I attended a three day virtual Speaking…
I attended a three day virtual Speaking & Influence Summit. The sessions ran 11am-3:30pm each day. I made the commitment to attend the whole thing. My goal for attending was to compare and contrast against other similar offerings, and to get more direction for some business development and strategy I'm involved with, both for myself, and for my clients. I've been to a lot of these types of events. But this one offered real value over the three days. They could easily have charged a couple hundred dollars for this session. Instead, they are counting on the quality to shine through and pull you into their other programs. I can see that happening. There's only one speaker that I thought was "meh", but I came away with 13 pages of notes and ideas and felt glad that I made the time for this summit. The summit tech was good, and I didn't see the presenters fumbling like I have in other presentations from other groups. But beware, they will share their Google Calendar with you and it will appear to take over your feed. I would prefer appts that I put on my calendar, and do not need another shared calendar in my life. Another criticism is that they lean into the often quoted (but misunderstood) Mehrabian study to defend their teaching methods (Look up 7%, 38% and 55%). I think this serves the company a disservice, and they should move away from this focus. They don't need to quote this dubious study to be effective. (Do your own research, and you'll see what I mean.) I didn't mind that there was a sales pitch for a deeper, more expensive paid ($5000) program. I saw many parallels with other programs, but I think these folks have it together.