Confessions of a Public Speaker

by Scott Berkun

the silence before I begin is the most powerful moment I have.

All performers have a mindset they use when everything else is going wrong, and that’s what gets them through.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

Ken Bain’s excellent book, What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press),

The challenge of teaching becomes observing your students, knowing how to respond, and making adjustments to suit their needs.

Hearing a message from an outsider often carries more weight than a team of expert insiders.

There will always be a shortage of good public speakers in the world, no matter how many great books there are on the subject.

E. M. Forster wrote, “Only connect!… Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.”

Sometimes when a room is silent, people pay more attention than when you are speaking

Donald A. Bligh offers this advice in What’s the Use of Lectures?:[

George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (Mariner Books)

Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen (New Riders)

Alan Weiss’s Money Talks: How to Make a Million As a Speaker (McGraw-Hill)

13, How People Learn, National Research Council (National Academies Press)