Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun Read Free Book Online Page B

in the space above the crowd, a place where few in
    the audience ever look, but precisely where a speaker’s eyes naturally
    want to go. In a good room, the ceiling is free of distractions; in a bad
    room, there’s a large glowing ball of stupidity hanging there.
    Figure 4-1. At a big event with stage lights. This gives an idea of what I
     see: mostly nothing.
    Disco balls work because they’re undeniably silly and make fun of
    real attempts at decoration, butchandeliers, even the cheap ones I often see, are entirely
    serious. Despite their phony plastic flame-shaped light bulbs (who was
    ever fooled by these?), they are a lame attempt to give a room class, a
    kind of class that—to the disappointment of the owners of these
    rooms—cannot be obtained by hanging something large and shiny from the
    ceiling. I’m told these chandeliers are placed in conference halls for one
    reason: weddings. They want to rent the room out for weddings—the highest
    marked-up events in the Western world—and somehow without an ugly
    chandelier in the brochure, they fear they’ll never be chosen as a wedding
    venue again. Next time you’re at a lecture, check the ceiling. If you spot
    a chandelier, know that it’s not there for you.
    Why pick on a glorified light fixture? Why risk beingbanned from speaking at chandelier-industry conferences for
    the rest of my life? Here’s why. Presenters talk about “tough rooms” all
    the time, usually referring to the audience. They blame the crowd when
    they should first blame the room . Many challenges are created by
    the room itself, challenges of atmosphere that change lukewarm crowds into
    tough ones. Ever try to throw a birthday party in a graveyard or a funeral
    in an amusement park? Of course not. You’d be set up to fail—unless your
    family has handfuls of Xanex for breakfast or you’re related to Tim
    Burton. Most venues for speaking and lecturing in the modern world are
    dull, grey, uninspiring, poorly lit, generic cubes of space. They are
    designed to be boring (which is why it’s hard to stay awake during
    lectures) so they can be used for anything. And like a Swiss Army knife,
    this means they suck at everything. Your average conference room or
    corporate lecture hall is bought and sold for its ability to serve many
    different purposes, though none of them well, which explains my unnatural,
    and possibly deadly, level of exposure tochandeliers. Blame speakers all you want—we do deserve most
    of the blame—but some fraction of hate should go to whoever chose the
    crappy room to stick the audience in. It’s not my choice. If I had my
    choice, here’s where you’d see me (check out Figure 4-2 ).
    Figure 4-2. The Greek Theater at Epidaurus.
    I’d want to be at this Greek amphitheater, in part, because I hear
    it’s quite nice in Greece, but mostly because theideal room for a lecture is a theater. It’s crazy, I know,
    but we solved most lecture-room problems about 2,000 years ago. The Greek
    amphitheater gets it all just about right, provided it doesn’t rain.
    Lecture rooms should be a semicircle, not a square. The stage should be a
    few feet higher than the front row, both to make people on the stage
    easier to see, but also to help them feel powerful. And most
    importantly, every row of seats should be higher off the ground than the
    one before it, giving everyone a clear line of sight. All of these things
    make it easier for the audience to stay interested and focus its attention
    on center stage, as well as provide the speaker with natural
    acoustics.
    One of the best lectures I’ve given in recent memory was at Carnegie
    Mellon University in the Adamson Wing, a theater-sized room that seats
    maybe 120 (see Figure 4-3 ). [ 22 ] If you put a kegerator inside the lectern and added a
    remote-controlled shock system that would electrify individual seats on
    command (an anti-heckler device), it would be perfect.
    Figure 4-3. The Adamson Wing at Carnegie Mellon