Reflecting on a few thoughts following my first TED Talk
It’s been about a week since I got to take to the stage in La Jolla to speak at TEDx San Diego, and the day still feels as surreal as it did when it happened.
I honestly love public speaking. In school, I discovered that this put me in the minority. Where most people experienced stage fright, I got a rush from being in front of people. Whenever there were group projects that involved presenting in front of the class, I was always surprised when people were averse to being the presenter. Are you kidding me? I thought. Everybody else has to do the work, the presenter just talks about it.
All that to say, speaking is one of the things I most enjoy, and getting to speak at a TED event was a real milestone, as the most well-recognized public speaking platform. (Unless you’re in my mom’s social circle, that got really excited about how I was about to deliver a Tik-Talk!)
TEDx San Diego was an extremely well-orchestrated event. I’ve got to credit our curator and lead, Audrey Jacobs and her team for pulling it all off. Hair and makeup. A backstage masseuse. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten speaker support quite like that. I was the second to last speaker in a lineup of fourteen, plus five performers. I decided to simply take it all in, letting the day sink in slowly.
Here are some of the thoughts that kept coming to mind throughout the day.
This isn’t just an accomplishment, it’s an experience
A few of my fellow speakers told me they didn’t envy my position of going second-to-last.
Personally, I was flattered by the slot. If this was Coachella, I would be SZA! And she’s having a damn good year.
But I think the reason I heard that a lot was because a lot of folks liked being able to get it over with and then enjoy the show.
For me, a lot of the enjoyment was in the anticipation. The build up.
Over the past year or so, I’ve tried to pay more attention to the difference between things I’m glad I accomplished versus things I’m glad I’m experiencing. The former are things you look forward to having on your resume, having medals to show for, or being able to say “I did that.” Running is like that for me, at least a lot of the time.
Then there are those things you can keep doing because you love the act. You would be okay with it being an unending task. I suppose video games have this effect on a lot of people. For me, stage work is one of those things. So, the day of, I just tried to ride it out as slowly as I could. And to take plenty of mental images. I have one seared into my memory of being on stage, staring out to the crowd and thinking this is really happening. 22 year old me would be jazzed. And I’ve got a bunch of people I love watching on the livestream.
This ain’t just my stage
My talk was on storytelling as a climate solution, and the importance of approaching climate change with the lived experiences of climate vulnerable populations in mind. I told a lot of stories from my time in Burundi last year, sharing experiences from people I will never forget. Antwan. Enos.
As I shared their stories, I kept thinking, these are their stories. This is really their stage. Same with people in places like Haiti and Bangladesh that I referenced in my talk, or even people in places that I didn’t mention but had an influence on the way I receive these stories.
Storytellers are simply stewards of the stories. More often than not, we’re just little receptors and satellites of stories being transmitted by frequencies way bigger than ourselves. (Rick Rubin talks about this a handful of different ways in his book, which I’ve started reading if you couldn’t tell!)
Anyways, I kept thinking about how I was really on stage just as a relay person for people living in remote villages. In a more ideal world, they would get invites to tell their story directly. But like I noted in my talk, until then, storytelling can be our bridge.
Picking your message is a big deal
There is a lot of talk about the tricky parts of “telling somebody else’s story,” and not being the voice of the marginalized, but simply amplifying their voices. I spend a lot of time in my work talking about the importance of ethical storytelling and I wish I had more time to include a bit of that in my talk. If I had 15-20 minutes on stage, I probably would have. But that might just have to be a sequel someday.
I think I have a few strengths as a speaker, but I am aware that one of them is not brevity. In an era where whittling down communications to be efficient and essential, I still find value in the details or things that aren’t quite essential but add a whole lot to a story.
For my TED Talk, I was given eight minutes to work with.
It was really different than my CreativeMornings talk which went for thirty minutes, and gave me a chance to integrate my personal journey with a few key points that people might find helpful. TED is really all about the key idea.
I wrote this talk a little differently, knowing that a few key lines that express the idea with total clarity tend to get the most traction. I actually wrote this talk as a vehicle for the key idea and some highlight quotes, and I think it served me well. Not a bad approach when the space you have to work with demands efficiency.
TED doesn’t often do repeat speakers, and for the few exceptions this typically only happens after a good amount of time has gone by. With that being the case, it was important for me to pick a topic that I was comfortable with being one of the top search results when my name is searched on Google. I’m happy I went with storytelling. This also made me happy to have gotten this opportunity now, versus five years ago when I was younger but thought I was ready. That extra time gave me more confidence and clarity around the message.
I’m really, really thankful I got this opportunity. I’m thankful to Audrey and the TEDx San Diego team, I’m thankful to my fellow speakers for being a great community, and I’m grateful to the people of Burundi and beyond for entrusting me with their stories and experiences.
It usually takes several weeks for the overall TED brand to bless these talks, but best believe I’ll share the video once I’ve got it.