PhotoshopDesign

In order to get more people in the design scene speaking at events like SillSwap, BarCamp and even dConstruct or UX London, I’ve been toying with the idea of organising a free public speaking course. It would be held on a yet-to-be-determined Saturday at the Clearleft offices in Brighton and would focus on practical, hands-on tuition.

We would start with how to plan, research and design a talk that delights your audience, paying special attention to story telling and narrative. We would then move onto the delivery and performance side of things; teaching people how to project their voice, vary their tone, use the stage and work the audience. It’s all basic stuff, but it’s these rookie errors that can damage an otherwise excellent presentation.

To ensure everybody gets the individual attention they need, the even will be for a limited number of people. I’m not sure how many yet, but probably no more than 12. Everybody will be expected to present a short practice talk and we’ll video each session so the attendees see how they improve over the day. So they’ll be no tourists.

This workshop will be aimed at people who are really keen on breaking into the conference speaking circuit and need some coaching and improvement. So it’s not for folks who want to brush up on their general speaking skills.

In order to select the best candidates I’m asking that people record a short 5 min presentation, post it up on Vimeo and then add the link in the comments below. If you could add a little background info as well, that would be great.

We’re not looking for super slick presentations, or the folks that need the most help. Instead we’re looking for people with an interesting message and a passion for what they do. Oh, and at the risk of being charged with positive discrimination, if there are two equally strong candidates and one comes from an under represented segment in the web community, we’ll invite them first.