I was slightly startled when I discovered yesterday that I was sharing a double bill at Monterrey Tech yesterday with Malcolm Gladwell. I have never read Gladwell’s famous books, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. And - up until yesterday, I had never seen him speak. But I know he has sold zillions of copies and is a famously good speaker - good enough to fill theatres with paying customers in London.

Usually posts like this promise to reveal the speaking secrets of Steve Jobs, so it's refreshing to see a perspective from the UK and a different speaker.

But, now that I've mentioned Jobs, how about this reference to an analysis of a speech by archrival Steve Ballmer and a useful technique for analyzing your own speeches.

I’ve shamelessly cherry-picked the presentation tips from Scott’s book that I most agree with.

1. Let go of perfection

If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection. Every time is I get up to the front of the room, I know I will make mistakes.

I so agree. I get so annoyed by courses, books and  articles that claim to help you deliver the perfect presentation. Not only is there no such thing, that type of thinking will sabotage your efforts to deliver a competent, effective and engaging presentation.

Olivia Mitchell picks the top six tips from Scott Berkun's Confessions of a Public Speaker. Click through for five more.

How to be passionate (when you open your mouth)

Vijay recently asked in the comments on a recent talk:

Thank you for a great presentation.  I noticed that your energy was explosive and  there was absolutely no point in the presentation where I could detect a lull. I am interested in learning if you have any secrets or techniques in  maintaining the focus of not just the audience, but also  yourself as I often space out even when I am working on something that I am passionate about.

Explosive energy makes me think of being a drummer in Spinal Tap. Perhaps I should tone it down.

There are four things going on.

1. My life is at stake.  I have bet I can make a living on my ideas and my ability to express them. I have no guarantees, no salary and no pension. Every time I write a blog post, a book or a give a talk I’m basically an entrepreneur. I’m not half invested. This isn’t a side project. THIS IS IT. I need people to buy my books, hire me to speak, and to tell others about me. When you’ve invested your heart in something, it’s much easier to appear passionate about it, because you are.
2. I believe what I say. I really hate phony people. I hate people who water things down, intentionally mislead, or pretend they care about things they don’t. How much of what is said at work do people truly believe or care about? I think very carefully, and long, about most of what I create, and so when the time comes to give a presentation, or write a book, my points are things I truly believe.  And I’ve worked hard to make them concise. I’m not holding much back because I know it’s easier to get excited about things you deeply believe, especially if they’ve been boiled down to their essence. If you asked me to talk about my favorite tax software, or which 401k forms I liked the most, passion would be hard to find.
3. I’ve extended my range.  If you can only play one note on your guitar, you can’t do very much. Musicians, especially singers, practice to extend their range. Most speakers have a narrow range. They only know how to get from volume level 4 to 5. If you practice, and listen to other great speakers carefully, you’ll notice how wide their range is. They can whisper (volume level 2) or almost holler (volume level 7).  You also have a range of gestures, and postures, and facial expressions. The wider your range the more tools you have to express passion, or curiosity, or humor, or anything. You extend your range through practice and coaching. I never want to be too passionate, as it’s easy to sound like a preacher on cocaine or Billy Mays. Instead my goal is to be at high level of enthusiasm  without crossing over into annoying.
4. I have great respect for anyone who voluntarily listens to me. Speaking and writing are very subjective, and I know that reasonable people might not like me, or what I have to say. But their sense of how much energy and effort I put in is something undeniable. I never want to be dismissed by people for not being sincere. They can hate me, prove me wrong, heckle me, whatever, but at the end of the day I don’t want anyone leaving the room, or finishing one of my books, feeling like I gave half an effort.  Frankly any speaker is burning way more calories per second than any listener, but that’s often forgotten by most listeners, it’s a consumer’s market when it comes to things to consume.

Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn’t.

Seems like this should be called Words for a Speaker to Live By. Scoot Berkun has been gaining a lot of visibility lately as the author of Confessions of a Public Speaker. This gives a pretty good idea why.

Narrative is important to how we remember stuff. You remember the story behind Lord of the Rings because there's strong narrative. Sure, it's a big book and there's songs, poetry, history etc. all in there, but there's also a narrative thread pulling you through the whole thing (The Ring is dangerous, it needs to be destroyed in order to stop Sauron's rise to power, Frodo the hobbit takes the ring into the middle of the enemy's lands and destroys it even though to others he is a small and seemingly insignificant person). Long after you've forgotten the song of Tom Bombadil, you'll still remember the gist of the story of Lord of the Rings.

Lack of narrative makes stories much more difficult to follow - your brain has to work that much harder to recall the sequence of events later. Exhibit A - Ice Age 2. Chris Atherton (Finite Attention Span) points out that your brain has a better ability to recognise gestalt principles of similarity, connectedness etc. and so it seems natural to suppose that narrative helps us recall the content of presentations better.

BUT (and it's quite a big but) how do you construct narrative in technical presentations? There's no "story" right? This isn't "The adventures of Mike's data". Well, this is where it gets tricky. You need to think laterally.

Mike Smith addresses a common problem with technical presentations--since they lack a story, they're hard to remember--at Posterous. Read the whole post for Mike's solution.

Later today, Lisa Braithwaite offered these suggestions for storytelling as she recounted her experience at a specialty food trade show

1. Tell stories that engage your audience and make them want to stick around for more. 
2. You, the speaker, are your brand, and you are a human being. Make a connection like a human being, not like a salesperson. 
3. When you're trying to get people to notice you and hire you, you have to notice them. If you're too important or too busy, they will move on to someone who pays attention.