Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared

Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by mrshoe on Thursday October 29, 2009 @05:25PM (#910952)

Spontaneity? Or announcing a lack of preparation at the beginning?

As Jason notes in the article, spontaneity can be a huge boon. I don't immediately see how the latter can be, though it's possible.

I suppose paul may truly be an exception, but it seems that I would get just as much out of his talks (which is to say, a ton) whether or not I knew how much time he had spent in preparation.

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by pg on Thursday October 29, 2009 @05:53PM (#911003)

Announcing a lack of preparation. All PB talks begin with him saying that he hasn't prepared anything; that it doesn't matter anyway, because he doesn't have anything to say; and that in fact no one has anything to say. From which he proceeds to tell you interesting things.

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by DanielBMarkham on Thursday October 29, 2009 @06:00PM (#911021)

What a very strange comment.

I wish I had heard one of these talks.

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by mrduncan on Thursday October 29, 2009 @06:45PM (#911089)

If you haven't seen it yet, here is a highlights video which has a brief portion of Paul's talk as well as links to the justin.tv archived stream.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=910426

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by herdrick on Thursday October 29, 2009 @11:55PM (#911499)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by mrshoe on Thursday October 29, 2009 @05:58PM (#911016)

Ah, so it is the contrast provided by lowering the expectations at the beginning which means they'll be shattered even more thoroughly by the rest of the talk. Makes sense.

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by cma on Thursday October 29, 2009 @05:51PM (#910999)

>whether or not I knew

Then by the same logic it is still ok if he is exempt from the rule.

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Re:Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared by mrshoe on Thursday October 29, 2009 @05:54PM (#911005)

I thought someone might say that. :-)

I will get just as much out of paul's talks because I love his talks and will always pay attention to every word. Some percentage of the audience, however, will take a lack of preparation qualifier as a reason to zone out.

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