In October I attended this Round table at Stanford University. Katie Couric was the mediator and did a really great job. It’s her birthday so she’s part of today’s Smiley-a Day. As I was prepping that post I realized I’d never shared this with you guys. It’s really interesting. VIDEO BELOW.
One thing I was struck by today, listening to the video, was that Katie’s voice sounds nervous right at the start and then settles into a comfortableness as she progresses. This made me happy. Not schadenfreude* happy, just glad to know that everybody gets nervous, everybody needs a few minutes to get their bearings!
That was sure true for me doing the TED Talk (also at Stanford). The tech told me in the second before I stepped on stage that my slides weren’t loading. I spent the first minute of my talk with the images not coming up, and looking as one observe remarked, “endearingly nervous.” And, just between you and me, no one asked if I’d ever spoken in public before. I wasn’t about to bring up the fact that the answer was NO. I was scared to bejeezits (how the heck do you spell that?), but what a great day that was! 700 people in the audience and 350,000 people live streaming. the only bigger audience I’ve ever had was via Katie Couric’s CBS Evening NEWS (That little segment resulted in 9 million clicks on my website in the 2 weeks right after it aired!!) !
* Don’t know what schadenfreude means? Ask a musical theatre geek. We may be nerdy, but we know a lot of stuff (with which we’d love to bore you to tears)! Better yet, If Avenue Q comes to a theatre near you, GO!