How to Ruin a Conference

A few years ago, I attended a TEDx conference in Portland, OR. There were a number of inspirational and interesting speakers, but I came away from it more upset than inspired. Many people did, as it turns out. As I walked out of the auditorium after the last speaker, I heard many mumblings about how cranky people were and how their expectations were not met.

All because of one person: the very first speaker.

Here's the deal. If you're asked to speak at a conference, remember this little rule: it's not all about you.

The first speaker of this TEDx talk took the entire time speaking about himself. Whereas most TED talks are around 15 minutes, he took a 25 minutes to complete his rambling monologue. The result? The next speaker didn't have enough time to complete her speech, nor did the one after nor the one after that, until cumulatively, an entire speech had to be removed from the agenda and lunch was late.

To be fair, this first speaker wasn't the only one responsible. A couple of the other speakers went over their time, compounding the issue. And to make matters worse, it seems to me the organizers didn't seem particularly well organized (lunch service was a bit of mess, along with simply being late); they should have emphasized emphatically to the subsequent speakers to try and be at least on time, if not a little under time.

All that said, creating any sort of event, but especially one such as a TEDx conference is hard work, requiring many people to coordinate and collaborate for many months to make the event successful. As a speaker, you may be on stage, but you're not necessarily the center of attention — the audience is. Never forget that. The audience is there to learn and to have fun and to experience something wondrous. Give them that gift; don't go over time, don't talk about yourself, and respect the time of all the other speakers and the organizers. All of these people came together to make magic happen. Respect that.