Thoughts on speaking
I always ask why I let myself get suckered into preparing a presentation. I struggle with ideas, wrestling with them until I can make sense. I stutter and sweat in the spotlight. Why bother?
But I can’t deny that I enjoy presenting more than other people might. No, not the act of presenting. That’s the tuition I pay. I enjoy that struggle, the tangled thoughts turning into stories. Sometimes I propose talks on topics I don’t know much about because I’m interested in what we’ll find out along the way.
I don’t have any standard speeches. Everything has to be on the boundary, even the old talks people like and ask me to revise. I need to learn something new each time I speak. Sometimes it’s the delight of being wrong and of arriving at an better understanding.
A talk isn’t a talk unless I can make it a conversation. If it’s just going to be a speech, no questions, no answers, I may as well leave it as a blog post or a video. I want to learn from people. I feel like my talks with no discussions trail off in mid-air, interrupted by silence. Sometimes I need to prepare these kinds of questions myself – standalone presentations viewed by strangers, talks in constrained formats for fun and creativity. I want people to ask questions anyway.
Presentations are scary, but they’re a fun way to learn. So maybe I’ll give up on my one-talk-a-month constraint, which I sometimes didn’t follow because of work or interesting opportunities. I don’t want to travel for talks, because that takes too large a chunk of personal time (even the work trips do). I’m comfortable with virtual presentations, and people have told me that my energy and passion come through. If the cost for a presentation-worth of learning is an evening or two of focus, it’s a decent trade – especially if I can get lots of reuse and ongoing insights from it.
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