TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson

BATB score: 8/10 ❤️

*TED Talk is hands down the epitome of world class public speaking - this book is all you need to know*

Best to: why speak when this could have been an email you ask? because, “It’s the human overlay that turns information into inspiration.”

Best as: an exhaustive lists of all the nooks and crannies to public speaking including how to start, how to finish, to memorize or not to memorize, what to wear, and how to save your presentation file in zip format *yep, the book suggest that you do have the file in a USB too just in case*

Fun fact: “Having no slides at all is better than bad slides.”

Best for: if you are speaking on a TED Talk / TEDx stage, this book has all the tips and techniques

BATB lingering thought:

(1) and there comes a point in your life that your role, status, accomplishments surpass your public speaking skills; ie. Bill Gates can just stand there and sing Happy Birthday off-key and it would have been a standing ovation

(2) and there continues to be lame events that does not ask the speakers to prepare their speeches, to just show up and sit in a panel so ‘they don’t have to prepare’, however, “when people sit in a room to listen to a speaker, they are offering her something extremely precious, something that isn’t recoverable once given: a few minutes of their time and of their attention.” and that is why those events suck

Best quotes: “Your only real job in giving a talk is to have something valuable to say, and to say it authentically in your own unique way.”

“Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.”

“The future is not yet written. We are all, collectively, in the process of writing it. There’s an open page - and an empty stage - waiting for your contribution.”