Public Speaking - Join the Talk & Spread the Word

Video Transcripts January 2015

Chapter 1 - Unit 1

MY EXPERIENCE
Hello everybody!
Welcome to this MOOC on Public Speaking!
You cant imagine how excited I am to undertake this trip, with
so many people putting their energies and hopes for months
My name is Alexandra Maratchi, and Im going to be your interlocutor for the next few weeks in which this MOOC will
run its course. Im from Barcelona, I studied in Paris and worked for several years at FCMG in Milano, and I came back
to my home sweet home about two years ago to co-found
HOMUORK with a friend of my childhood. Homuork is an
edtech start-up made to produce MOOCs for firms. But we
mainly make SPOCs through our LMS, and thats why we
decided to undertake this adventure along with Iversity! To
have the real experience of a MOOC! Thank you for joining
us, what an adventure!
Before anything, Id like to start with a confession: the first
presentation I ever did in my life was dreadful. I know it
sounds like a clich, but I swear its true. You can go and talk to
my friends or family or my bosses at the time, and all of them
can tell you all about that shameful scene in detail Because,
even though 5 years have gone by, they are not like to forget it.

Id like to start with

a confession: the
first presentation
I ever did in my life
was... dreadful.

It was not long ago after I finished university; I was an intern

in Milano for Marketing Garnier at LOral. All of the interns
had to do a presentation for our bosses to decide whether to
hire us after 6 months of internship.
After several weeks working and preparing the slides in parallel (renders, flow, messages, graphics) I faced 7 people in a
room, all of them my superiors since there is no lesser figure than an intern to present my strategic proposal for launching a new range of anti-aging products.

Page 1/4

Public Speaking - Join the Talk & Spread the Word

Video Transcripts January 2015

Chapter 1 - Unit 1

It was an absolute disaster.

I was extremely nervous: on my third slide the marketing
director asked me how I had calculated the segments I was
presenting, and I got completely blocked. Blank. Standing
in front of 14 eyes staring at me intensely. Like in a movie. As
my silence went on, an immense black hole was growing and
swallowing my contract. After that the presentation got better, but I left the room knowing that the impression I had left
was very bad And I didnt get the job.
Nevertheless, it was a valuable lesson, and after some time, experience and the preparation of this course, I understood that
I had made the 4 capital mistakes in a presentation.
The first one was an excess of confidence: I didnt prepare the
intervention. I had actively participated in the design of the
strategy and the slides, but I didnt know what to say in every
moment and I hadnt thought of the answers to the possible
questions I would be asked. I trusted my knowledge on the
subject, and I misjudged it sufficient to expound it. ERROR.
The first condition for a public intervention is that it has to be
thoroughly prepared, never improvised. Like the adagio says:
the best improvisation is the one that has been prepared to
the millimeter.
My second mistake was not to adapt both form and content to
my audience. The people watching that disastrous presentation were my superiors, with a much larger experience than I,
very exigent on details and with a much deeper knowledge on
the subject I was expounding.

The first condition

for a public
intervention
is that it has to
be thoroughly
prepared, never
improvised.

In other words, they were way over my head. A good deal of

my mistake was lack of preparation, thinking that I could just
get by with a decent presentation. When in reality, my audience was made of experts who expected (and demanded)
greater depth. Another crucial mistake!

Page 2/4

Public Speaking - Join the Talk & Spread the Word

Video Transcripts January 2015

Chapter 1 - Unit 1

The second condition to consolidate a public intervention is

to understand and adapt to your audience. For instance, is it
colleagues youre going to speak to, or is it just general public
to which transmit a few ideas? In the first case, youre going
to use a proper slang. In the second case, using technical term
might grant you a loss of attention from half of your listeners.
My third mistake was the lack of objective. What was it that
I wanted to sell with that presentation? I whish I had asked
myself that question at the time, but I didnt. The result was
a linear presentation of my strategy, without highlighting the
key messages, nor emphasizing on any objective beyond sharing information. Because if you actually think about it, they
already knew my strategy, so my objective should have been
to yield an excellent impression. By not knowing my objective, it revealed itself as unreachable.
So, the third condition in any public intervention: be conscious of your goals and objectives.
And, to be over with the scourge, let me tell you about my fourth crucial mistake: not analyzing who I was for my audience.
This is as obvious as fundamental. You must ask yourself who
you are for your audience in order to understand their expectations and prejudices. Are you someone important to your
audience? Or are you just a necessary nuisance? Is it a weekly
meeting? Or are you a world-renowned speaker coming to a
congress?

The third condition

in any public
intervention:
be conscious of
your goals and
objectives.

If they are dying to see you, if you are Steve Jobs in Stanford,
you wont need that many seduction or adhesion elements,
for your audience is already seduced beforehand.
Nevertheless, if you are an intern doing a presentation in front
of her bosses, interrupting their meetings and most pressing
tasks You might as well try to use the first minutes to generate adhesion, and try to convince them that in reality, they are

Page 3/4

Public Speaking - Join the Talk & Spread the Word

Video Transcripts January 2015

Chapter 1 - Unit 1
no completely wasting their precious time! I didnt do it myself but I learned a lot!
And it made me want to understand how to perform winner presentations, and that is what we are going to achieve
throughout this course.
Welcome again, and see you in next video!

Page 4/4