Check out my TEDx talk by clicking here.
This is Episode 5 in my TEDx journey series. In case you missed them, here are the previous entries:
I screwed up my first two TEDx drafts.
- Draft 1 was closest to my vision for the talk but not personal enough to be a “TEDx”
- Draft 2 got too personal and crammed so much the message got diluted.
I wanted to redeem myself with Draft 3 and make something “just right”.
You can imagine the duress I was under. I had about a month (only a month!) before the TEDx Logan Circle event and a few weeks before the final dry run, AND my talk needed to be completely re-done.
PLUS I needed to work within the following constraints:
1. TEDx talks typically go up to 18 minutes
But our organizer encouraged us to cut to 10 for the sake of modern attention spans 🙂
2. I needed to include personal, vulnerable stories in this talk to make it “TEDx”
This was something very foreign, and even uncomfortable for me. I was used to telling client stories or stories based on data, but stories about me … that required me to share things even my close friends didn’t know.
3. I wanted to play piano
My talk was about how musical principles can help us communicate data better, so of course I needed to play something! But how to make it feel organic? Should I play something at the beginning as an opener and then put the piano away? Should I go back and forth between live music and verbal presentation? The last thing I wanted was for the music to feel like a gimmick.
4. I needed better data examples
During my dry run, I challenged myself to not use slides: no visuals, no charts, no text support. I was concerned about distracting both myself and the audience with too many things on stage – since I already had my piano. But thanks to the coaches, I saw the gap. Without visual support, it became easy for them to get lost in my word salad of data and stats.
I needed to tackle this last issue first
The core of my whole talk after all was how to communicate data well. Once I had that, the music, stories, and timing would more naturally fall into place.
I went with a case study approach
At the beginning I’d show a chart with “bad” data representation. Then I’d make improvements slide by slide, showcasing all the science and psychology behind best practices. It’s a style that clicked in previous conference talks and corporate workshops, so … it should work for TEDx right?
If you’ve followed my blog series up to this point you know what’s about to happen. Just when I think I’m on the right track, I get another roundhouse kick reminding me TEDx is a completely different beast.
I set up a coaching session with the TEDx organizer Monica to go over my latest and greatest, and…
“It was ‘too much like a lecture'”
I really struggled with this at first – because I wanted to “show” how to communicate data well. But to make this a proper TEDx, I couldn’t “show” like I normally did.
People, after all, watch TEDx talks en masse because they’re not standard training sessions. They’re about the “idea” – an introduction and inspiration to explore a topic further. The feeling after a TEDx shouldn’t be “ok I’ll do this and this and this and this”, but rather “oh I see the world a different way”.
At this point I had to change tactics.
- For draft 1, I got feedback it wasn’t personal enough. So I added too much personal story.
- For draft 2, I got feedback the examples weren’t clear enough. So I made them way too granular.
This time I needed to take a balanced approach. I had to stop seeking to make the next draft “the one” and instead take the best pieces of all my drafts to create something truly spectacular.
Off we go to the final dry run…
Coming up next in the series is Episode 6: “My TEDx Draft 4: How I Completely Overhauled My Talk”…
Before getting to the end of the series, you can also check out the TEDx talk below!
