101–110 of 240 posts
I apologize in advance for being so pedantic, but the nuns at St. Augustine School in Pittsburgh used yardsticks on my body to beat this into my brain: "... who was much better than I (was)" and "... not merely a better speaker than I (am), ...". Damn subjective vs objective case. Thank you.
Speaking and writing are more different than they seem. It's actually a different medium, and so a transcript of a great speech will often seem weak, just as a reading of a great essay may seem flat. Too much is lost in translation, which I think may the problem PG is encountering -- he first writes an essay and then translates it into a speech. Imagine a painter who creates a great painting and then tries to transla…
Video is next, and it's what I actually care about. I think if done correctly, like a really thorough, honest, well reported 60 minutes piece for instance, you get closer to being in the mind of the subject than you do in any other medium. Hearing someone say a quote, while watching them squirm (Clinton, Gates, etc.) give you a good idea of who someone is better than any other situation, except public speaking / one-on-one convos.
Web video isn't really doing a good job of this yet, and I think it's related to PG's idea that the writer of a script should spend all his/her time making the ideas better, while the actor can focus on the presentation layer.
If it were easier / had a shorter feedback loop to author the presentation / video layer, and the content layer were what was taking up the majority of the time, we could see more interesting video. Right now, the render / capture / upload / publish loop is so long, that it's just too difficult to meaningfully experiment in video as information, as opposed to video as entertainment, which is why YouTube's success has a foundation of quick funny bits, and not some informational underpinning.
In a good talk you want to have one central point, repeat it half a dozen times, and pad it with a whole bunch of very memorable concrete examples. That's the only way you're going to make anything stick - otherwise people won't take away anything.
So the goal isn't to pack as much info and wisdom into a talk as possible - it's to pick that one central point and try and get people to remember it.
This is of course totally different than an essay where people reading it tend to be less distracted and have time to read it over if necessary. So you can be more liberal with how much information you're trying to convey and how complex the idea can be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't claim that, of course, but something of similar intent is implied in this paragraph: > A few years later I heard a talk by someone who > was not merely a better speaker than me, but > a famous speaker. Boy was he good. So I > decided I'd pay close attention to what he > said, to learn how he did it. After about ten > sentences I found myself thinking "I don't > want to be a good speaker." A charitable readi…
I don't see how you think that passage implies "people who speak [well] cannot think." All I'm saying is that speaking well depends little on having good ideas. That doesn't imply people who speak well can't have good ideas, just that they don't need to. Playing soccer well depends little on having good ideas. Is someone who says that saying "clarity of thought or soccer ability, pick one?"
> "I don't want to be a good speaker."
a) The guy on stage doesn't have any ideas and is a brilliant speaker. b) Flashiness appears to preclude good ideas, or is at odds with it. c) Hence, I don't want to be a good speaker.
If I'm still getting it wrong, please explain what the anecdote means -- especially given that, apparently, your essays contain only exactly what you intend them to contain.
[EDIT: Slight rephrasing.]
The whole thesis behind this essay is overly facile. A person who is a bad public speaker -- and admits it -- propounding on The Meaning of Public Speaking, its worth, and comparing it to acting (when he presumably is not, and has never been, an actor), and making all sorts of broad sweeping statements which seem to make sense in the moment the sentence passes into your brain but which, if examined for a moment, do n…
Can you give any examples of specific sentences I wrote that you believe are false?
I don't think that statement is adequately supported.
would be great to get Scott Berkun opinion on this (I enjoyed his "Confessions of a Public Speaker" http://www.speakerconfessions.com/ )
On Speaking vs. Writing: http://t.co/SYOqGZfm
It feels to me that PG is simply making excuses for not preparing for his talks. There is no reason technical talks can't be fun, engaging, and full of information. If you only read it out loud once, you're not doing enough prep. Sure you could do a funny talk, which sounds great and doesn't have substance. But it's not a zero sum game. Don't read your talk out once, read it outloud a dozen times. Don't present it un…
One of the most amazing things you see when people is bad at something is how they make excuses so they don't have to do the work. I have cached myself so many times making excuses. We tend to distort our world with fantasies.
This is like the people that are bad at meeting women, instead of admitting it and do something about it, they create excuses like "women love bad boy bastards, so because I want to be a good boy I don't want to meet women",in reality is more like "I don't want to accept that maybe just maybe they do something better than me I can learn from".
In Paul case it is "I don't want to learn to do better speeches so I invent the excuse: Doing better speeches will mean I will be a worse writer so I don't want to do it"
When you admit it is a temporal issue, when you are in denial it is permanent.
Could you tell me those speeches are devoid of content?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V57lotnKGF8