Fireside with Voxgig

Should innovators kick over the table or just rearrange the things on it? Does it even make sense to regard the question in black and white? TEDx speaker Máirín Murray joined Orla on this episode to share her passion for technical products that produce a positive social impact.

Máirín is a tech innovator and ethics evangelist. Previously, she was Senior Digital Content Producer at the BBC. She is a co-founder of Tech for Good. This Ireland-based community of more than 1,750 people showcases projects and technologies that are solving everyday problems and having positive impact on people, communities and the planet.

Tech for Good Dublin was a 2018 finalist in the Innovation for Change category of the Irish Red Cross Humanitarian Awards.

Learn more about Máirín here and Tech for Good here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Alex is a record-breaking adventurer, keynote speaker, published author, brand ambassador and charity fundraiser from Cheshire, England. He is dedicated to inspiring others to achieve their own ‘Everest’ in life.

Alex is not your typical Everest speaker. After single-handedly raising over £35,000 in corporate sponsorship whilst still at school, his first attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest in 2014 was abandoned following a tragic avalanche that took sixteen lives. Aged just 19, he returned to Everest a year later and survived an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall, triggered by the Nepal earthquake, which trapped his team on the mountain for two days. 

He is no stranger to adversity, having overcome epilepsy, bullying and a stammer in his early life. These experiences have re-defined his view of success and failure to develop a humbling realisation that success lies not just in reaching the top but our journey to get there. Alex understands first-hand how our circle of control is sometimes no bigger than two metres below our feet, and that so-called ‘failure’ is just another opportunity to win. 

Learn more about Alex here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast. 

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com. 

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use  #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Richard is an international conference speaker, serial entrepreneur, published author and CEO of Voxgig. He also writes a weekly column, ‘Startup Diary’, for the Irish Independent newspaper. 

He tells Orla how he never envisaged himself as a public speaker in the earlier part of his career. He found, though, that he “always ended up on stage, one way or another”! As he found himself being asked more and more to give talks, he developed his love for “the story” - the narrative arc that captures and holds the audience’s attention, which he feels serves him well to this day.

Richard lets us in on some things he’s learned the hard way in his speaking career, and what to do when you’re asked an awkward question! He also has some tricks he’s learned over the years for balancing work as a start-up CEO and life as a parent.

Learn more about Richard here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast. 

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com. 

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use  #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

April Dunford is a positioning consultant. In plain English, that means she tells companies where their brand belongs in the market and what customers they should target. Her knowledge comes from 25 years of experience running tech startups and working for global tech giants. She is the author of a brilliant book on positioning called Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Positioning So Your Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It.

In her podcast chat with Richard, April tells Richard how she uses cake to help people understand the power of positioning. She also reveals how taking on a ton of conference speaking engagements helped her sell a ton of books and win new clients for her business.

Learn more about April Dunford here.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Mick tells Orla how he fell into public speaking as a career. He has made a virtue out of the underdog story; according to him, he has failed at everything he ever tried, and the keynote speech he now travels the world delivering is the culmination of that. Having finally achieved his dream of representing his country, he and his team came last in the World Sudoku Championships.

But he has made quite a success of his failure: a documentary was made about his team’s trip to the World Sudoku Championships in India, he has written a book about his experiences, and he’s still capturing audiences everywhere with his self-effacing, brutally honest talk. And he’s honest in real life, too; he tells us exactly how he did it, and makes it sound easy!

Learn more about Mick here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Petra Kindler is a spoken word artist, a comedian, a literary translator, playwright, and freelance creative director. She’s a German who has been living in Ireland for over thirty years and she specialises in pointing out the ridiculous in everyday life.

Petra tells Orla how she went from being a high-level creative director at German advertising agencies to the pretty unique position of being a German-Irish comedian (among her many other activities). She also speaks about how she deals with the cliché of Germans being humourless! 

We get a glimpse into Petra’s family background, which takes in some of the major political and historic events in twentieth-century Europe. She tells us how she made it through school as a creative person with her sense of humour and self-worth intact. Fascinatingly, she reveals how some of her most recent work has enabled her to connect with young artists in Ghana and bring their work to European stages. 

Learn more about Petra here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast. 

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com. 

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use  #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

We usually feature top public speakers on Fireside with Voxgig, but in this episode, we decided to speak with a top public speaking coach. Peter Hopwood describes himself as a pitch and presentations coach, and he supports public speaking professionals at every stage in their speaking career.

During our thought-provoking Fireside Chat, he revealed that speakers can always learn something new, no matter how experienced they are. It’s tempting for speakers who have some experience to believe that they have nothing left to learn, but Peter helps them break through to the next level.

Peter Hopwood is also an MC, and he has helped speakers through some very sticky situations – the stuff of nightmares. He saw for himself that if speakers, can find a way out of that crisis and carry on, the audience will be right behind them. For Peter, the biggest lesson any speaker can learn is resilience.

Learn more about Peter Hopwood here.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use  #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Orla chats to Bonnie Williams, a dialogue and performance coach for actors, public speakers and other professionals. Bonnie describes herself as a “Amsterdam-based American European”. She’s also an actor and a TEDx speaker coach, and was featured in Marie Claire magazine.

Learn more about Bonnie here.

We’re proud to partner with https://simplecast.com/ to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Russ Miles is a tech and microservices whizz who can define chaos engineering in ninety seconds. He is an international keynote speaker at tech conferences and he is CEO of ChaosIQ, which builds commercial and open source software for companies that are engaged in chaos engineering.

In a lively Fireside Chat with Richard, Russ revealed how he taps into the power of story to captivate his audience. He believes that we learn with our brains, and our brains love stories. When a speaker tells a story, your brain gives you the feeling that you are in that story. That’s why storytelling is so engaging for audiences.

Anyone who has heard Russ Miles speak will know that he likes to break out the guitar and sing his talks, to tunes by ACDC and other rock bands. He told Richard how he began playing his guitar as a way of calming his pre-talk nerves, and how he weaves his guitar playing seamlessly into his talks.

Learn more about Russ Miles.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.

Deepa Mann-Kler is an artist, entrepreneur and public speaker. She’s also the creator of the very cool Neon Dogs installation that has lit up the night sky in London, Amsterdam, Derry/Londonderry, and various other parts of the world.

In her Fireside Chat, Deepa shared a reassuring message with aspiring speakers. Don’t worry about making a fancy presentation. Just strip back to the real story you want to tell, and you will captivate your audience. Deepa herself learned the hard lesson that being authentic is the best way to go.

Deepa and Richard also talked about overcoming nerves, a favourite topic in our Fireside Chats. Virtual reality is growing in popularity as a way to prepare for talks, because you can experience the venue before you even go there. But Deepa has a simpler cure for nerves – all you need to do is breathe.

Learn more about Deepa Mann-Kler here.

We’re proud to partner with Simplecast to bring you our Fireside with Voxgig podcast.

To get a weekly dose of public speaking tips, information, videos of great talks, conference news, book reviews and more, sign up to the Voxgig newsletter.

View all show notes, links, and more brilliant public speaking resources at voxgig.com.

If you like what you hear on Fireside with Voxgig, don’t be shy―tell everyone! Use #firesidewithvoxgig on your social media.