Eric Edelstein

I spent time at the Techomadic Markets course the last 2 days.

On wednesday afternoon i did a 400 second speech called a pecha kucha.

What an amazing presentation technique - I started preparing at 4pm on monday night and worked on it till 3am tuesday morning!!

How does it differ from other presentation techniques? 20 slides of 20 seconds each ON autopilot, so the slide changes every 20 seconds. No matter how much you prepare, it’s difficult to get the timing right on EVERY slide so that you finish the information for each slide just before they change over to the next.

Speaking @ the Technomadic Markets course, got me thinking about speakers, specifically…

What makes a great speaker?

1. Giving the audience information so that they LEARN NEW INFORMATION and understand & remember specific facts, and perhaps change their opinion

2. Motivate & inspire so that people want to find out more about the subject or are generally energised

But what is the OBJECTIVE of the speakers? (Why do we speak?)…I’m writing this while listening to some fascinating facts from the delightful Heather Ford (the energy behind iCommons) who is saying…

…speakers give information away so they can show people how clever they are.

(obviously some lucky speakers get paid to speak about their passion, but many speakers don’t get paid for speaking, and my thinking is based on these speakers)

And as I was about to write down the PRIMARY reason I was thinking, Dave interrupted Heather with my exact line of thinking…

Speakers speak to boost their business 

So what should a speaker do to MAXIMISE the value THE SPEAKER gets out of speaking…

1. Give a POWER speech so that the audience thinks you are wonderful, whats to know more from you, realises you are an expert in your particular field etc

2. In your speech, make it easy for the audience to contact you afterwards - in my pecha kucha talk…

a. on my third slide I was meant to tell the audience not to take notes as I’d give them everything afterwards

b. my 10th slide showed my facebook profile, and I wanted to tell people to connect to me

c.  my 20th slide showed my blog and told people to go there to see a summary of my talk, and for them to contact me through my blog

(Unfortunately I got so caught up with the information imparting and inspiration, that I forgot to give the audience the messages on those slides - so I showed my own facebook profile and FORGOT to ask people to connect to me - OPPORTUNITY LOST!!!)

3. After your speech, it is ESSENTIAL to stick around for awhile so that people can ask you questions - I was @ the course the whole day before I spoke and chatted to a few people where conversation occurred naturally, but it was only AFTER my 400 second speech, that people kept coming up to me @ the dinner on wednesday night and now at the conference this morning to ask me questions & discuss ideas.

4. Try speak on a topic that you want people to appreciate you are an expert in - I spoke about social media yesterday which is a passion of mine, and was introduced as a Venture Capitalist, but the audience probably didn’t realise that I’m obsessed about ALL AREAS OF INTERNET MARKETING - especially affiliate marketing, pay per click search marketing and search engine optimisation, viral marketing, and INNOVATIVE cutting edge ways of getting traffic to your website. (I love social media, but it isn’t my primary expertise)

5. Know what you want to tell people when they speak to you afterwards. (This probably isn’t applicable to people who work for a company or have one company they want to promote.) But with me, as I’m involved in a number of differerent areas, when I hand a person a business card, or when you get introduced afterwards, what does my expertise and passion focus on, and which business card do I hand out?

An example would be yesterdays topic. I was introduced as the original investor in incuBeta - yes, I did put the seed capital up using an overdraft facility and a collection of credit cards (those were crazy days!!!), but the founding was done jointly by 4 of us, and we all put in 18 hours a day for the first TWO YEARS! But because of the introduction, I didn’t get thought of as hand’s on in the business - the perception is that I wrote a cheque, and went back to the Yaught (yeah right!!!!).

It takes us speakers huge time and effort to give a good speech - in this case, 11 hours preparation for a 400 second talk - next time I’m not forgetting about that extra point on Slide 10.