The Ideal Communicator

In this talk, the Jamie Oliver presents his TED Prize acceptance speech, where he reveals his wish to change the world. Compelling, persuasive, and at times heart-breaking, I highly recommend taking the time to watch this 19-minute speech not only to watch him display some unusual – yet highly-effective – speaking techniques, but to learn about the food-related problems facing the U.S. today.

From the moment Jamie takes the stage, it’s hard to take your eyes off him. So what makes this speech stand out? Here are 6 reasons: 

1 — DRAMA!  Right from his first words, he grabs the audience with dramatic statements that will make anyone sit up and take notice. “Diet related disease is the biggest killer in the US, right now, here today.” “Obesity costs you Americans $150 billion per year.” “We’ve condemned our kids to living 10 years less.” All designed to hit home. Of special note are the first words out of his mouth in this speech:  “Sadly, in the next 18 minutes, 4 Americans that are now alive will be dead because of the food they eat.” Now THAT gets attention – and would start any speech off with a bang.   Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Williams is one of the co-founders of Twitter. As a result, he’s probably invited to speak to tell his story and share his insights to all sorts of audiences. So how did he do in this 7-minute speech at TED?  Let’s take a quick look at what was good, and what needs to be improved the next time he takes the stage.
  

WHAT HE DID WELL:

Introduction: He wasted no time, and went straight into the speech with a personal story about the origins of Twitter.  The story was interesting enough, and was an effective way to start the speech.
 
Transitions and photos: He made an obvious transition out of the introduction and into the ‘body’ of the speech with the facts of what Twitter is and how it’s used.  The photos and images used backed up his points and the accompanying stories extremely well. 
 
WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED: Read the rest of this entry »

For an air-tight example of an excellent speech introduction, look no further than Seth Godin’s speech about sliced bread at www.ted.com. In a little over two minutes (from minute 0.25 to 2.35 on the video), he not only tells the audience exactly what he’s going to talk about in an concise, interesting, and engaging way, but he includes the all-important WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) factor to really draw in his listeners.

How does he do it?  Watch the first 2 minutes of this speech for clues…

1. He immediately introduces the four specific examples that he’s going to talk about, including one of his own failures (Seth Godin failed at something?  I don’t believe it…) Read the rest of this entry »