Digging into the “Confessions of a Public Speaker”

I was once deathly terrified of public speaking.

The first time I recall being freaked the frak out was back in grade school and I was to recite “In Flanders Fields’. The night before my presentation, I was beside myself. My mom wasn’t able to console me and I sobbed, barfed, shook and gasped my way through the night, with visions of failure, mass-laughter and my untimely death rattling around my head like gunshot. Morning came. I stood in front of the school, delivered a pitch-perfect recitation of the poem and then rushed off the stage to gulp mouthfuls of metallic-tasting water from the larger than life water fountain. And it was over.

It was hardly worth the amount of torture I put myself through and I remember my mom trying to soothe me by saying ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’ For a child’s imagination, that opened up a whole treasure trove of possibilities involving rabid rogue muppets and a front row of Bic-sponsored peashooters.

I’ve grown better with public speaking, but that doesn’t mean that I’m a pro by any stretch of the imagination. I think I’ll always be that self-conscious kid who fears the worst and thinks that they could always do better. To get me primed, I picked up Scott Berkun’s book “Confessions of a Public Speaker”. I’m already a ‘Berkun-fangirl’ due to my love of his book “The Art of Project Management” which was my bible during my digital web project management days.

Here’s a video that summarizes why Scott wrote the book, why he’s qualified to give advice on this topic and his wish for how folks will use the information that he provides.

I’ll be posting a review of the book shortly but suffice to say, I’m already loving it. Oh and this fangirl let out a squee when she received this Tweet yesterday…

Rock on Scott!