What I learned after eight days, three overlapping conferences, and five appearances in a row
April is Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month and usually makes me in high-demand for speaking engagements, but this year was different.
Instead, all my appearances got consolidated into the last week of April and first week of May, in an epic eight-days straight of overlapping conferences.
I’ve been struggling with my talks over the last few months or so, being out of breath and having problems with hoarseness. That only worsened after catching the coronavirus in March of this year. All that combined with supporting a friend who just got into stand-up comedy, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to best be able to perform.
That’s really what public speaking is, a performance. I am not going to go into the regular tips like, “pretend you’re speaking to the back of the room,” and other oft-repeated basics, but rather looking at public speaking as performance, using the concept of, “the body is your instrument.”
So from that perspective, you need to maintain your physical health so you have the capacity to deliver your talk. Literally getting up and speaking are two very physical acts. So I’d like to share some of the methods I use to try to…
