The last time I spoke to more than 20 people in a room was in Grade 3. I gave a speech in the auditorium about the solar system and I described each planet. I have no memory of that day but I do have the bronze medal I won for my speech. I decided to wait over twenty years to speak to a gym full of people again......
For a while, five or six years ago, I had to do some marketing workshops and there were 10 to 20 people in each group. The first couple workshops I gave involved me mumbling and looking at the ground as my hands shook a little. By the fifth or six workshop my hands almost stopped shaking. I had a flashback to those days of looking at the floor and mumbling at the beginning of the presentation I gave last week.
Here’s the introduction to the speech:
“I used to think who ever told the most stories, took the most pictures before they died would win. It was a race to see how many images could be captured. How many stories could you tell in one lifetime? Every image we take is part of us and tells the world something about who we are. But What is an image? What are we trying to do with our films and with our photographs. We are showing the world where we were looking, what we were doing. We are documenting our way of looking at the world. If you look back at all the images you’ve ever created and put them together, you would be able to piece together the stories of your life. If a picture is an experience. If a picture is moment in time captured. If it is a reflection of who we were when we took the photograph. Then the images we create define us. They are your stories. They are your friends. They are your family.”
It ‘s strange how you can overcome shyness yet still carry it with you. Due to the world of social marketing we live in my recent speech was shot on video and will be online in a few weeks. Hopefully I wasn’t staring at the floor and mumbling too much. I do openly admit my hands were shaking just a little bit.....