Pubic speaking is not easy

I had created what I thought would fill 30 minutes. I showed up at the Funding Summit at Shoreline Conference Center on June 10th and 12:30 pm. I found my co-presenter, and we sat like two people who have little in common, talking with little to say, to the point of exhaustion, and then we went to the Rainier Room (does every conference center and hotel have a Rainier Room – I guess they have to) to see the set up and watch the audience walk in. I had vowed to follow the actor’s advice to love the audience and let them love me, so I observed as the women and men, mostly women, came in, tired and a little desultory. The time came to speak and the third workshop presenter was not there. We went on without her. I spoke and at first felt uneasy, but I told myself that they loved me. I continued, they loved me. My topic was the use of certain creative thinking or free-thinking devices might be of value when people deal with mission statements and other artifices. I had to stretch it at times, but I thought it was a good topic. I quickly moved into the murky area of deductive (analytic) to inductive (synthetic) reasoning, and I felt that I was losing their attention, so I quickly shifted my discussion to the techniques I’d brought with me, mostly from writing and dance. These techniques, particularly clustering, would, in my opinion, allow the proposal writer (and others) to expand their vision and vocabulary simply by playing with the words in their mission statements. I felt so alone. I made an attempt at interaction with a flip chart, but they chose “Mexican Food” (the offering at lunch) and the relationships were not fast in coming. Finally a woman in the back said “red” and I said “I love it,” but that was the end. I spoke on about the coin game and scratching, but I felt my grip on them slipping away, and quickly. A man in the back row, with a lap top opened in front of him, raised his hand. “We’ve been going for 45 minutes, are we going to hear something about sources of funding?” I was shocked that I had gone 45 minutes already. I thought it had been more than 20. I apologized and quickly finished with a statement about how they might enjoy using the techniques I’d shown them, but there were no questions.