How to Deliver an Idea Worth Spreading
Aka… how I threw out habits from a decade of keynote speaking in preparation for my second TEDx talk
“The woman on the stage is weaving wonder, not witchcraft. But her skills are as potent as any sorcery.”
—Chris Anderson, TED Curator, “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”
I thought I was a good speaker. I had keynoted at industry conferences and spoken at South by Southwest on behalf of Facebook, undergoing grueling media training to ensure that my talk and responses to audience questions wouldn’t lead to negative press. I had crafted and delivered countless presentation decks to sell brilliant concepts to the world’s top brands as well as to create product visions for many tech companies. As a designer, I was proud of the minimal-yet-elegant slide design, the animation effects (always keynote, never powerpoint), and use of video and memes for sly humor.
Through COVID and working remotely, I patted myself on the back as I learned to improvise and give talks with no slides (while writing fancy blog posts about the process).
And… the experience of my first TEDx talk in New York and my current preparation for my second talk at TEDxRutgersCamden have completely humbled me.
There are three parts of delivering a TEDx talk that have stood out in my process:
Part 1: The Idea
I tend to be cerebral. In past talks, I’ve spent 90% — who am I kidding… actually 99% — of my time outlining the content of the talk. This next TEDx is on Asian American women and it’s based on the months of research I’ve been conducing for my second book, Hardworking Rebels: How to Lead as Asian American Women.
The content really matters to me. The points have to be data-backed, from reputable sources, and the findings should be original and surprising. I’ve spent the hard work outlining each point and making sure that viewer can follow along.
Now I’ve realized that that’s only the first step. It’s a crucial and important step, but probably only 50% of the effort and energy needed to deliver an idea worth spreading.
Aside: You can find many more sources online about finding your idea… this article is focused on the delivery.
Part 2: Make it Concise & Memorizable
TEDx talks also are intimately scripted for online consumption and must stay within 18 minutes. This is really difficult. Chris Anderson, TED curator, shares a story:
“President Woodrow Wilson was once asked about how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: if it’s a minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”
Limiting the highlight points of the idea is the first challenge. You’ve got to cut the majority of your content, and cutting things is hard. It feels like ripping out key parts of your message. Yet, it’ll make the content that remains so much more impactful.
The second challenge is memorization. Unlike a 45 minute keynote where there’s space for improvisation, most people memorize their talk so that they can stay within the time parameters.
For my first TEDx, when I had 5 days to memorize, I relied on old habits from school, the brute force repetition to cement the content in my brain. One helpful tip from my first coach Nathan Gold is to make an audio recording of your talk and listen to it 3x before you start trying to memorize a section).
I also realized that I often use slides as a crutch for memorization. That if I have a compelling image and a couple of bullet points, it’ll help me outline my next points. Through my first TEDx talk, I’ve learned that I didn’t really need my slides… they were a sense of false confidence that could vanish the instant the A/V team makes an oh-so-human mistake. I realized that I know my idea and with that confidence comes wonder.
Part 3: Adding Wonder
“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou
Creating wonder is being the magician who weaves attention and channels emotion with the audience for a brief period of time. To my surprise, the path towards wonder took both structured discipline and free-flow emotion.
The organizers outlined a rigorous calendar for the TEDx countdown:
4 months out: The final round of applications involved submitting a script and video of the full talk.
3 months out: Acceptance! It’s time to incorporate the organizers’ valuable and detailed feedback.
We now start weekly meetings with a speech coach
2 months out: Final script content and title are due and we start the process of memorizing the talk
1 month out (where I am right now): The full talk is memorized and we work on stage presence and emotional resonance
This calendar was initially CRAZY to me. I have a rebel streak and was chafing against the dictated structure. But eventually, realizing I had no choice as I’d contractually agreed to these terms, I relaxed into it and enjoyed the accountability of weekly meetings with a speech coach.
I’d improvised this process before for my first TEDx and had completed the script and slides 5 days before the actual talk. I’m happy with it as a messy first draft. This time around, I realize how much richer the talk is with my 4–6 weeks of diving into the emotional resonance of the talk.
This emotional resonance started with the memorization process. My speech coach, Kim Boudreau Smith, had me look at each paragraph of the script and focus on the energy of the words. Then without looking at the script, she had me deliver it blind. My process was:
Picture the women I was speaking to who most needed to hear the message
Imagine the emotions I wanted her to feel
If the script was focused on my story, I tapped into how I felt at the moment of telling the story.
If the script was telling someone else’s story, I thought of the woman and heard her voice sharing her story.
I wove all of these energies together felt the words, and delivered them
I’d been skeptical of this process, but as we went through the talk, it hit me: I didn’t need to memorize the words to deliver the emotional impact of the idea — simply focusing on the energy was the biggest impact.
This energy leads to wonder, and back to Chris Anderson.
“The woman on the stage is weaving wonder, not witchcraft. But her skills are as potent as any sorcery.”
— Chris Anderson, TED Curator, “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking”
Yes… I eventually did go back to memorize all the words, but it didn’t matter. I already had the energy of each beat of the talk, which means that should my mind go blank and not recall the exact phrasing, it wouldn’t matter — I already knew the intention and could improvise the mini-idea.
This story is to be continued… I give the talk on Jan 14, 2023 at TEDxRutgersCamden. I’m wholeheartedly bought into this three step process, and you can judge for yourself once the video is released. If you’d like to follow along the process, I will give regular updates via my newsletter (see examples).