Check out my TEDx talk by clicking here.
This is Episode 7 in my TEDx journey series. In case you missed them, here are the previous entries:
- Episode 1: My Secret to Becoming a TEDx Speaker: The Event Theme
- Episode 2: How I Became a TEDx Speaker: Getting The Acceptance Letter
- Episode 3: Why I Hated My First TEDx Talk Draft: What Was Missing
- Episode 4: Why My Second TEDx Draft Was Worse Than The First
- Episode 5: My TEDx Draft 3: Even Worse than Versions 1 and 2
- Episode 6: My TEDx Draft 4: How I Completely Overhauled My Talk
When I was in high school, I had a crush on a girl. Totally out of my league, but I wanted to do something special to ask her to prom.
With some LEGO, wires, programming skills, and DIY pizazz I planned a robot that would help me ask: it would lift its little arms up to reveal a sign saying “Prom?”
The only problem was: I had no idea what I was doing.
I adjusted the settings over and over, scrapped the whole thing, rebuilt from scratch. I almost gave up 3 times but I was fueled by the power of love.
Finally, after months of planning, Prombot version 17.5 gave a flawless performance. And my crush said “yes” – blissfully unaware of that behind-the-scenes insanity.
That’s exactly what it feels like to write a TEDx talk.
After the final dry run, I probably went through 7-10 more drafts
I scrapped the whole thing, rebuilt from scratch, adjusted the words and the examples and the flow over and over and over again.
But I was fueled by the power of love … for this idea: that music and data are more related than we’d think. Because every person can benefit from seeing the world in both an intuitive and analytical way.
A week before the talk, I met with each of the coaches to get their blessing.
The first coach, Sharvari Chwastyk, pointed out where I went a little too overboard
In my quest to make this talk emotional, personal, and vulnerable, I used phrases like:
- “I tried to cry, but was unable to … I had truly lost my way”
- Or “I realized if I kept this up, I would let die an entire half of me”
While my feelings were authentic, the language was overly dramatic, making the moments feel a bit forced.
I reigned the drama back in, making sure every word sounded like I normally spoke.
The second coach, Kyle Schnoebelen, helped me see I pulled a bit too much
By cutting detail from the talk to make it more accessible, I also made it less interesting.
He would love, for example, to hear more jargon on music or jargon on data.
Hearing that helped me trust myself. The audience for this talk was a lot more non-technical than I was used to, and I was afraid of overwhelming with the slightest slip of jargon. But I had forgotten that new, fancy terms can be cool and exciting if explained well and properly interweaved.
I adjusted the talk to carry more of my expertise.
The last coach, Ian Weissgerber, gave me the thumbs-up on the content – phew!
And with that we could focus on the delivery. He noted my tone sounded a bit flat and I could enhance it with more variety.
He was right. Unlike all my previous talks, I had written a script for this – to make sure I got every single word of content right. And as a result, I became stuck reciting instead of exciting.
I needed to have fun.
After practicing with him on a few key lines, I realized that really was the missing piece. Once I let go of saying “words” and focused more on conveying “feeling”, I began to find my voice again.
I was feeling pretty good at this point! But there was one person left I needed to show. I had workshopped my drafts with the TEDx Logan Circle organizer Monica Kang over the past few months, and wanted her green light to set everything in stone.
In one final meeting literally 7 days out from the event, I delivered the final draft to her.
She didn’t need to say a word. I saw her smile, and I knew – in that moment – I was ready to be a TEDx speaker.
Coming up next in the series is Episode 8: “How I Rehearsed (Unconventionally) for my TEDx talk”…
Before getting to the end of the series, you can also check out the TEDx talk below!
