Oisín Lunny is a professional public speaker, master of ceremonies (MC), webinar host and journalist. He has hosted and moderated events and given keynote presentations at over 200 conferences worldwide, including TEDx, MWC and SXSW. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and is music editor for ‘The Phoenix’ magazine.
In this episode, Oisín talks to Richard about how his early PR career led him to public speaking and his ‘aha moment’, when he realized that speaking with authenticity and passion can make even a seemingly insignificant speech great. He also explains why stepping outside your comfort zone can be a brilliant way to learn; being put on the spot can sometimes lead to great creativity.
Being an MC has become a big part of Oisín’s public speaking career and life in general. Oisín shares with Richard his first MC experience—at a music festival—and the positive things he learned from the experience. He also shares his secret to remembering hundreds of people’s names: good old-fashioned printed notes!
Learn more about Oisín at his website.
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Fireside Chat with Oisin Lunny
Intro
Richard Rodger: Welcome to Fireside with Voxgig for professional public speakers. I’m your host, Richard Rodger, the founder of Voxgig.com, which is an online community and service for speakers and event professionals. In each episode, we sit down for an intimate fireside chat with people in the public speaking community, to learn how they have mastered the art of getting up on stage and speaking in front of an audience. If you’re an aspiring speaker or just want to improve your onstage performance, this podcast will help you learn from some of the most accomplished and interesting professional conference speakers.
Today, I’m talking to Oisin Lunny, a professional public speaker, master of ceremonies, radio presenter, and journalist. Oisin has hosted and moderated events and given keynote presentations at over 200 conferences worldwide, including TEDx, Mobile World Congress and South By Southwest. He has also had media appearances on CNN and BBC and has featured in The Observer and Telegraph, Business Reporter and Customer Experience magazine. Join me today to get the inside tips on being an MC and keeping control of the audience.
The Fireside Chat
Richard Rodger: Oisin, welcome to Fireside with Voxgig. It is fantastic to have you here today.
Oisin Lunny: Delighted to be here. Thank you so much for the invite, Richard.
Richard Rodger: Good stuff. I’m going to jump straight in with one of my favorite questions, which is, given that you’re now a wonderfully experienced conference speaker and MC, has the memory of your first speaking engagement completely faded from your mind? Or can you still take us back to that first day that you stepped on stage?
Oisin Lunny: Absolutely, no problem. It’s burnt into my retinas to this day. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that experience, even though it was a great learning experience. The background to my first speaking gig was, I was working as a product manager at a rather large network company, and this company owns fiber-optic cables that carries the internet, Netflix etc. carries the backhaul from the mobile phone signal. So, they literally owned the fiber-optic cables that sit underneath the roads, and you’ll see their names on manholes all over Europe.
So, they had a bit of an issue in that they had this immensely profitable and brilliant next-generation product, but they weren’t getting a lot of PR for it, because it’s not very ‘sexy.’ It’s incredibly necessary for pretty much everything that we need to do in this mobile-first, internet-first day and age. But at the time, it was difficult to get PR. So, the part of the business I worked in was looking after… I was product manager for the ‘media services’, which involves things like video streaming, content delivery, and content protection.
My boss at the time, a guy called [Tom Frankfurt?] Time: 00:03:00, an absolutely brilliant strategist, called me into his office and said, ‘You know what? As a product manager, you’re great. If you were managing a standalone company, it’d probably be the best-performing, most profitable in Europe. But as it stands, in the context of this multimillion-pound business, there’s not really anything more you can do that is going to move the dial for your particular portfolio, so we need to think of another reason for you to be here.’ That was brilliantly challenging and motivating at the same time.
We had a bit of a brainstorm and he said, ‘You’re working with all these record labels and movie streaming companies and these new businesses like YouTube’. This was a very long time ago, early internet days. So, he said, ‘Why don’t you go out and get us a bunch of PR? Because that’s what you can really do well that none of the other products can do, because they’re selling fibers. They’re selling cables and hosting and colocation.’ He gave me gave me an empty A4 folder, a foolscap folder, and said, ‘Every time we have a monthly review, I want you to bring this back to me and have a bit more PR on it, so I want you to get some high quality PR for the company.’ That was a brilliant challenge, I have to be honest, and it’s one I relished.
Richard Rodger: So, he said, ‘Get a speaking gig or we’re going to [inaudible] Time: 00:04:18.’
Oisin Lunny: Yeah. That’s how I read it anyway. Parallel to this, I bumped into somebody who was putting together a conference called Radio at the Edge. This was the new age of getting radio over the Internet, and she asked did I know any speakers. And I, thinking of my then empty folder with no PR that I managed to generate, I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. Will there be PR around it?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, totally.’
So, I volunteered for it with not much of an idea of what I would put together. And I remember I put together a presentation which was about what I did, what I thought was exciting about technology, and a little bit about the company I was working for, to generate some good PR. And the organizers put me on back to back with a leading expert from an analytics company, and I remember sitting in the front row of this auditorium that was much bigger than I was expecting, with much more important people than I was expecting.
And I was on after this guy, and he waltzed on stage very confidently and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m from a very important analysts’ company and I have some very important data analysis for you that no-one else has seen in the world. This is a premiere and I put it together just for you.’ And I remember sitting in the front row and the blood draining from my face and my stomach starting to churn, and thinking, oh, my God, I’m such an idiot. Why have I volunteered for this? This is the worst idea of my life. This is just a disaster.’ And I sat there in a cold sweat for a few minutes and then I remembered some good advice that somebody shared with me, which is to remember to breathe, so I started breathing.
Richard Rodger: That’s good. That’s the best advice we’ve had on this podcast so far.
Oisin Lunny: Yeah, remember to breathe. You’d think something like this would be self-evident, but anyway, dud some kind of deep breathing, relaxed a bit. And then I looked around and I saw that people were yawning. This guy was brilliant and he had some amazing statistics that nobody else in the world had seen, but he was talking about stats for 20 minutes, and people had had enough.
Then I realized that my job was to make things a bit more interesting and energetic. I couldn’t compete in terms of the content. His content was really high quality, but there was just a lot of it. So, that left me a bit of room to jump on stage and give it my best shot, and I just tried to speak with authenticity and passion, and gave a very genuine and heartfelt presentation about what I thought was exciting about technology. And at the end, it was really well received. I don’t think one would ever forget one’s first time public speaking, but mine was particularly terrifying.
Richard Rodger: That’s a baptism of fire, if ever I’ve heard one. You’ve touched on a couple of points there that I think are important. One of them is this wonderful state of mind you enter into before a talk, the night before, when you haven’t done any slides, or when there’s a brilliant speaker ahead of you, or when you suddenly realize you have to plan. You [end up on a trip?] Time: 00:07:18, which is, why on God’s holy earth did I volunteer? That always happens. That is guaranteed to happen. And then the other one, which I feel is very important, is to remember that your main job up there is to entertain people. It’s their valuable time, and yes, you have to teach, but our job is to be entertainers as well, I think.
Oisin Lunny: Yeah. I totally agree, and I had a thought that was really helpful, which crossed my mind as I was sitting in the front row, trying not to sweat through my shirt. I thought, it’s too late to leave. I can’t actually run out of the venue. That would look really bad if I ran out and then the stage was empty.
Richard Rodger: You were considering it quite seriously.
Oisin Lunny: It did cross my mind, and I thought, no, I can’t. What I would recommend to anybody looking to give it a go from that point of view is, stepping outside of your comfort zone can be a brilliant way to learn quickly, because you don’t have the option not to learn. When you’re volunteering for a speaking spot and going through the fear and all the rest, at the end of the day, it’s too late to leave. You can’t run away; you can’t hide, so if you volunteer for something, there’s a spot on the stage, and it’s got your name on it. You have to go up there and do something. Like you say, it’s a baptism of fire, but it’s also a concentrated opportunity to have that experience and get the ball rolling.
Richard Rodger: And was that the first time you were on stage performing? Because it sounds like you still had a degree of comfort with the whole idea of getting up on stage.
Oisin Lunny: That’s true, to be fair. I hadn’t done any public speaking before, but many moons ago, back in the 1990s, before some listeners were possibly born, I was in a band. And we played on stage and toured and did x, y, and z. I was horrendously shy during that time and found it very difficult to be on stage, but my role in the band was as a guitarist, so I didn’t have to have the same level of exposure as one of the vocalists.
Richard Rodger: Yeah, but you had that experience of standing on the stage looking at an audience. One of the pieces of advice that I was given years ago when I was starting out speaking at conferences was, if you get a chance before the auditorium fills up or the break, literally get up on stage. Stand there behind the podium and just get used to what you’re looking at, so you don’t get hit with it the first time.
Oisin Lunny: That’s really good advice. I have something of a portfolio career these days. If you hang around for long enough, you pick up a few different bits and pieces. One of the things I do is, I contribute to Forbes.com, which is an awesome publication and website. And the other day, I was chatting to one of the best-known techno DJs in the world, a guy called Carl Cox, who is something of a legend, absolutely brilliant. And I haven’t actually published his piece yet; it will be published soon.
And we spoke about the reasons that he got into it and why he was doing it. And one of the interesting things that came out of our chat was that he was first and foremost a punter, a dancer. He would go clubbing and he knew what he wanted as a punter and he knew what he wanted in the crowd. And that’s what gave him an edge that a lot of other DJs didn’t have when he got behind the decks, because he knew the experience he wanted as a member of the audience. And he said he was a clubber for many years before he got behind the decks.
Maybe there’s a parallel, like you say, with going to a venue when it’s empty, going on stage, but also going to an event and sitting in the audience, and really thinking about how I feel about this speaker. What is it I like about this person? Is this woman really inspiring me? Whatever, look at it from the point of view of the audience, and I think if you can keep that perspective on your own place and your own responsibilities as a speaker, that helps a lot.
Richard Rodger: I think [stand-up?] Time: 00:11:20 would be a good idea, because when a lot of us start out, we’re sent to conference to learn. Use that as an opportunity. If you have an inkling in the back of your head that you want to be speaking, use it as an opportunity. Don’t just pay attention to the content, but pay attention to the speaker. That’s a great idea. I want to turn now to the role of the MC. This is a quantum leap from the very first speaking engagement to where you are now, which is that you’re a professional speaker and you’re asked to MC at conferences.
I recently MCed one track at a tech conference. It’s one of those. Was this a good idea, is what I was thinking. Because I had done a whole bunch of conference speaking, I thought, well, it can’t be too difficult. It’s sort of the same thing. But I found it terribly difficult, because when I speak at a conference, I’m talking about stuff that I know about. But when you’re introducing people, you have the facts you have to remember about them. And you have to find something witty to say, create excitement for the audience, and there’s ten different things coming at you. Maybe let’s talk about the MC role and how you approach that and your first experiences there, and then the skillset needed in that role. Because it’s one of the places that people often end up if they become known as… oh, you can speak.
Oisin Lunny: Yeah, it’s interesting. As with many things in my professional life, it’s more or less pure serendipity, and more by fortuitous accident than by design. But I started as a conference speaker, speaking about the things that I felt passionate around, in music, technology, social media, innovation etc. And as I went on, conference organizers would notice I was approaching them to get involved in an event and they’d say, ‘Could you speak about this? But then can we rope you in to moderate this panel here, which is about some of the stuff that you talk about’. And that progressed quite naturally.
And I think my first engagement, which was moderating an entire conference, was thanks to some wonderful people, in a place called Borlänge in Sweden, and this wonderful lady called [Osa?] Time: 00:13:55. And she ran an event called Trigger Creative Conference, which was part of a music festival called Peace & Love. And they had a two-day top-level music and technology conference in this place called Borlänge in Sweden. It’s not a thriving metropolis. It’s actually a small village in the Swedish countryside.
Every year, they would have this massive music festival and they’d invite people like deadmau5, Depeche Mode, Bob Dylan, MIA, big headliners. And they had the same approach to the folks who were speaking at the conference. They had Seymour Stein. He signed Blondie, Talking Heads, the Ramones, the Smiths. He brought Depeche Mode to the US. They had folks like Scott Cohen, who has just been signed up as the Director of Innovation over at Warner Brothers – Warner Music, should I say.
It was a very top-level conference, but they needed an MC just to keep things going smoothly. The interesting thing that I find both from public speaking and MCing – and I suspect you may feel this as well, or maybe everyone who’s a public speaker feels like this – but it’s something that you learn by doing. There’s no course on how to be a speaker in particular, but it is something that you can learn by doing it again and again and again, a bit like driving a car. I think being a conference MC is like driving a car, because there are so many tiny micro-movements that you have to do again and again until you have a muscle memory of them, and then it’s really easy and you don’t even think about doing them.
Richard Rodger: That’s a really good point. It is hard to begin with, but you develop muscle memory.
Oisin Lunny: Exactly that. And I think the thing with being an MC is that you are there. At a conference, I am happy when I am the conduit between the speakers, the organizers and the audience, for them all to have the best possible experience. And I know that there are certain things you can do again and again for the speakers, the organizers and the audience to make sure this happens.
One of them is being prepared, doing a bit of a deep dive into the subject matter, knowing who the speakers are, liaising with the AV crew and the stage managers on the day, helping with social media running up to, during, and after the event. It means being absolutely, 100% on it in terms of timing, because there’s so many different dependencies at big events. Everything has to run to the second.
And it is being able to improvise and being able to make sure you’re listening very attentively to what’s happening on stage, in the audience etc. and reacting to it. It means making sure that everything moves smoothly, from a speaker to a panel to a fireside chat to the wrap-up to the networking etc. It’s a role that I find immensely challenging in a very good way. I enjoy it, because it brings together so many skills from different areas of my own experience. And it felt a bit daunting at first, but like with everything, the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Richard Rodger: And would you say that predominates your activities these days? Because I noticed that you do speak rather a lot.
Oisin Lunny: You hang around for long enough.
Richard Rodger: Your schedule is completely insane, I have to say. How do you manage that?
Oisin Lunny: It’s a bit more manageable these days. I’ve got a few things. I just did 4 Years from Now in Barcelona, which is part of the Mobile World Congress. It was an immense privilege to do this.
Richard Rodger: That’s one of the biggest.
Oisin Lunny: I was MCing the Garden Stage. It’s massive. There are 120,000 attendees. It’s mindblowing. But 4 Years from Now is this future focused, innovation focused sub-conference within Mobile World Congress, and I was MCing the Garden Stage for three days, introducing folks like the decentralised chief officer of HTC, who’s just launched this incredible blockchain phone. And more than anything, it’s an opportunity to meet incredible people who are making a huge impact on the world. I’m wavering off a bit. I just got a bit excited thinking about 4 Years from Now.
I’ve got a few gigs coming up in the next few months. I’m over in Dublin for the beatvyne Music x TECH Experience on May 1 and 2. That’s going to be a lot of fun. We have folks like Beatie Wolfe, who’s this incredible innovator around technology and music. She’s going to do a keynote. I’m on the advisory board for the Customer Experience world event, so I’m going to be chairing their tech stream in London and Johannesburg in May and July. I’m over in London for the Digital Marketing World Forum in May and also MCing the retail and brands experience in Barcelona, again in May. If anybody would like to connect or find out more, just visit my website, oisinlunny.com.
Richard Rodger: And obviously, all of these events are great opportunities to see the skill of the MC as well.
Oisin Lunny: That’s very kind of you. You haven’t seen me MC yet. I hope so.
Richard Rodger: We’re going to have a mountain to climb. When you get to the mountain, there’s yet another peak.
Oisin Lunny: It is very true.
Richard Rodger: How do you deal with something like this? Or has this ever happened to you, where you have some sort of brain freeze, where you can’t remember the name of the person you’re about to introduce, or remember something important about them?
Oisin Lunny: Printed notes, my friend. That was something I learned from very early on. There’s enough stuff happening if you’re introducing 100 people over three days, to remember their name, their title and what they’re talking about. There’s how to pronounce their name. I always check with the speakers first. I have a clipboard. I can’t even remember where I got it. Somebody gave it to me at one of the conferences and I didn’t give it back.
Richard Rodger: Always keep your clipboard.
Oisin Lunny: A clipboard is your friend. This is the thing. I did a TEDx talk in 2017, and for all that you learn by doing, I think there’s some tips to be had from the TED Talk book. That guy Chris – I can’t remember his second name – who’s the MD of TED Talks, he wrote a great book, which is How to Give a Ted Talk.
Richard Rodger: Yes. [Rupert Grey?] Time: 00:20:23.
Oisin Lunny: Yeah, it’s fantastic. I’d recommend it to anybody who’s listening to the Voxgig podcast. One of the points he makes is that the best possible TED Talk delivery is completely memorised. Your hands are visible. You’re talking into the audience. You don’t have any cue points anywhere. You use your slides as your reminders. But their study shows that if you’re reading out a speech or you’ve got some research or you need to refer to notes, it’s much better to have the notes in your hand on a clipboard, or to have a stack of paper or to have some memory cards. Because if the audience thinks that you’re using some kind of high-tech cue cards that they can’t see, it seems a bit inauthentic.
Richard Rodger: It’s an interesting point, because at most tech conferences these days, people just use their phones. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m in my forties. I can’t quite see what’s on the screen at that velocity of distance. Perhaps a clipboard?
Oisin Lunny: Clipboards are great. I remember doing something. I think it was the first day that I did Trigger, back in 2012, this conference in Borlänge in Sweden, and I had, I think it was either an iPhone or an iPad. And I had all the stuff on Evernote that I needed to refer to. And I can’t remember what it was, but as I was giving the introduction, my hand slipped, and it went into another app and I couldn’t find my notes.
Of course, anything that can go wrong with technology might go wrong. Call me old fashioned, but you know where you are with a stack of paper and a clipboard, and that way, you can edit it. You can make notes. You can make mental reminders to come back to things. Also, one of the things I like to do after an event is do a wrap-up blog post and thank the speakers and that kind of thing. So, making notes beside the schedule is helpful for that, in terms of what were the things that really impressed you about the speakers.
Richard Rodger: That’s a top tip for sure. You mentioned speaking at TEDx. This is another ambition that many aspiring speakers would have. Just picture in your mind somebody who has just started giving small talks at meetups, but in the back of their minds, they believe this is important for their career. How does that person who has given one or two talks at a tech meetup with maybe 20 people in the audience go from that place? Let’s forget about actual TED, because TEDx is good enough. Let’s just say TEDx. How do you get from that point, giving meetup talks, to giving TEDx talks?
Oisin Lunny: I would suggest and encourage anybody listening with that ambition to absolutely go for it. You might be pleasantly surprised. One of the cool things about the TEDx talks is, they are created by volunteers, and each TEDx talk has a theme, and there are hundreds of them every year. Have a look on the TEDx website and have a look at the themes, and see if the theme of a particular event deeply resonates with you? That’s the important thing. If you find the theme that resonates with you and echoes what you’ve been talking about even, it doesn’t matter where you’ve been talking about it. If you’re passionate about something, the TEDx format is very egalitarian, and it can provide you with a wonderful platform.
In my experience, I wanted to speak about something very specific, and it was all about connectivity and all about what I like to call our phono sapien planet. And it’s this huge adoption of mobile phone technology. And I got in touch with the organisers of TEDx in a place called Rapid City in the States, and they were just wonderful. They very kindly accepted my presentation and allow me to join the line-up at the very last minute.
And it was a great experience. They assigned a speaker coach to me, a guy called Michael Howard, who’s wonderful, and I actually got some great speaking tips. I delivered my presentation a few times as I was working on it over Skype with Michael, and he gave me some great feedback. So, I think that’s the deal with all of the TEDx talks. I may be wrong, but that’s what I’ve had.
Richard Rodger: They give you a higher level of support and it’s just a higher [impression?] Time: 00:25:03.
Oisin Lunny: Exactly. So, if you want to talk about something interesting, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t spoken about it hundreds of times to hundreds of people. If it’s interesting and it fits with the theme of that particular TEDx talk, you have as good a chance as anybody. And they do, in my experience, offer you some really useful support.
Richard Rodger: In a way, it sounds like you do a TEDx talk to end up being good enough to do a TEDx talk.
Oisin Lunny: That is absolutely spot on, because I’ve never done a solo presentation like that, where I’ve memorized everything and relayed it as if it was naturally conversational. That was a lot of very interesting new work, and that was part of the joy of doing it, is that it was a real stretch goal, but by virtue of the stretch, you figure it out how to do it on the way there. Again, coming back to that thing of stepping outside of your comfort zone, the rewards from that whole approach can be massive. [Don’t think they’re massive?] Time: 00:26:13.
Richard Rodger: Absolutely. Did you prepare properly? You know there was that chap Tim Urban. He gave that talk about procrastinating, about preparing for his TED Talk. You should [use?] Time: 00:26:30 that one. Did you prepare?
Oisin Lunny: Yeah, I absolutely did. I got some help with making the slides to make them look nice, from a company called Buffalo 7 in the UK, and they were great. I didn’t prepare quite as much as the TEDx book recommended, or the TED Talk book recommended. And as its typical of most things that I should prepare for more, it was all a bit last minute. And I did have some very late nights when I was preparing for this. And it came down to having to find a quiet spot on the day and disappearing there with the notes a few more times, and go through the whole thing again and again and again in my head. But it was the right amount of time to deliver the TED Talk in the right way, and it went really well. I was very happy with how it went. So, if you have that great planning mindset that enables you to prepare for months in advance, that is wonderful. That’s such an admirable thing.
Richard Rodger: It’s a great quality to have.
Oisin Lunny: It’s a great quality to have, exactly. I don’t have it myself. I’m a bit more… I volunteer for something and then I’ll figure it out. It usually gets figured out coming up to when it actually needs to be delivered, but that’s the way I work. That’s my personality type.
Richard Rodger: It’s the personal dynamic, the dynamic intellectual pressure to make it happen.
Oisin Lunny: Yeah, and I think as well, on stage, it gives you a bit of energy. I’m a great believer in not everything being totally ironed out. It’s actually in the GSMA, which is the industry body that runs the Mobile World Congress. They put together some really helpful notes for moderators, for panels. So, if you’re chairing, MCing or moderating, they have some advice on how to prepare. And one of the things that they recommend is, don’t over-prepare. So, don’t go into a room with all of your panellists and have all of the chat an hour before you go on stage, because then it’s done.
Richard Rodger: You’re bored by it then.
Oisin Lunny: That’s it. You don’t get any controversy or any nice dynamics or conflicts on stage, and I think all of these things are good for an audience, to have that spontaneity.
Richard Rodger: Yeah, and speaking about conferences and delivering value for audiences, I think you’re on the advisory boards of some conferences.
Oisin Lunny: Yes.
Richard Rodger: I don’t know what you can or cannot reveal, but I’m more interested in the perspective of how you use speakers, what you want from speakers, what speakers can do to provide value to the audience, which is what we’re all about.
Oisin Lunny: That’s a great question. I haven’t thought of it before. I just got involved as an advisor in various organisations. Some conferences have very specific guidelines and judging criteria to evaluate speakers and panel proposals. South by Southwest is one I’m incredibly honoured to be on the advisory board for, so I have an input into judging submissions along with many other advisory board members. And our evaluation of the panel-picker proposals makes up 30 or 35% of the result for any particular panel picker proposal. A lot comes from the public, 30%. I’m not sure.
Richard Rodger: So, it’s public.
Oisin Lunny: Exactly. It’s all very transparent. Maybe 30% comes from public feedback and then a further 40% comes from the board of directors at South by South West. So, every single proposal for Southwest is viewed in such detail, with such attention and care, and real consideration towards trying to make the line-up for every South By the best it can be. I’m super impressed to see that whole system in action.
So, there’s strict criteria; there’s guidelines, and there’s themes that South By want to have that year. So, you’re advised to look out for x, y, and z megatrends, and x, y, and z subject matter experts. For something like Customer Experience World, where I’ve just recently joined the advisory board, this is very much around the vision of Maggie Wheeler, the conference CEO, the CEO of the company, Focus Group Events. She has a very specific vision for what the Customer Experience World series of events is going to deliver to the audience. It’s very high-level, high-end customer experience experts.
So, as the chair of our events, we have a gentleman called Adrian Swinscoe, and he is one of the people who invented the science of customer experience. He’s been writing about it in Forbes for years. He’s run one of the world’s leading podcasts about customer experience, and he’s run that for years and years and years. He speaks to people like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple, a small little start-up called Apple Computers. You probably haven’t heard of them.
Maggie’s vision is getting these very high-level people in who can put together an exciting agenda that crystallises exactly what customer experience professionals need to get from going to a conference. The best approach is coming back to the Carl Cox example, putting yourself right in the shoes of somebody in the audience. If you’re a chief experience officer, a customer experience professional, somebody in comms, somebody in marketing, what do you want to get from your investment of time and money and sitting in the auditorium? Who would you like to see on stage and what can deliver the most value?
It’s different for every event, and if anybody listening is approached to be on an advisory board, it’s an experience I would recommend volunteering for and saying yes to. A) it will help you grow your own personal network. B) it will make you think about events in a new way. It can be challenging in a very good way, so it’s something that will help you evolve as an event professional for sure.
Richard Rodger: That is fantastic advice. I’m afraid we’ve run out of time. We could keep going for another couple of hours, I’m sure.
Oisin Lunny: Another time.
Richard Rodger: Absolutely. There can always be a part two. Let’s wrap it up for today. Oisin, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Oisin Lunny: The pleasure is mine. Thank you so much, Richard, and keep up the great work with Voxgig.
Richard Rodger: Wonderful. Thank you.
Conclusion.
Richard Rodger: Thank you so much for listening. Just a few things before the embers fade and we wrap up another episode of Fireside with Voxgig. You can find notes and links from this podcast at voxgig.com/podcasts. We also publish a weekly newsletter on public speaking, selecting the best advice and techniques from some of the world’s greatest speakers, both ancient and modern. Rhetoric is an old and revered art, not especially easy to master, but a skill like nay other, one you can also learn. Visit voxgig.com/newsletter to subscribe.
If you’ve enjoyed this fireside chat, please consider subscribing to the podcast. Please also leave a review. That helps us make this podcast even better. If you’d like to contact me directly, please email richard@voxgig.com. If you’d like to be counted as a supporter, just let me know, and I’ll add you to our supporters’ page. Till next time, remember, take a deep breath, pause, and step forward.