Book Review: "TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking" by Chris Anderson 4/5
A comprehensive guide to public speaking, starting from finding your idea to the very last moment on stage. Be sure to grab it before your next public talk.
One of the best sources of public talks is TED1, so the best place to learn about the craft of public speaking is also TED. And yes, it’s a craft, it requires hard work and rehearsal after rehearsal.
We can learn how to be a good public speaker but it's hard work. We don’t see the hours of preparation or rehearsals, only the end result, the final performance. Great public speakers practise with the same level of determination and discipline as musicians or athletes.
Giving a public talk and sharing our ideas gives us an extraordinary power - we can transfer ideas from one brain to another. Sharing ideas worth spreading is the mission of TED, but fortunately you don’t have to be on a TED stage to achieve this. The concept of transferring ideas from one brain to another resonated with me a lot. In fact, that’s what I adopted for my definition of writing at work: as a transfer of thoughts from one brain to another - more on that in my talk below:
The book is based on years of experiences and lessons learnt by TED curators and speakers. Its content is condensed in an easy-to-digest and enjoyable form, with humour included. The guide is backed up with a few dozen examples from TED talks which show us the knowledge in practice. The story of how TED started was an interesting addition - told by TED curator, the author of this book, Chris Anderson.
You can grasp the key ideas presented in the book by watching this video: Chris Anderson: TED's secret to great public speaking | TED Talk. If you have more time, Chris Anderson was a guest on the “Talks at Google '' series and covered a few concepts from the book.
The book helped me with my preparation for my own talk. However, it does not take all the credit - the dedicated coach was much more important to put it into practice. The book gives lots of tips, and even if you try just a few, you'll get better at public speaking. I wish you all success in sharing your ideas on stages.