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Confessions of a Keynote Speaker
There is always more than ONE audience in the room
Recently, I gave a keynote presentation to 150 people in the health care industry. After being introduced, I decided, as I usually do, to leave the safe confines of the podium, dismount the stage, and walk my talk — weaving my way in between the 20 round tables in the room, each with their own pitchers of water, tent cards, and little bowls of red and white mints.
For a keynote speaker, dismounting the stage and walking into the audience is always a risk — the same kind of risk a person takes when they decide to get married, instead of just date — why it’s often easier to love humanity than just one human being.
People, in theory, are interested in learning. People, in theory, are interested in listening to an outside speaker, especially when he’s flown in from who knows where. But in reality, it’s a completely different story. How do I know? By looking. By seeing. And by feeling what is really going on.
To the AV guy in the back of the room, there were 150 health care professionals in attendance, but to me there were 12 different subgroups, 12 different mindsets, 12 different tribes. And while they were all being paid by the same employer, they were all paying a very different kind of attention to what I was saying.
