11 Things I Learned From Speaking and Networking at Gnomedex

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18 points·markbao··4 comments

The experience of teaching improved my public speaking significantly. I think most people hate public speaking because the initial experiences they have are for short periods of time when they're nervous and full of adrenaline.

That adrenaline surge burns off pretty fast though. Physiologically you just can't sustain it and (at worst) within about 15-20 minutes you relax. When you teach a class that may be several hours or days long, that means you're relaxed for the vast majority of the time. I think that experience conditioned me to be more relaxed for public speaking in general.

I'm always nervous before I give a speech. But being confident while actually giving it make huge improvements, and focusing on one person at a time definitely helps.

There's an interesting public speaking class that I've heard about, where the only feedback listeners give is about what the speaker did well. The point is to make the speakers more comfortable with speaking, which naturally fixes a lot of the faults that find their way into your presenting skills.

Anyone up for a pitch/speech-practicing group in Boston?

I hadn't either, I had done about 2,000 people in an auditorium no problem. Then I went on national radio to an audience of over 10 million. That got my hands sweaty. Once I calmed down I realized, the difference between 2,000 and 10 million is not that much, and both are really like talking to 10.

I find this advice very valuable:

"You aren’t talking to 1130 people- you’re conversing with just one person."

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