scott berkun – Ignite Seattle

Everything You Need to Know About Philosophy in 5 Minutes – Scott Berkun

Scott’s pitch:

I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.

About Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is a friend of Ignite and we’ve referenced his last talk “How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk” when anyone asks that very question. Scott’s work as a writer and public speaker has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Wired magazine, National Public Radio and other media. His latest book, which is near and dear to us at Ignite, is “Confessions of a Public Speaker.”

You can find Scott on his blog and Twitter at @berkun.

Confessions of an Ignite Speaker

Scott Berkun, an Ignite Seattle regular and fantastic public speaker has a new book coming out out on public speaking, “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” The book will be on bookshelves on November 6th, 2009 but in the mean time, here’s a PDF preview and a trailer he put together for it.

Full disclosure: I gifted a couple of images that appear in the book and O’Reilly, one of sponsors, is the publisher.

That said, I can’t imagine a more appropriate book to pimp for anyone considering speaking at a future event

How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk – Scott Berkun

Editor’s Note – this post is completely ripped off of Brady’s post on the Ignite main site.

Scott Berkun is a great public speaker. He travels the country speaking on project management, innovation, design and lately on how to speak. As an offshoot in his research on his upcoming book he put together this Ignite talk on Why and How to Speak.

He’s summarized the talk in this excellent blog post on Speaker Confessions (where he’s chronicling his new book):

300 seconds kicks ass. This is super short, which means it’s easy to practice . There is no excuse for not practicing until it feels good. It also means you have to be tight in your points. 300 seconds equals 10 television commercials. You can make great points in a short time if you refine your thoughts. The entire sermon on the mount can be read in about 5 minutes and The Gettysburg address takes about 2 and a half minutes.
Figure out your points before you make slides. Talking about something for five minutes is easy – really, give it a shot once or twice before you make a slide – it will help you sort out what you want to say. You only need Four or five solid points to go 5 minutes. And practice with a timer before you make a slide. You’ll quickly discover how unlikely it is to run out of things to say during an ignite talk.

It is ok to breathe. There is no law that says you must fill every second with talking. When you practice, practice breathing. Take a moment between points. Like whitespace in visual design it’s the pauses that make what you do say stand out clearly. Give yourself a slide or two that’s for just for catching up and taking a breath.

Pick strong stories and big themes. What do you love? What do you hate? What is the best advice anyone ever gave you? Pick stories with big themes, since they require less introduction. What are the 5 most important things to know about X that no one talks about? The stronger the topic & title the easier the work is. Top 10 lists can work, but making 10 points is extremely hard – aim for 5 or 6.