Confessions of a Berkun lecture attendee
November 18, 2009 by Paul Mayson · 1 Comment
The School of Visual Arts was kind enough to host author Scott Berkun, and allow any schlub off the street to attend. Wanting to be prepared, I grabbed the Kindle version of Scott’s latest book, CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLIC SPEAKER
The talk lasted for about 20 minutes and it was definitely note-taking worthy. Q&A took up the rest of the hour. During the lecture, he covered common pitfalls of public speaking, using funny and “oh man, I’ve done/seen that before” examples, then offering escapes from those traps. The question and answer session was strong as well. Berkun is a clean moderator and engages the audience instead of referring folks to “find the answer in a chapter X of the book.”
About the book? It’s a fast read and thankfully free of any MBA-type baggage that can certainly weigh down a book on public speaking. Instead of gimmicky “tricks and shortcuts”, he writes about honest things that will improve your speaking skills, like practicing and practicing some more. It’s not about making clever slides or issuing “7 rules to rock the room”. It’s useful advice from a guy that started out just like a lot of us, and later found himself in front of rooms of people explaining his work. Instead of living with “I’m just not a good speaker”, he studied it, made changes and shares the results in this book.
For anyone that needs to pitch a product, idea or service, there’s useful information here that can make all the difference in your next presentation. Or, if you’d rather run through a plate glass window than stand in front of a room with nothing more than a mic and some slides, save yourself the stitches and grab a copy of Confessions.
As a man that has sat through hours of corporate sales and product presentations, this guide is a gift waiting to be given to the soft talking, slide reading, jargon dropping, bullet covering, feature mumbling masses that make the yearly week long sales conference feel like 6 months in PowerPoint hell. Even if you’re already a golden god, pick up a copy for that guy down that hall that can’t seem to get it together year after year.
Shitty public speaking is a plague that effects many of us. CONFESSIONS OF A PUBLIC SPEAKER is a book to aid us in our vaccination efforts.
Other Notes:
- Check out a preview chapter here, and here.
- Author Info: Scott Berkun
- Web: http://scottberkun.com
- Twitter: @berkun
- email: info@scottberkun.com
Book Info:
- Title: Confessions of a Public Speaker
- Pages: 238
- Pub Date: November 10, 2009
- Price: $24.99 retail (less on Amazon)
helpful post.