green slime and you (thoughts on giving speeches)

I began my public speaking career in the early 1980s. I was an ACM National Lecturer, National Toastmaster, Chairman of the ACM-SIG/BDP (ACM Special Interest Group on Business DP) and gave speeches to a variety of business groups from lawyers to computer professionals. In my 11 years as a consultant and division president for Gartner Inc., I was consistently one of the highest rated speakers at their various international conferences.

Here are the lessons that I learn which helped me become successful as a public speaker.

• Keep it simple. Make only one or two points in your speech.
• 50% of the speech should relate your personal experiences.
• Use humor.
• MOST IMPORTANT: Use an analogy to help solidify your point.

This last point really made my speaking career successful!

Flashback.

Sometime in the 1970s I saw a movie about a spy, very much like James Bond. I just can't remember his name. The movie was pivotal in my success in communicating big business and technology ideas to average, non-technical people. This technique is, perhaps, something they can benefit you.

At one point in the movie, Evil Company CEO gets up to give a speech. What shows on the projector is a Chinese dragon eating his own tale. Evil CEO starts his speech, not by talking about a business topic, but about the dragon eating his tail -- and why. Needless to say, his already is, at first, perplexed.

After the tail eating story, Evil CEO starts talking about the business, and tying the business points, point by point, to the story of the tail eating dragon.

Brilliant. So brilliant, it's the only thing out of the movie that I can remember with any clarity. I adopted this technique for most of my public speaking engagements.

The "bucket of green slime".

For several years during the 1980s, I gave what became known as the "Green Slime Speech." At the beginning of the speech, I told the story of the volvox colony. Volvox are one-celled microorganisms that have a nasty habit of turning water into a brownish green sludge. However, given the right provocation, enough time, and the right temperature, the green sludge condenses itself into a multicellular colony of creatures in which the individual one celled animals take on particular roles based on where they end up living in the colony (such as living on the outer perimeter versus the central core of the colony).

The yucky, green water turned crystal clear with one clump of jellylike stuff in the corner.

What could a bucket of green slime possibly have to do with high-tech anything, particularly computer software? Nothing actually. It was an analogy.

Most projects, in that day and age, were late! Late projects are like a bucket of green slime. They are messy, smell pretty bad and generally leave a bad taste in your mouth, just like the green slimy water.

However, given some time, organization, and management principles, projects could be organized and controlled, much like the organized volvox colony that congealed with the right provocation, and left the water clear.

I actually used the green slime analogy in several different speeches, and was even written up in one trade magazine, praising up my green slime analogy.

My speeches, today, always feature an analogy (it's now my trademark) and they are always highly memorable. That's what you want! You want people to remember two things: 1) you; 2) what you said. Thought provoking analogies do that.

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Note: Since I began giving speeches featuring the volvox colony, the scientific classification for living organisms has changed. Volvox used to be an animal containing a chloroplast. Now, it appears to be a plant with a flagellum similar to microscopic animals. Oh well. The story still works and life goes on!