Is it clear how your home impacts your life? Frankly I haven’t often reflected on it. I’m embarrassed to admit that. And learning about refugees through The Blue Key Campaign has crystalized for me how much the experience of a home is worth. It has motivated personal action too; and I’m honored to be a champion for the cause of refugees and the Blue Key campaign.
It’s an incredible anchor, isn’t it?
Or how else would you describe home? How would you like to describe the experience of home and its impact on your life? I’m more fully valuing what a gift it is to have the opportunity to dwell in a home day in and day out.
Impacting family, community and business.
On a personal level, home has been the place to grow our marriage of 11 years. It’s a hub for reflection, contentment, togetherness, and relief. It’s been a safe place of fun for family and friends and our kittens. On a business level too, it’s been an anchor for my work – providing a place for clients and I to find solutions as a team.
Yet beyond the borders of my little safe home, there are over 43 million people forcibly displaced from their homes and countries worldwide.
What you and $5 can do:
The Blue Key Campaign also taught how $5 can show support to those without a home — refugees specifically impacted by war, violence, and loss of stability. I invite you to learn more at The Blue Key – to show support in different ways and even get a blue key symbol of your own.
For some eye-to-eye contact and a story:
There’s a lot of emotional depth to the question. Is it daunting to answer? Sometimes I find that it can be a daunting thing to ponder.
Is your home and its impact on your life worth $5?
The Blue Key Campaign is an effort led by the United States based nonprofit, USA for the UNHCR, which supports the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR).
More stories and insight:
Khadija Omar, a Tunisian refugee photographed at right, who gave up her child to protect her child’s welfare;
Shonali Burke, a great Blue Key advocate and why she’s turning blue;
What a great experience!
A long time goal has been to speak at Ignite, specifically the unique community for IgniteDC. This short-form style is a blast; the DC crowd is supportive and energetic. And I’ve enjoyed coaching clients on this format with my business sponsoring local events.
Ignite is flat out fun.
Have you ever participated in an Ignite event?
Ignite’s mantra is: “Enlighten us but make it quick.”
It’s a vibrant public speaking event with many venues across the globe. Sixteen speakers get to present at each — all giving a talk within the same format: 5 minutes about any topic using 20 slides. And the kicker: each slide automatically advances after 15 seconds.
Do you have favorite tips for preparing short-form presentation like Ignite?
Here’s an approach I often rely on:
TIP #1: focus on your spoken content first and the slides last.
Why? to avoid ‘conjunction-caption speak.’
Focusing on the spoken content first helps to establish a cohesive structure and arc for the talk.
What is your core message or messages?
How does one idea transition and support the next?
Where does the audience end up?
It addresses all those questions.
And it avoids an unintended problem many Ignite speakers have described when they focused on making their slides first: they ended up giving an Ignite talk that is a set of conjunction-caption-like phrases that come across as run-on sentences (vs a cohesive storytelling experience for their audience).
Fuzzy bunnies: an example of the unintended conjunction-caption-sounding result when speakers focus on preparing slides first (vs focusing on a story-centric whole):
“Fuzzy bunnies are happy and cute, see aren’t they cute? and fluffy and they bounce and then they eat a lot and I wish they could fly and drive space ships and they make great cartoons too.”
Have you heard a presentation that sounded this way?
Fuzzy bunnies with context:
Or here’s an example of focusing on the spoken content first and giving the audience a specific point of view (and then crafting slides after the fact to support your spoken content):
“Fuzzy bunnies are a great greeting card icon for 3 main reasons: they evoke sweetness; they’re fun; and they are innocently playful too which makes them ideal images to help celebrate children’s events.”
I’m having some goofy fun here with the bunnies, but the point:
Focusing on your spoken-word content first creates a clearer way for your audience to relate to your ideas.
TIP #2: Knowing the word count for a 5 minute talk.
I focused on a draft that was app. 640 words in length for a five minute talk.
After timing it, I divided app. 31 words to each slide and crafted the slide deck based on that.
Factoring in a reasonable speaking rate and pauses to give the audience a few seconds to absorb along the way — a 640 word draft worked.
Footnote:
Certainly speaking rates vary for all of us!
You may comfortably articulate at a swifter rate and speak closer to a 150 word per minute rate. But after testing and timing some of my past speeches, this is a comfortable rate on my end – with time for pauses factored in.
It served as a really useful framework for the spoken-word draft.
Speech history really fascinates me so I chose (3) speeches to share about and then wrote, edited!, and re-wrote.
Ignite invites a wide range of passions — philosophy, tech, education and how-to, and personal experience.
What’s topic drives you the most?
TIP #3: Rehearsing each section with a recorded audio device.
This really helped to understand and maintain timing along the way (and ensure the right messages and images were on the screen as desired). For rehearsals, I timed without slides first — via audio a few times to ensure the 5 minutes (or 4:55 for a buffer window). Then after making the slides, I timed a few sections via audio again to see if a particular section was overly delayed and needed editing.
What do you think? Is it time to dive into your next Ignite talk?! What other tips do you have for prep?
…& the motivation for a new video project called #Silent10. A quick intro clip follows just below:
When engaging with an audience, speakers can evoke a sense of command by offering silence or amplify meaning of their spoken words. Honestly I’ve come to realize in the past few years that silence is one of my most cherished engagement tools to study.
Silence can serve as a distinct gesture…
…when a speaker gazes out to listeners, offering silence before or during a presentation. I have observed how silence, extended in a certain way from speaker to audience, can express unconditional acceptance between speaker and listeners. Even if just for a few seconds – the presenter’s quietness and directed eye contact can come across as an act of reciprocity to those listening. In collaborating with folks on different speech projects, I’ve been enthralled to see a certain exchange that silence can prompt. It’s like extended silence from the speaker indicates to the audience: ”Your dedicated attention is valuable and honored.”
Have you tried silence in this way as a public speaker?
Or have you exercised silence in other more introspective ways?
…like being quiet out in nature? Or have you exercised meditative silence to cultivate inner calm (or greater clarity of mind)?
With this new project, these questions come to mind:
Could online video & silence unite? And could that union create a simple meditative practice between those on both ends of the video clip?
That’s what the new video project - Silent 10 - is about: exercising silence & fostering its benefits through video.
Each week, a video clip of my silent face will show up on camera, a recording of just 10 seconds. It will be shared here at Live Your Talk.
Would you like to join in?
Would you share 10 seconds of silence & record it on video each Friday?
Years ago during a meditation class, the instructor suggested to meditate silently without placing any goals on the practice session.
I’m realizing now though I have hopes for this project.
to strengthen my ability to give and receive attention,
to be more present-minded,
to dedicate to regular practices of silence. Yet no matter what may occupy my mind each Friday – i.e. the hectic dimensions of life – showing up silently and looking honestly as possible in the camera will occur.
to learn, from a speaker development point of view, to be my own best audience first with the camera’s help, and yours if you’re game to participate too!
What do you think? You are very welcome to participate.
Feel free sharing your own #silent10 video clip, just you gazing silently for 10 seconds into the camera, here in the comments too.
I’m motivated about this and curious too (-curious if this may emerge a neat, meditative experience with others, or if it may end up being my cats and me staring at the camera each week!).
A friend gently poked fun at how much I was rehearsing for a recent speech (…for the wonderful Grow Smart Business Conference) held last Friday.
Honestly there were 3 reasons for the aggressive preparation:
It was a new story for me to tell (about using Twitter and social media to improve public speaking skill). So there was plenty of brainstorming on how to storyboard and organize from this audience’s point of view.
The speech was apart of a lightning talk round where multiple speakers would present in 10 or 20 minutes each. It was a mental wrestling match at times when writing and deciding what should be whittled out.
Many of the lightning round speakers were also immersed on the regional and national speaking circuit. So the good ole law of comparison was in play.
Holy Compelling Feedback Batman
Presenting the speech was a blast. After speaking, I headed for the far side of the conference room to reflect about the audience dynamic (and read the conference’s robust Twitter backchannel aka hashtag #GrowSmartBiz). Then a conference attendee walked up and shared a fascinating and timely perspective.
He said:
“You know, it was a hard situation to be the speaker who followed Shonali Burke. She was awesome and to top it all off she has a beautiful British accent. But your speech did well and was effective even in comparison to her.”
I suppressed the desire to hug the man.
Another audience member in a different conversation shared similar insight. I appreciated the candor and how they underscored that…:
When presenting with a suite of speakers, no matter how conducive one’s content is to the audience, the human mind – will and often starkly – respond to speakers’ unique delivery and personal traits (like in this case, Shonali’s lyrical accent and voice). This isn’t at all to discount the vital influence of content. Yet when presenting in the midst of a boat load of great speakers, it presents an apt time to assess readiness from a specific vantage point.
These 3 questions help to foster a more honest evaluation of my own readiness:
How assured am I when engaging through this content? Is it enough to conversationally relate to the audience with clarity of mind and authenticity? Or would more practice help dissolve any angst about being compared to another speaker’s style?
It was a great, educational, revealing day.
For more video about the GrowSmartBiz Conference, please enjoy here.
As someone who helped get the Women Grow Business community off the ground over a year ago (with the great team of social media swami Shashi Bellamkonda), this particular day made such an impact on my thinking.
It was irreplaceable.
Apart of the DC region’s Digital Capital Week events, it was beyond educational and motivating with over 100 women business owners arriving early on a recent Saturday morning to learn and engage. All this equated to fantastic introductions, new friends, great resources and potential partnerships – thus the first Women Grow Business Bootcamp that wonderful editor Shonali Burke organized. There’s more here on coverage with video excerpts by the great folks at Yayastream.
What would you like to see at the next Women Grow Business Bootcamp?
What an energizing day, with 5 minutes of my closing remarks here.
