Princess Bride, a keynote address, and asking "why?"

I gave my first keynote address on Friday. I was asked to speak to a group of 150 teachers and trainers at a conference on TEYL (teaching English to Young Learners). Right up my alley! I thought I’d talk about the issues that teachers face—being so busy with the day-to-day work, plus the work they do at home as well, that there’s no time to think about and apply the theories and research they studied when they were in university. Then I would propose a simple solution—to start asking why. Why do we do things a certain way? Why do we use groupwork? And so on.

I researched what makes a good keynote address—a repeating refrain, humor, stories and inspiration. I spent hours incorporating these into my speech, plus decided to experiment by adding some interactive activities to bring home my message. I spent another hour or two creating a powerpoint with illustrations to support my points. I endured frequent requests from the organizers without complaint, sending them everything—my bio, my resume, my abstract, my powerpoint and even a copy of the written-out speech.

Here’s how the speech played out:

When we arrived, the program had already begun and I was handed the schedule--a revised schedule. I was now sharing the time slot with another keynote speaker and had half the time. After about 5 minutes to mentally prepare, I was introduced with just my name. Wondering what became of the bio I sent, not to mention the resume, I went up to the stage with my speech in hand, big black Xs chopping out the activities and cutting the speech to about 20 minutes. From the stage I realized I couldn’t see the screen on which my powerpoint would be shown. I moved to the floor. More awkwardness ensued as I tried to get a handheld microphone. I started but the slide changer didn’t work and had to stop. Again. Thankfully, it was quickly fixed and I launched full force into the speech. 

The humorous anecdote actually got a few chuckles and the one British man in the room was taking notes as I talked. It crossed my mind that perhaps he was making a list entited “Things to Avoid When Giving a Keynote Address”. 

I stumbled over the parts where I had removed the activities, giving a summary of what it would look like. The clock was ticking away and the audience watched me in silence. I jumped to the ending, gave my biggest smile, and slinked back to my seat. During the next address, I glanced through the materials handed out, including a book of all the presentations.  I was hoping to gain redemption by seeing my speech in its full, un-hacked up version.  Mine was not in there.

Afterwards, several people came up to speak with me and get a photograph. Comments 1-9 were compliments about the sound of my voice. (Comment 10 was that I didn't speak long enough.) Here’s how one conversation went:

Vietnamese teacher: I liked your voice!

Jill: That's nice. Did you like the message, too?

Vietnamese teacher: Yes...Coffee in Vietnam is very good, isn't it? (In all fairness, we were drinking coffee during a coffee break.)

I felt a bit like Buttercup in this scene in The Princess Bride:

[Buttercup kisses the senile King]

The King: What was that for?

Buttercup: Because you have always been so kind to me, and I won't be seeing you again since I'm killing myself once we reach the honeymoon suite.

The King: Won't that be nice. She kissed me, ha, ha, ha!

We stayed for the whole day and ended with a prolonged photo session. Everyone wanted a picture with me.

Jill, you have such lovely sounding English, isn’t that nice? Let’s take a photo, ha ha ha!

Looks like I’m the one who needs to start asking why.  

Note to my readers--Don’t worry, in spite of the last line, I am NOT regretting coming to Vietnam or even agreeing to the speech. Lesson learned is that I need to spend less time on composing my speeches and more time on styling my hair for photo opportunities.  Joking aside, this was a good reminder to be even more flexible, prepared for the unexpected, and gracious always.

With love from Hanoi!