How to Deliver a TED Talk

No- I am not planning on giving a TED talk anytime soon.  But for anyone who has to speak in public, this book is a good, quick read at improving your skills.  My takeaways are below, and you can find a better review here.

• One of the biggest mistakes that speakers make is trying to pack a lifetime worth of learning into a single talk
• Remember that the first ten or twenty seconds of your speech is the peak of your audience’s engagement level
• The most consistently successful opening is the personal story
• A quick list of how not to open your speech
• With a cliché- it is cliché even if it is relevant
• With a joke- see cliché
• With anything mildly offensive to your audience- seems obvious
• With “thank you”- if you want to thank your audience, do it at the end
• With “before I begin”- because you just began!
• Since pleasure is a more powerful long term motivation than pain, I recommend telling stories with positive ending the vast majority of the time.
• The most viewed TED speakers deliver an average of one joke per minute in their keynote speeches.  The best deliver around two jokes per minute.  The secret is that the jokes are not evenly spread out.  When they hit a funny theme, they ‘riff’ on the theme with clusters of three, progressively funnier quips. 
• Keep in mind that the slides are for the benefit of your audience, not gigantic crib notes for you.