Thoughts On Speaking At Seminars…

I love speaking in public.  But I didn’t always like it.

I remember the first time I had to speak in front of people. I was in graduate school at Baruch College and was in a public speaking course. I got up in front of the room, stood at the podium, put down my prepared speech and my glass of water on the podium.

As I spoke, my mouth got very dry. I reached for my cup of water and you know what happened? The cup spilled all over my face as my trembling hand went up to my mouth.   I was so nervous. Wet, embarrassed and scrambling to find my place, I finally finished the talk and sat down. I was relieved.

A few years ago, Christina Harbridge who has a company called, Allegory in California, came to an Entrepreneurs’ Organization event and gave a lecture on improving stage performance.  She was excellent. I learned that people want to see visualizations and they want to feel the experience with you in order to really get to know what you are experiencing.  So since then, I’ve been using her techniques and they work.

Since then, I published my first book, “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Media but were afraid to ask…“ I have been giving a lot of speeches.

I’ve talked before students at various colleges  and I’ve talked in front of all kinds of business groups throughout the tri-state area. I’ve even talked before non-profit groups and corporations on developing a social media program and developing business using social media. A few times, I spoke at national conferences in various places around the states.

Most of the time, I get standing ovations. I get people engaged and the conversation gets interesting.  It’s never the same conversation and I always learn something from every speech I give.

The other evening, I gave a speech at the Organizational Development Network of Long Island (ODNLI). I was intrigued by the questions I was asked and I went home even pondering what social media has done to interpersonal communications.

The next day, I gave a seminar at the Social Media Camp put together by Howard Greenstein and David Parmet. These guys did an amazing job and the event was held at the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC.

When I walked into the room, it was packed with people. My first reaction was, this is going to be a great conversation. Unfortunately, no one spoke.  No one asked questions.  It was just me talking.  At one point, I asked the group to help me out a little by either asking questions or making comments. But no one spoke.

After the meeting, I got several emails and tweets from people who sat in the audience who were interested by my presentation and loved that I was so “animated.”

I had a similar experience at the AITP (Association of IT Professionals) meeting yesterday.  I wasn’t quite sure of the set up and when I got there, it looked like it would be a panel discussion.  But it wasn’t.  I spoke first and the other speakers followed.

At first, I was feeling as though I was losing the audience because the salad was being served at the same time as my presentation.  No one looked at me.  Everyone sat quietly eating their salad. But then something happened.  I don’t know if they all finished their salad at the same time but everyone looked up at me.   They were really listening.  And, the best part, they laughed at my jokes!

I walked away from that seminar feeling really good.  As I was walking out the door, a man came up to me and told me that he felt his calling was in giving seminars. “How do you stand up there so naturally and not be nervous?” he asked.

I smiled and told him that that wasn’t always the case.

It’s been a long time since that day that I spilled the glass of water on my face. I still get nervous before I do these engagements but once I get talking I love it and don’t stop…