Webby Clare

Thoughts and other writings by Clare Conroy

  • Home
  • About
  • Head and Heart
  • Sticky Wisdom
  • Women Talk Work

Things I’ve been thinking about (29/1)

January 29, 2011 By Clare Leave a Comment

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’.

Filed Under: Journal Tagged With: speaking, TED, things, ubuntu, wedding

Things I’ve been thinking about (20/1)

January 20, 2011 By Clare Leave a Comment

Public Speaking

Today I gave a presentation to 200ish staff at work. Am not generally a particularly outgoing person and you won’t often find me speaking in front of large groups. But I loved it. I loved being pushed. Being out of my comfort zone. Rising to the challenge. Doing something that I knew at least 80% of the audience would probably never do. The two main things that I think made a huge impact on how I performed and how I felt about it (both before, during and after) were 1) I was interested in, understood, and cared deeply about the content, and 2) practice, practice, practice. I had a similar feeling after delivering training as part of my train-the-trainer course (and the same reasons applied then too).

Wedding Song List

So far, the definites on my list are…

All Over Again – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Oops! – Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald
This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) – Natalie Cole
It’s Growing – Margie Joseph

Filed Under: Journal Tagged With: speaking, things, wedding

Recent Posts

  • What worked for me in 2019
  • New school
  • Bike riding lesson
  • Head & Heart #40: How could it be worse?
  • Alarm

Categories

  • Books
  • Journal
    • Head and Heart
  • Link
  • Links for light reading
  • Picture
  • Poetry
    • Daily Haikus
  • Quote
  • Sticky Wisdom
  • Video