Moving others
While reviewing a conference presentation a few days back, I found that the speaker hardly has anything unique to convey. The talk is about a tool, but there is no attempt to clarify:
- Why this “tool”?
- What are the benefits?
- How did it work for me (the speaker)?
We, the review team, recommended a set of changes to create a story of his experiences. Hopefully, he accepts the recommendations and upgrades it to a “useful” presentation.
When you are on the “stage”, whether you like it or not, you are trying to move others. You are conveying that there is a different way —a better way, in your opinion — to achieve something. And the idea is to convey the benefits, so the right people are “moved”.
The audience is watching you on the “stage” to learn what worked for you. And if you are not focussing on “providing the learnings”, then you shouldn’t be on the stage.
Sell ideas which you are confident about. And the most powerful way of selling is sharing actual experiences. Sharing your experience is a lot powerful than sharing how the idea worked for others.
Most of us believe “sales and marketing” are bad. That is because of the incorrect assumption that “sales and marketing” are for exploiting people. I too thought so until I started listening to Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, Jason Fried, DHH etc.
Dan Pink in his book — To Sell Is Human — mentions that everyone sells. Convincing a co-worker or the boss about a different approach, parent speaking to a kid to obey him etc. are examples of selling. Public speaking is no different.
I met Avdi Grimm @ Ruby Conf India ’18. During our conversation about Continuous Delivery, he gave me an idea to speak about Database Refactoring. He also offered help for reviewing my proposal.
I took the offer and shared the talk proposal with him. And here is the writeup an video of him providing his recommendations:
So far I’ve given the same talk @ five conferences. A few more are lined up in 2019.
