Book review: Confessions of a public speaker

I’m not exactly sure where I got the link to this book. It was probably a tweet or IRC-posting from somebody, but it actually was because of Amazon’s take-a-look-inside that made me buy the book. The few parts of the chapters I read where not only funny, but had lots of interesting tips & tricks for me as a (wannabe) speaker.

So the preview was good, but don’t you just hate it when you are watching a movie-preview and they use the best pieces of the film for it (which means, the average movie has about 30 seconds of good parts in it.. which sounds about right for the average Hollywood movie nowadays). Luckily, the rest of this book is just as funny and interesting as its preview.

Not only is the book about Scott’s story on the pros (and cons) of being a public speaker, but he will tell you how to become one yourself. Not only will he talk about the psychology of lecturing, but also how you as a speaker can easily make or break a talk just by the way you bring it to your room (yes, it’s YOUR room). He talks about why most speaker evaluations are useless (sorry, most of them, except joind.in off course :)). What to do when you are facing a difficult crowd, or even how to act when a SWAT-team comes busting into the room and take away one of the attendees (seriously, there is a anecdote on exactly this in the book!) or how to deal with the annoying know-it-all guy in the room.

This book is also a lot about common sense but which we all forget once we enter the stage. It truly is a must-have when you are - or want to become - a public speaker! What’s left to say? Nothing really, you should just buy it and read it, even if you don’t ambition a public speaker role, it will be a quite funny and interesting book nevertheless!

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