Nick Morgan's Blog, page 45
July 16, 2019
I Have Seen the Future and It Is Video
As an author of (mostly) written words, I’ve of course noticed that the sentient world is becoming increasingly video-based. At first, we written-word authors were safe from video online, because the bandwidth and compression ratios hadn’t sorted themselves out and video didn’t work all that well. But somewhere after 4G and before yesterday video surpassed […]
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July 9, 2019
Dr. Susan David’s TED talk and Its Lessons for Keynote Speaking
It’s been a few years since I helped designed a conference from soup to nuts; these days I’m primarily a coach for executives and speakers. That didn’t stop Dr. Susan David from promoting herself to me as a speaker I might want to hire. David is a Harvard Medical School psychologist, and author of Emotional […]
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July 2, 2019
Information Is Addictive – and That’s Good News for Speakers
My good friend Mitch Joel and I share a trait: we’re both infovores. An infovore is someone who “indulges in and desires information gathering and interpretation,” according to some online dictionary I ran across while googling information about the number of people who died during the plague outbreak in Europe in the middle ages. It […]
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June 27, 2019
The Democrats Debate, Round Two
Thursday night’s debate was much more interesting than Wednesday’s, because more of the A Team was present. In retrospect, with the exceptions of Warren, Castro, and Booker, Wednesday night was the kid’s table in comparison. So how did the grownups do? For Vice President Biden, it was a mixed night. Senator Harris woodshedded him on […]
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The First Democratic Debate – Who Were the Winners and Losers?
The first Democratic debate of the 2020 campaign season is over. Ten of the candidates have had their somewhat fair share of the two hours to make an impression on the American people. Who fared well and who did themselves no favors? Let’s start with the frontrunner on the stage, Senator Elizabeth Warren. She made […]
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June 18, 2019
The Power Of Jon Stewart’s Testimony to Congress
Every now and then a speech comes along that both defines the era and transcends it. Comedian Jon Stewart’s recent speech in front of a half-empty congressional hearing on behalf of 911 first responders is such a speech. Students of public speaking can usefully ponder it for lessons about the craft of both construction and […]
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June 11, 2019
Drew Tarvin’s Humor That Works
I had the great pleasure of interviewing Drew Tarvin recently about his book, his work, and how he ended up proselytizing for humor in a very unfunny world. I was instantly on board with that! Here goes. Nick: So, how did you get started? Take us back to your origin myth. Did it have something […]
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June 4, 2019
What’s the Single Most Important Key to a Successful Speech?
What makes for a successful speech? The truth is that it’s a complex mixture of art and science, intellect and emotion, journey and destination. You work fiendishly hard to get the content right, and then just as hard to nail the delivery. Then you find that, at a certain point, the success or failure of […]
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May 28, 2019
How Speakers Need to Forget
Starting this week I’m going to one post a week, for the summer. That way we can all take a deep breath, relax, and spend more time at the beach. Enjoy! I’ll go back to two posts a week in September. Forgetting is important for speakers in several ways. First of all, there’s the very […]
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May 23, 2019
Audience Participation and Rodrigo y Gabriela
Last week I was off on another busman’s holiday. I learned at the last minute that Rodrigo y Gabriela were appearing at the Orpheum in Boston and there were a small number of tickets available. I grabbed one for an extortionate amount; for me, Rodrigo y Gabriela is one of those bands it’s worth a […]
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