Presentations / public speaking

Have been thinking a lot about this following my presentation last week. Bought, and quickly made my way through Scott Berkun‘s Confessions of a Public Speaker. The book was a really easy, enjoyable, funny read. Two particularly memorable bits… the discussion about the similarities between fear and excitement; and the part about creating interesting titles for talks.

I’ve also been thinking about how conditioned we are to expect ‘boring’. We expect long, text-heavy, poorly prepared PowerPoint based lectures. Why do we tolerate this? Why do we continue to allow it? I believe that everything can be made more interesting. Induction, occupational health & safety, employee briefings are so dull and have infinite scope for improvement.

Wedding dreams

For as long as I can remember I’ve had ‘anxiety’ dreams just before I travel, or have a big assignment due. Usually they involve me forgetting to do something. I had my first wedding anxiety dream this week where I forgot to send the celebrant our vows and readings etc before the ceremony. And then it got to a few minutes before the ceremony and I went into a mad panic of trying to find someone at the hotel (we’re not actually getting married at a hotel, but in my dream we were) to email or fax the celebrant.

So, what did I do? Got up at 4am and wrote my vows. And they have now been safely emailed to the celebrant!

Ubuntu

I listened to Elizabeth Lesser’s TEDWomen talk on Friday morning and in it she mentions the word ‘ubuntu’ (which I only knew as the name for an open-source operating system). Basically, ubuntu is all about our relationships with others and our human need for interconnectedness. But I really liked how Elizabeth explained ubuntu in her talk… ‘I need you in order to be me, and you need me in order to be you’.