How To Deliver A TED Talk by Jeremy Donovan

It took me a long time before I heard of TED, and then some more time before I listened to one, but lately, I've been hooked on TED talks. No matter if you agree with them or not, if you listen to a TED talk, you have something to think about.

So when I saw this book, I figured that I had to give it a show. And very conveniently, I had to give a two-minute speech around the time I was finishing it. The speech was, well, I didn't get to use my slides and my English was a bit too difficult, but apparently it was better than the first speech I gave.

This book is divided into 23 chapters, subdivided into a total of 113 tips. The tips span four parts - Content (how do you choose what to say?), Delivery (How do you say it?), Design (What else do you need?) and The Journey To The Stage And Beyond (this part is really really TED specific. The first three parts will be useful to anyone who has to give a speech, while the last part is for fans of TED or people who want to be able to speak at a TED conference one day.

Along the way, the book uses many many TED talks as examples. Apart from effectively illustrating the points, the examples also gave me a lot of videos to put on my "to-watch" list, so I suppose it's a double-benefit for me.

Personally, I really liked this book. It's written in a very readable manner - no dry "how to give a speech stuff", and I found most of the tips to be practical. I'm pretty sure that I'll have to give more speeches in the future (both in English and Japanese), so I'm looking forward to using more of the stuff this book has taught me.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.