“Choose a human being—an actual human being in your life—and prepare your talk as if you will be delivering it to that one person only. Choose someone who is not in your field, but who is generally an intelligent, curious, engaged, worldly person—and someone whom you really like. This will bring a warmth of spirit and heart to your talk. Most of all, be sure you are actually speaking to one person, and not to a demographic (‘My speech is for people in the software field who are between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-eight.’), because a demographic is not a human being, and if you speak to a
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