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Authors: Scott Berkun

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Ranked bibliography

Traditional bibliographies provide little value. They obscure the
relative value of prior works, and fail to indicate how the author used
them (devoured, skimmed, or as a paperweight?). In addition to the
preceding annotated bibliography, I experimented with different formats
for a comprehensive listing—the result is this ranked bibliography. The
intention is to indicate which sources drew attention during my
research.

The order below is based on a review of over 150 pages of my
research notes, from over 50 books. Every note I took from a book during
research counted as one point, and the references are listed in ranked
order. There are other books referenced in the text that may not appear
here, as they served to support or reference a specific point rather
than as an overall contribution to my thinking. There is no ideal system
for ranking influence (the flaw in this one is that not all notes
influenced me equally, and some good books didn’t score any notes at
all), but this was the best of all those suggested.

40,
What’s the Use of Lectures?
, Donald A.
Bligh (Jossey-Bass)

31,
Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21
Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers
, James C.
Humes (Three Rivers Press)

28,
Public Speaking for Success
, Dale
Carnegie (Tarcher)

28,
Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know About
Making Speeches and Presentations
, Max Atkinson (Oxford
University Press)

26,
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and
Thriving at Work, Home, and School
, John Medina (Pear
Press)

26,
History of Public Speaking in America
,
Robert T. Oliver (Allyn & Bacon)

25,
Money Talks: How to Make a Million As a
Speaker
, Alan Weiss (McGraw-Hill)

23,
Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What
They Mean
, Michael Erard (Anchor)

22,
Conquer Your Speech Anxiety
, Karen
Kangas Dwyer (Wadsworth)

22,
The Francis Effect: The Real Reason You Hate Public
Speaking and How to Get Over It
, M. F. Fensholt (Oakmont
Press)

20,
What the Best College Teachers Do
, Ken
Bain (Harvard University Press)

15,
The Lost Art of the Great Speech
: How
to Write One—How to Deliver It, Richard Dowis (AMACOM)

14,
Speak for a Living: The Insider’s Guide to Building
a Profitable Speaking Career
, Anne Bruce (ASTD Press)

13,
How People Learn
, National Research
Council (National Academies Press)

12,
Secrets of Successful Speakers: How You Can
Motivate, Captivate, and Persuade
, Lilly Walters
(McGraw-Hill)

12,
Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move
Your Audience to Action
, Nick Morgan (Harvard Business
Press)

11,
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term
Fulfillment
, George Leonard (Plume)

10,
I Can See You Naked
, Ron Hoff (Andrews
McMeel Publishing)

10,
Confessions of a White House
Ghostwriter
, James C. Humes (Regnery Publishing,
Inc.)

10,
Thank You for Arguing
, Jay Heinrichs
(Three Rivers Press)

8,
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be
Persuasive
, Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert
B. Cialdini (Free Press)

6,
Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of
Memoir
, William Zinsser (Mariner Books)

5,
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation
Design and Delivery
, Garr Reynolds (New Riders)

4,
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great
Presentations
, Nancy Duarte (O’Reilly)

4,
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others
Die
, Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Random House)

3,
Smart Speaking: 60-Second Strategies for More Than
100 Speaking Problems and Fears
, Laurie Schloff and Marcia
Yudkin (Plume)

2,
The Years with Ross
, James Thurber
(Harper Perennial)

2,
Speaking: From Intention to
Articulation
, Willem J. M. Levelt (MIT Press)

2,
Pecha Kucha Night: 20 Images x 20
Seconds
, Klein Dytham Architecture (Klein Dytham)

1,
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on
Performance
, Atul Gawande (Picador)

1,
Green Eggs and Ham
, Dr. Seuss (Random
House Books for Young Readers)

Other research sources

Interviews
. Over the course
of two years, I interviewed more than 70 people, ranging from
phone/email conversations to chats over dim sum. I talked to
comedians, musicians, teachers, professors, trainers, and ordinary
folks.
Lectures and discussion
. I
presented some of the book’s themes in lectures at Ignite! Seattle,
Presentation Camp Seattle, and O’Reilly’s FOO Camp.
Blog
.
www.speakerconfessions.com
served as a sounding board for some of the ideas in this book and
was the primary source of the disaster stories. It also has some
very good posts on aspects of public speaking that were not included
in this book.
Survey
. Over 150 people who
identified themselves as having presented in the O’Reilly Ignite! or
Pecha Kucha format filled out an online questionnaire about their
experiences preparing, presenting, and afterward. Results are posted
on
www.speakerconfessions.com
(search for
ignite research
).

Appendix G. How to help this book: a request

Thank you for buying this book. If it somehow exceeded your
expectations or left you feeling like, gee, things would be better if more
people read it, this is for you.

As you know by now, I’m a young, independent author. I don’t have a
huge marketing machine behind me, nor a gang of billionaire friends, or
even a magic genie offering me three wishes. But that’s OK. If you’re
willing to chip in a few minutes of your time, you can seriously help this
book find its way in the cold, tough world, where many good books never
reach all the people they should.

Please consider doing any of the following:

Write a review on Amazon.com.
Post about this book to your blog, on Facebook, or on
Twitter.
Recommend the book to coworkers, your friends and your friends’
friends, or your friends with blogs, or your coworkers’ friends who
blog, or even your friends of friends who blog about their friends’
blogs. The possibilities are endless.
If you know people who write for newspapers or magazines, drop
them a line, or perhaps Oprah or Jon Stewart owes you a favor. If so,
now is a good time to cash it in.
Check out
www.scottberkun.com
and
discover all the great things I write about each week. If you like
what you find, run through this list again with that in mind.

These little things make a huge difference. As the author, my
opinion of the book carries surprisingly little weight. But you, dear
reader, have all the power in the world.

Not only can you help this book find its way, but you’d also make
the many risks of writing the next book easier to overcome, increasing the
odds that I’ll do an even better job next time around.

As always, thanks for your help and support.

Appendix H. Acknowledgments

Special note: I owe the life that led to this book to people who buy
my books, recommend my writings to others, leave comments on my blog, and
help me get hired to speak at various places around the world. I’d be an
idiot for not thanking you here. Thank you. You’ve changed my life and
helped me chase my dreams, and I hope this book, or the next one, repays
that debt. Your mere mentions of my work to others in person, on blogs, or
wherever you do it makes my life possible. Please, pretty please,
continue.

While my name goes on the cover, all books are made by a gang of
people who do various bits of work you never notice. Mary Treseler, my
editor and friend, who greenlights these crazy ideas I have for books and
wisely guides their way, simply rocks. O’Reilly Media needs to clone this
woman. My friend, Marlowe Shaeffer, who has worked, mostly voluntarily
(fireams were only involved twice, fired once), on all my books at
O’Reilly. Also a candidate for cloning. Rob Romano rocked with the
illustrations, Angela Howard crushed the index, Ron Bilodeau made the
insides all nice and cool, Monica Kamsvaag made the unmistakable cover,
and production editor Rachel Monaghan shepherded all these diverse talents
together to create a single bound object worthy of your hard-earned cash.
And thanks to Christine Walker, Sara Peyton, and all my friends at
O’Reilly Media for helping promote this thing.

To the Donner party (Terrel Lefferts, Rob Lefferts, Kaelyn Lefferts,
Oliver Lefferts, Royal Winchester, Andrea Winchester, Skaeya Winchester,
and Jill Stutzman) for collectively restoring my faith in humanity.

For giving various honest and possibly intoxicated opinions, digging
up facts beyond my reach, or providing otherwise generous positive support
for my work (listed in a secret order I will never reveal): Richard
Grudman, Chris McGee, Jeffrey Bialy, Bob Baxley, Bob Sutton, Jeff Veen,
Russ Miles, Fitz, Kim Ricketts, Mary Treseler, Terrel Lefferts, Rob
Lefferts, Neil Enns, Brady Forrest, Chris Baty, Jared Spool, Dana
Chisnell, Pam Daghlian, Royal Winchester, Andrea Winchester, Vanessa
Longacre-Wilcox, Lauren Cramer, Jeff Veen, Ron Fein, Eugenio Perea
(@eperea), Kaleem Khan (@kaleemux), Sarah Milstein, Lynn Cherny, Todd
Berkun, Sarah Davies, and Brian Rowe.

I’d like to say hi to everyone who didn’t answer my email. Hi. Your
name could have been here.

For my regular haunts where much thinking on this book was done:
Blue Ginger (Bellevue), Crossroads (Bellevue), Pho Than Brothers
(Redmond), Half Price Books (Redmond), the Seattle Public Library, and the
King County Metro 545 express bus that takes me there.

To Groucho, the crazy owl who hoots at 2 a.m. outside my window,
reminding me I’m not the only fool awake and working.

For photographic consultation: James Duncan Davidson, Randy Stewart,
Del Paquette, Neil Enns, and Shawn Murphy.

Thanks to Beth Goldman and Mary Duffy at CNBC and Stu Hitchner at
Fisher Pathways studios for photo permissions and general coolness.

To Bryan Zug, Brian Dorsey, and Stewart Maxwell, for the pholaden
lunch conversation that helped me rewrite
Chapter 1
.

To the teachers who changed my life and inexplicably set a time bomb
for making me want to teach: Alan Stein (Bayside High School), Todd
Berkun, Jerry Reinstein (Bayside High School), Don Cole (Drew University),
and Willfred Seig (Carnegie Mellon University).

Love, but also anti-thanks, to Bonnie Sheehan, Ryan Grimm (who
drinks lesbian beer for its urbane and discriminating flavors), and Jason
Hunter for stealing my Moleskine at FOO and watching me look for it like
an idiot for 20 minutes. Lesson: never fuck with a writer. We will write
about you. :)

If you saw someone you know in here, please say hi to them for
me.

Peanut M&Ms consumed during writing of this book: 12,428

Regular M&Ms consumed: 65

Number of regular M&Ms confused with peanut M&Ms: 65

Bowls of pho eaten: 105

Moleskines filled: 3

Games of
Gears of War 2
(Horde) played:
168

Number of bowls of pho confused with peanut M&Ms: 0

Knees sprained: 2

Point per game average before knee sprain / after: 16.2 / 1.4

Progress of human race: not verified, but technically
possible

Planets destroyed: 0

Universes experienced: 1

Paradoxes solved: unknown

Music listened to: Aimee Mann, Cat Power, Bon Iver, The Avett
Brothers, Patty Griffin, The Frames, Charles Mingus, The Breeders, Duran
Duran, Bruce Springsteen, Elliott Smith, Cake, Rilo Kiley, Paul Simon, The
Pretenders, The Clash, The Pixies, Flogging Molly, The Pogues, Social
Distortion, Johnny Cash, Eddie Vedder (
Into the Wild
soundtrack), They Might Be Giants, Mozart, Bach, Bob Dylan, Bell X1, Woody
Guthrie, Billy Bragg (
Mermaid Avenue
), Sufjan
Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, PJ Harvey, Palomar, DeVotchKa, Beethoven, and
the great Sonny Rollins.

Appendix I. Photo credits

All photos used by permission and listed in order of appearance.
Thanks to everyone for allowing me to use their work.

Chapter 1

Opener, P.S. Zollo (& JP) (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zollo/404871195/
)

Figure 1-1
. James
Duncan Davidson, Scott Berkun at Web 2.0 Expo

Chapter 2

Opener, Terri Fisher (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fish747/240988262/
)

Figure 2-1
. Scott
Berkun, Audience, RIM; Robin Drucker Photography, Lion, Auckland, New
Zealand (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightknight/495334127/
)

Chapter 3

Opener, Dennis Mojado (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/refractedmoments/223052548/
)

Figure 3-1
. Josh
Evnin, Ft. Mason, San Francisco, California (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jevnin/60967651/
)

Figure 3-2
. Scott
Berkun, National War Museum, Kiev, Ukraine