Speaker Confessions | True Tales from a Veteran Public Speaker

On tour last month I was in Mountain View, and spoke at Google HQ.

You can read about it and watch the full video here.

Did a webcast earlier this week to 500 folks about topics from Confessions.

I went back in afterward and grabbed all the questions from the chat room during the talk and answered them all here.

Lots of good stuff in there – it’s currently one of the most popular posts on my site.

Really great, high profile review here – check it out

Mr. Berkun’s book is packed with tips on how to reduce anxiety and how to speak in public with greater effectiveness. They range from common sense—arrive early, make sure you have back-up copies of your speech, practice—to more advanced tips on what to do when 10 people show up to hear you in a 1,200-person room (cluster the 10 immediately), how to cut off rambling questions and how to fall silent after making a key point, to give the audience a chance to soak it in.

Read the full review on WSJ.com here.

More reviews here.

Earlier than expected, the new book is now selling from Amazon.com.  Early reviews are strong (3 5 star reviews, none from my Mom), and it’s already #1 in business skills on amazon, and ~900 overall.

Two sample chapters are up on the page as well as the promo video.

Please check it out and help me spread the word. Cheers!

The first in a series of videos O’Reilly Media has made for the book is up.

This also appears on the amazon.com page along with the sample chapters.

You can now read sample chapters from the book, Confessions of a Public Speaker.

Head over to the amazon.com listing for the book and you’ll see a link at the top of the page.

The book is on the home stretch.  Copyediting is done, the galleys are being reviewed. And most important perhaps, some early praise has been rolling in. In just a few weeks it will be on sale and in stores.

“Berkun tells it like it is. Whether you’re speaking to 10 or 1000 people, you will gain insights to take your presentation skills to the next level. It’s a rare book that will make you think AND laugh.”
- Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos

A fresh, fun, memorable take on the most critical thing: what we say.Highly recommended.”
- Chris Anderson, Editor-In-Chief, Wired magazine

“The definitive guidebook for every speaker.. the most useful fun book I’ve ever read on anything.”
- Bob Sutton, Professor of Management at Stanford University

“Smart, funny, and provocative, Scott Berkun’s ‘Confessions’ puts an very modern and wholly relevant spin on the fine art of public speaking.”
- Suzy Welch, Best selling author and public speaker

“Loved it! This is a very informative and entertaining look at the important art of public speaking. Anyone who speaks for a living— including teachers — will greatly benefit from this book.”
- Garr Reynolds, Author of Presentation Zen

“…packed with invaluable tips and advice — gold dust for anyone who ever has to talk to a crowd. If only there was a way I could send a copy to myself ten years ago!”
- Tom Standage, business editor for The Economist

A sample chapter will coming soon, but you can pre-order on amazon right now.

For nearly a decade many leaders in psychology, design and even technology have decried Powerpoint and its many evils.  Every few months another blog post, or presenter, explains in detailed outrage why the common bulleted list slide, when used exclusively, is a very bad idea.

So why then are bad slides so popular? Here’s some theories:

• Bad slides are less work. Nearly everything in the world we know to be stupid is easier to do than the right thing. Ignorance is often less of an issue that the lack of interest in doing the extra work to be better. For unpleasant things, most people, most of the time, are happy to do just enough not to be horrible, and move on.
• Culture of expectations. If most people at an event do the same old boring, hard to understand, bulleted list death, to do the right thing requires standing out and taking a risk, something most public speakers do not want to do. They want to fit in and take few risks.
• It makes it look like you’ve done tons of work. To the average eye, a dense, heavy, slide deck looks like much preparation has been done.  It’s a fast way to make it appear that you’ve done much work, when in reality a simple, clear, concise slide deck requires much more work. People are often impressed, at least at first, by volume, rather than quality.
• They really don’t know there’s an alternative. Some people don’t get out much. They don’t see many presentations. So when it’s their turn they pull up an average of all the ones they’ve seen and try to use their presentation software, tools that promote bullet lists above all else, to approximate it.
• They’re asked for bad slides. Some event organizers ask to review slides, as if that’s a good quality control measure.  When handed a slide deck of 15 pictures, they have no idea what the speaker is going to talk about, and this makes them nervous. It’s not uncommon for speakers with slides that follow Garr Reynold’s advice to get feedback to make their slides worse.
• Speakers use slides are their own notes. Slides should be for the audience, not the speaker. But many speakers destroy their slides by cramming back-up information that would only be used by the speaker.  It’s ok to leave cues for yourself in slides, but they must be minimal enough they don’t ruin the audiences experience.

I’m convinced there will always be bad slides. There will always be ugly, bullet laden slide decks, or Powerpoint abused visuals, filled with text and diagrams few will read much less understand.

I think until conference organizers, professors, and bosses explicitly encourage a new, improved style of communication, we’ll be living with these complaints for a long time.

Chris Atherton’s excellent recent presentation at TCUK09 details the cognitive psychology of good slides – why aren’t these concepts and research more well known?

Are there other reasons people make bad slides / slide decks?

What do you think needs to happen to help presentations, and slides, evolve?

Things are winding down on the book. Finishing up the 3rd and final draft, scrubbing up the copyedit, and all sorts of little things.

If you live in the boston area and might be able to help me with venues for giving lectures about the book, head over here. Thanks.

For years I’d heard about Edward Tufte’s famous all day lecture. I’d owned his books, but somehow never made it to the show. That changed last year. I caught his seminar here in Seattle.

As it turns out the full day seminar, like many seminars, is almost entirely lecture based. Tufte is up front, lecturing, telling stories, and asking the crowd of several hundred to flip to the appropriate pages of their books to follow along.  The event is super popular, as the same course sells out year after year. I didn’t count but by my guess he had nearly 800 people attend that day in Seattle.

But from all the learning theory research I’ve read, all arrows point away from these lecture marathons. Here’s why:

1. They’re passive. Sitting and listening can inform but you are guaranteed not to learn a new skill since you can’t practice it. With no practice there is only vicarious experience.
2. You don’t meet others at your level. One side benefit of a bad workshop is if you are actively working with peers you can learn from them and make connections useful for learning later. In a 500 or 800 person room, where you never break into groups, this is impossible.
3. Retroactive and Proactive interference kills.  It’s counter-intuitive, but there is strong research suggesting cramming lessons into a single is self-defeating. Your brain has limits on how it digests new information, and if there are not frequent breaks and light activities to give the brain time to recover, less learning occurs in 8 intense hours than might occur in 5 well paced ones.

There are two factors at work explaining the dominance of all day, mostly lecture events:

1. It generates more revenue.  If you don’t break into groups of give exercises, you can fit more people into a room. More people, per room, per course means more revenue per hour for the people running the event.
2. It’s less work for the teacher. Lecturing is the easiest method in the world. It requires few risks and little student involvement, or opportunity for students to challenge the teacher.
3. It’s less stressful for the audience. Sitting in a lecture is a passive, and therefore safe experience. While you won’t learn as much, there’s zero risk of embarrassment or the awkwardness of meeting new people.

Have you been to an all day lecture, or all day course that was mostly lecture? What did you think? And how does what you know about learning theory match what you saw?