Fireside with Voxgig

Karina Ochis is a serial entrepreneur, an international professional speaker, and a life coach and trainer. On top of all this, Karina is author of the bestselling The Influence of Social Media on US Presidential Campaigns and co-author of Cracking the Code to Success. She has lived all over the world and currently resides in her home country of Romania.

In this episode, Karina takes Richard through the different steps involved in personal branding. She explains why elite personal branding is extremely important in order for all of us to truly succeed. She describes what it was like being on TEDx, where she presented her formula, ‘The Olympics of Life’, and what she gained from that experience.

Karina has conducted the majority of her speaking career in English. She delves into the difficulty of transitioning between English and her native Romanian. She also tells us how important it is for speakers to incorporate different cultural norms into their talks, based on different audiences.

Learn more about Karina here.

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

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Doug Thompson is a Texan who gets to travel all over the world with his job as Senior Technology Strategist with the Microsoft Education sales team. In other words, he gets to speak for work!

In this episode, Doug tells Richard why he finds it important to know your own personality in order to become truly comfortable with speaking in public. He goes into why he uses improvization in his talks, and describes his coaching methods for his sales team—which, interestingly, include having each team member tell him a story.  

Doug also tells Richard about his experiences giving speeches in parts of the world where, on top of having to present a speech, he also worked with an interpreter.

Lastly, he discusses his fascinating career at Microsoft and the struggles he is now encountering while writing his first book in technical sales.

Learn more about Doug 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.

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.

Andreea Wade is the founder and CEO of opening.io. She is an event organizer and public speaker—an unusual combination—with many different passions. She has started several different businesses in a variety of sectors.

Andrea relates how she had a panic attack during her first public speaking experience. She tells us that she still experiences stage fright but it reminds her that she cares. She also discusses the variety of events she curates, and how being a public speaker and an event organizer can clash at times. She also gives advice on what conference speakers can do to help events run more smoothly and to make things easier overall for event organizers.

Andreea and Richard also delve into conference logistics, and how logistics can make or break a potentially great event. Andreea offers the advice that public speaking is a key skill for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, especially if you are taking an old idea and putting a new spin on it. When your message is important, she says, you will be asked to share it, so you must be able to present it in an engaging and relatable way.

Learn more about Andreea 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.

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.

Oscar Santolalla has been working in the tech sector for over 10 years. He is currently a sales engineer at Ubisecure. A Peruvian living in Helsinki, Finland, Oscar hosts his own public speaking podcast titled ‘Time to Shine’. He has also authored the book Create and Deliver a Killer Product Demo.

In this episode, Oscar explains how Toastmasters changed his life by allowing him to practice his public speaking in English and to experiment with different topics to engaged audiences that gave honest feedback.

He also discusses how his public speaking career was born when he became a lecturer in telecommunications and information security in Peru. He discusses with Richard the difference between being a lecturer and being a conference speaker, and how—surprisingly—lecturing can be substantially harder. He also imparts the advice that when presenting your speech, it is important to not hide behind too much content or too many slides; simple is always better.

Learn more about Oscar 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.

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.

In this episode, Richard speaks to Tanya Butenko, founder of NodeGirls, an organization for women and other gender minorities in the tech world. Tanya is a native Ukrainian who now lives in Australia.

She delves into the story of one of her first presentations. The topic of that presentation was a personal one that made her extremely emotional. She discusses why this topic was a bad choice for her first experience, not least because she did not have the strength to control her emotions on stage.

Tanya also describes what it was like to begin coding later in life, and what her first experiences in coding were like, especially live coding presentations.

Lastly, she emphasizes the importance as a speaker of picking conferences that chime with your personal ethical values, and conferences where you are going to have fun.

Learn more about Tanya 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.

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.

Dylan Schiemann is a professional conference speaker and the founder of Dojo Toolkit. He is one of those lucky human beings who does not get nervous before talks! He attributes this confidence to his early speaking experiences, which he tells us about in this episode.

Dylan also explains what conference talks, sales discussions and venture capital pitches have in common, and tells us how his own impressive conference talks have helped the success of Dojo Toolkit. He discusses why a speaker's ability to read and adjust to different audiences is key to a successful talk, and why he personally likes to give either one of the first or one of the last talks at a conference.

He also touches on why community is so important to him, and how this led him to start his Javascript meetup, HalfStack, which he still runs today.

Learn more about Dylan 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.

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.

Vicky Lee is a self-described ‘Pythonista’. She’s a software engineer and community organizer who began organizing events in order to bring people together and create a sense of community.

In this episode, Vicky describes how she fell into the diversity-driven sphere of tech, and tells us about her first venture into organizing meetups—which, perhaps surprisingly, stemmed from her forum for Irish-born Chinese people and the difficulties she encountered with her first tech event, Python Ireland.

Vicky also delves into why you should never ever put all of your eggs into one basket,  discusses the importance of working well with business partners (even if they are your actual partner!), and why a great community is so crucial for a great event.  

Learn more about Vicky 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.

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.

Why do introverts make great public speakers?

Karl Hyden, a mental toughness coach for the professional introvert and self-touted Texan from Western Ireland, explains why. He has mastered the art of overcoming the personality barriers that can keep us from the success he believes we all deserve.

You’ll learn about the four different types of introverts, the core differences between introverts and extroverts, and why many leaders are not necessarily extroverts. Karl also gives insight into how introverts can slowly build themselves up to doing something big, and describes the different exercises we can all do to increase our mental toughness.

Learn more about Karl 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.

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.

For the past several years, Pauline Kwasniak has been diligently working to establish herself in the events organization industry. She has recently started a tough, fascinating trip into the event organizers’ public speaking sphere.

In this interview, Pauline tells Richard what lead her into event organizing and public speaking. She explains how living in a country that is not the country of her birth has affected her journey. Having an ‘accent’ isn’t as big a deal as people think, she says. The most important thing she’s learned is to slow down when delivering speeches.

Pauline also touches on the topics of how stressful it is being an event organizer, why it is important to maintain your cool, and to always remember that the things that are most important to you as an organizer are not necessarily important to others.

Learn more about Pauline 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.

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.

Every great speaker needs a great speech. In this episode, Richard speaks with Simon Gibson, high-profile speech writer and founder of World Speech Day. You will hear about how Simon transitioned from being a script writer to a speech writer, what exactly a speech writer does, the history of speaking, and how great speeches have the power to change the world.

Simon also provides some insights into the US political family, the Kennedys. What makes them such amazing speakers?

He also opens up about his immense fear of public speaking and gives us some back-story on the inception of World Speech Day (WSD), an annual event that celebrates speeches and speech-making through live speaking events across the world.

Learn more about World Speech Day and Simon 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.

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.