Speaker Academy

Over the last year or so I had seen quite some tweets going around about the Speaker Academy. Although I do a lot of speaking in public, this is mainly based on delivering training & coaching sessions. Being able to speak about other topics I considered a challenge. So I decided to apply for the Speaker Academy, run by two awesome coaches Keir Bowden and Julia Doctoroff.

The purpose of the Speaker Academy is get ready in 6 weeks to deliver a 5 minute public talk about any topic you want. The beginning of the coaching is focussing on being able to speak in public. We were all given some home work and in session random topics to talk about. To see if we are able to stick to timelines, be able to think on our feet and just be able to talk. Sounds easy, but if you are all of the sudden presented with a photo and you have to talk about it for 2 minutes without a script, it is a challenge to not ramble a lot!

The second part of the program was focussed on writing your talk and doing practice runs. Againg, it sounds so simple, just write a 5 minute topic on anything you want. But the challenge is to a) make it interesting for the audience and b) stick to the 5 minutes. To get an interesting talk with introduction, main and conclusion for just 5 minutes is a challenge. Time goes quick and you have to avoid talking to fast trying to cover everything. Also you need to make sure you don’t fall in the trap of Death by Powerpoint. Yes, you need some support slides. But you only need a few as guidance. The coaches were great in giving tips and feedback on the sessions and guide us in the right direction to improve our talks.

The big challenge will be on 12th January 2021, when we will have our graduation session. This means that lots of people will join the call and hear us do our stuff. Although I know we will all be successful, it is still rather stressful to get ready for it. Even though I know the talk! I will do some last minute prep runs this weekend as it has been a while I looked at the presentation.

Hopefully I can share the recording afterwards!

Now, why should you try to join one of the upcoming sessions:

• First of all, even if you think public speaking is easy, there is always room for improvement. You might not realise yourself you have certain ticks or habits (like saying “like” a lot, or a lot of uhming)
• Second, you will learn from 2 great coaches as well as a small group of other students. It is great to learn how others go through the program. See them grow. But also learn from them. For example one of my groups speakers used hand drawn images for her talk. Not only is this incredibly creative, but it means you have exactly what you want
• Third, it is a great way to learn what is expected if you want to do any public talking at Salesforce events. The team makes sure you do things like write an abstract, prepare a good slide deck and stick to timings. All skills very useful to have and work on.

If you want to join, keep an eye out on #SpeakerAcademy tweets. It is always a heavily subscribed event, so make sure you are ready to sign up.