's not much you can do you haven't memorized the talk, you have no other aids, it's no fallback and the thing is broken. She had to wait until it started again. And then she started again.

Now obviously, if you look at it on ted.com, you wouldn't know I can't remember the name of the lady in question, but you would never know because they'll cut those two things together and cut out the uncomfortable bits in the middle, but it was slightly uncomfortable in real time in the room. So all of these aids can be wonderful props, but they have advantages and disadvantages, and I certainly wouldn't recommend reading from a piece of paper on a podium these days. I don't think it's the premier way to go. If you want to remind yourself of things and you don't want to use slides, then cue cards are very good way to go. They can be extremely effective, a little bit like a TV presenter. You can even put a nice logo on the front of them, and they can give you stage directions.

Put a reasonable amount of control On each card, only use one side of the card nice large font in handwriting is fine, or you can print them out using capsules is a good idea. And you can put a little stage directions to yourself from this is an important point, I'm going to pause for effect here, and then punch the air. Yeah. And overall, if, for example, I happen to be a gambler, and speak really, really quickly, I can put a slow down on every single page. And if I look serious and frowny when I'm talking smile on every single page, just to remind myself to do things which are going to connect me with the audience and speak better into the listening. Now, I do use slides, not as well as this guy did.

He was the ACE slide user of all time, I think and developed really a new way of presenting which has come into common use. I think now you can see it at TED. You can see it in most major presentations, that people do not any longer. Use the style slides with bullet points, it's much more dramatic. It's much more backing up what you're saying with a strong visual image that's impactful. So you're engaging the eyes as well as the ears, but you're not asking people to engage with these things.

I do urge you not to use these if you can. Because you end up with slides that look like this. And by the time I'm reading bullet points tempt you to read the screen. You've read all of that, haven't you, which means I'm completely redundant, really. You're ahead of me all the time. And it is extremely boring.

It also tempts you to one of the cardinal Sins of speaking, which is turning around and reading the screen. We'll come back to that. There's a wonderful book by Gary Reynolds called presentations and which I strongly strongly recommend to you if you use slides at all, and he's come up with a great word slide ument. So often, I still get from time to time people saying Could you say As your slides in advance, so we can put them in the pack. And I said, there's no point putting my slides in the pack. Most of my slides are just a picture with a single word.

If you want to handout or leave behind, then I'll create one for you, which talks about my content. As we have for this course in across a variety of the chapters, you've got handouts or exercises or PDF sheets. Also, of course, you can revisit this course anytime you like. If it's a single talk, you go through it, people will remember 25% if you're lucky, and you can leave them with the slides, I often will leave them with the slides as aide memoire, but if they want something more than that a document that's a separate thing, not a slide ument where all your content is laid out in bullet point form, because it's extremely tedious to read through that as somebody's talking. The strongest and bravest way to handle your content is with a memory palace. If you have a phenomenal memory eidetic memory, then that's easy for you, you can just write it down and read it in your brain.

I don't, not many people do. There are tools and techniques. A memory palace is one of them where you create a house or a palace with rooms that you're familiar with. And then you have a journey that you go on. Every time you enter the memory palace or the memory house, you're on the same journey. And you would remember the front door is a banana.

The next room you go into, which happens to be the the kitchen on the left, the table is somebody's face or a word. And so you as you move through the rooms of your memory palace. You remember that first thing you're going to talk about for some reason there's a banana and then there's that word you're going to talk about and it gives you the flow and you're not going to forget things. It is a dangerous way to play in that it's a chain and very often if people memorize talks One link in the chain gets broken and your cast adrift and you cannot remember where you're going. And the solace I can give you. Because that is everybody's ultimate fear in talking to solace I can give you about that is that nine times out of 10 when I've seen that happen, the audience are so on the speaker's side, what will happen, the speaker stops, breaks down, looks really flustered, goes, red starts sweating, looks really uncomfortable.

And there's this pause and then what happens? Somebody will start clapping and the audience will clap. That's what I've seen happens so many times, the audience will clap in support and in encouragement, they're with you. They're on your side, generally, unless you're stand up comedian in some sort of terrible place where you're trying to put yourself across and everybody's going to heckle. Audiences aren't like that. Generally, they don't Heckle.

You're giving them a gift. They know you've spent the time and trouble to come there you there's something they want from you and they're happy for you to say I'm So sorry, I'm going to take a moment. I've completely lost my thread. Please give me two minutes even if you have to walk offstage and check in aid or something like that. It does, however, create some stress. And it's a high tariff system to use memory.

Good on you've, you've got a fantastic memory and you can do that. I congratulate you. And some of the best talks I've ever seen at TED have been people with no cards, no slides, no script. Alan, the buttons first talk, I would commend to you as a tour de force of somebody who just walked on stage and talked for 18 minutes brilliantly. And then left, it was all from memory. Now in order to minimize the chances of stuff going wrong, my suggestion to you is when you know you've got to talk, rehearse until you bleed.

That's perhaps a strong expression, but you know what I'm talking about. Just rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Until you know the thing really, really, really well. It doesn't take that long to do it, let's face it, if you have a 20 minute talk to deliver, you can rehearse it over and over again. And you know, if you allocate one day to that, or if you do it over the space of a week, you would have it taped by them. My very first TED talk was, I mean, speaking at TED is a daunting experience.

As I think I may have said, before, you know, there were there's Jeff Bezos or there's Larry Page, or there's Bill Gates, you know, the the audience is quite high level. And so you don't want to make a fool of yourself there. So when I had my first ever TED talk back in, I think it was 2009, the one on the for effects of sound. I rehearsed that so much to the point where my daughter was my audience, and she knew it probably backwards as well. And so when I got onto the stage, I didn't have any fear of forgetting stuff. I had my slides.

I knew my material, and I was able To enjoy the moment, and to jazz, if you are like a jazz musician, you know the chords, you know the tune, then you can play with it a little bit and have fun. And that's how I like to talk. I don't like to read a script, I like to be able to play with it and have fun and extemporize a little bit. So that's your second P. Prepare, master your age. check everything about the room and the venue and how you're going to deliver it have fallbacks if you can, if you're using tech, just imagine what would happen if the tech failed you can you carry on, you might if you're using slides, for example, you might want to have a little deck of cards in your in your case. So if the whole thing goes down, you can say, ladies and gentlemen, that's a bit of a problem.

Hold on one moment, I'll be right back and you come out with your slides and carry on. If you're the person who can do it when everything's falling apart. That's a wonderful moment. that did happen at TED once in Oxford. The entire of the Oxford Playhouse shut down. They were running so many gigawatts that the whole thing blew.

And there was about a 15 minute pause while they cranked everything back up because it all had to be restarted in sequence. And there were some people in the audience who could cover. There was an opera singer. There was a poet, and they got up on stage and did something. And it was it was fantastic. And everybody was really delighted with them.

Another great example I remember from Ted was when the BBC were doing a thing in Monterey and all the tech broken their comms went down. So they couldn't do the interview. And everybody started getting antsy and a guy two seats to my right, started shouting and I thought, yeah, goodness me, you know, come down, till I realized it was Robin Williams, the late lamented Robin Williams, who then got up, went down on stage and did 15 minutes or 10 minutes of brilliant stand up comedy. And that was the pause, taken care of in the most amazing way. So if you're the person who can say Hang on, I can go on Even though the text gone down, that's a very good thing having some fallbacks is good and most of all, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

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