Photo by Tomas Whitehouse
I’m a public speaker. That means I go to conferences, events and organisations, I stand up in front of a group of people, and I tell them things in what I like to think of as an informative, illuminating, and – where possible – entertaining manner.
The nature of those events differs greatly. I’ve given guest lectures at universities in Budapest, Auckland, and London. I’ve spoken at music industry conferences in New York, Mumbai, Brussels, Dublin, Groningen, Berlin, Medellín, Sao Paulo and Oslo. I’ve given talks to management and staff at the BBC and at YLE (the Finnish national broadcaster). I’ve presented at Like Minds, a conference about enterprise and innovation – and I’ve spoken at a conference for the British Library’s Sound Archives about the nature of copyright in the digital age. I’ve given 1-hour keynotes and delivered whole training days, participated in countless panels, and moderated a fair few as well.
I generally talk about things related to the music industries, the digital age and innovation, but I have spoken before about culture, the history of media, online marketing, internet strategy, and blogging. I’ve even given seminars about time management and run what can only be described as ‘life coaching’ sessions for creative workers and musicians.
As a sideline, I also host whisky tasting events with my friend Clutch, which is an entirely different (and thoroughly enjoyable) type of public speaking.
I turn down as many speaking offers as I accept, and tend to take the ones that are both interesting and possible from a scheduling perspective. As a general rule, I charge money for doing these speaking engagements, as you’d probably expect – though there are some exceptions to that from time to time.
What I pride myself in is the fact that I don’t simply truck out the same old speeches over and over again. I have never given the same presentation twice, and I will always research and prepare something that is just right for the occasion.
If you’re interested in getting me to speak somewhere, by all means feel free to get in touch and let me know what you have in mind.