I was beyond excited to give a talk at Britex's workshop space launch party on Saturday. I prepared my little heart out, wore one of my Mata Traders dresses, and even made custom booklets. The audience and my fellow speakers were nothing short of lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching bloggers Shams, Beth, Erin, Nicole, and Laura show off their creations and talk about their personal evolutions as seamstresses.

But damn. I fell victim to one of the worst bouts of stage fright I've had since middle school. I'm not really sure what happened, but I kind of fell apart. I guess you never quite know when the nerves are going to hit you.

Aside from the awkward stammering, though, I realized I went about preparing for the talk all wrong. I'm in the communications business - meaning I get paid to help people share their ideas - so this should have been cake. But I think my focus on audience empathy and engagement (major buzz words in the biz) was actually what murdered me.

So I'm going to throw out some lessons learned for any first-time speakers out there. And hopefully next time I'll take my own advice (along with a nice, deep breath)...

1. Never write your speech out word for word unless you plan to have it completely memorized. And then, for Pete's sake, don't take it with you on stage! I already knew this was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. And I held my stapled packet in front of my face the whole time.

2. Know your format. I approached this talk from a teacher and presentation designer's perspective - which probably would have been great if I was facilitating an hour-long workshop. I included a warm-up activity (which I didn't have time to follow up on), passed out a booklet to provide a visual aid, and peppered the talk with questions about the attendee's own lives.

But this was a 15 minute talk. Which really isn't enough time to cram in an immersive audience experience. I knew this going in, but my ego got in the way; I wanted to put some of my teaching and communication theories into practice. Unfortunately, I may have simply made my audience feel confused and rushed.

3. It's ok to talk about you! The current presentation design mantra is "make your audience the hero" by meeting them where they are on their journey and guiding them toward a better understanding of the message. This is totally a valid philosophy and makes sense for a TED talk or college lecture. But when poorly delivered by a nervous presenter (ahem), such guidance can come off as patronizing and preachy (e.g., "I know it's hard not to contribute to global suffering, but let me guide you on the path to ethical fashion enlightenment").

This audience was here to listen to my story. And I should have told it. Had I simply walked on stage without notes and talked about my personal journey toward shopping more ethically, I'm pretty sure my passion would have been palpable and infectious.


I'll follow up soon with some of the content from my talk, much of which I do think is useful and informative. But today I'm going to go to work, come home, go to the gym, drink a glass of wine, and not worry about inspiring anybody :)

Update: I've added the first section of Crafting and Ethical Wardrobe.