The statute of limitations has expired, so I confess that on 4 February 2017 I beat up a motivational speaker in the Sofitel ballroom in Sydney.
I watched this clown of a presenter commit a litany of egregious public speaking crimes. The captive audience suffered horribly, and I knew I had to act.
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”
Not on my watch.
This speaker, this MONSTER, did horrible things.
Among other travesties, he:
⛵ told a long irrelevant story about the time he sailed a boat
📖 read whole sentences off his own slides
🙅♂️ didn’t ask a single question
⏰ went 7 minutes overtime
Boring stories poorly told are bad, but they’re worse when the audience is given no context or reason to care. Reading slides is awful, but not as bad as going overtime, apologising, then ploughing through the last 5 slides uselessly at speed anyway, BEFORE LUNCH.
So on behalf of an aggrieved audience, I administered some vigilante justice.
I tackled him off stage and wrestled him to the ground, thumping his head against the corner of the stage to the delight of the front row. I hauled him back on stage and executed a textbook suplex to the whoops and hollers of the people at the back.
I dropped an elbow off the top rope as lesson to presenters everywhere that there are LINES. YOU. DO. NOT. CROSS.
In this Friday Fink Tank we talk about the responsibility you carry when you step onto a stage.
And we share a couple of easy tools to help do a good job.
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* The statute of limitations (7 years for most tortious offences under Australian law) only applies to civil cases. Repeatedly smashing a motivational speaker’s head against the corner of a stage could well be considered a crime.
* Fans of the amazing podcast “60 songs that explain the 90s” by Rob Harvilla will recognise that I have wholesale ripped off this entire bit from his Portishead episode from November last year. You’re welcome, Rob.
