What we’re about
This meetup is all about learning to embrace our fear and practising public speaking. We never call it public speaking as it doesn't fit well with our ethos, so we call it STORYTELLING. We have a very friendly, supportive and non-judgemental environment, which means we encourage people to make mistakes here and learn from them.
Our philosophy:
Fail fast, learn fast.
We strongly believe that being imperfect and making mistakes is the best way to learn and develop or simply even to live a happier life. Our approach is purely focused on vulnerability and authenticity. So feel free to allow yourself to make those mistakes fast and develop your skills quicker. We recommend to watch the video of Brene Brown as our core principles are based on her findings.
Youtube LINK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0
Our WHY:
We are a bunch of freelance data-culture consultants who coach businesses on creating and embedding an authentic data-driven culture, which we call it 'The Story Culture'. Our goal is to get businesses comfortable and confident in using data to improve its decision-making by implementing data storytelling principles.
As part of our data storytelling training we have developed a range of techniques that will help business managers and data analysts to learn the art of storytelling and dashboard designs using Power BI. As business storytelling involves an element of public speaking we started to train people on developing simple communication methods that can be readily applied by accepting their own authentic self. We found a lot of people are finding it really difficult to be an authentic storyteller within a business environment as it involves showing your vulnerability. This is the main reason why we started a meetup group to give people an opportunity to be vulnerable and believe in themselves so that they can carry them confidently to any setup and perform any task with ease, in this case it is public speaking.
Our dream is to create a community where beginners can learn the techniques and framework that will help them to be confident so that it improves their quality of life, skills and job prospects in this gig economy. This meetup is our first action towards fulfilling our dream.
So why meetup?
We believe it is crucial to provide a safe space for beginners to come out of their shell and be confident about themselves in facing a group of audience. That's exactly this meetup is all about, creating that safe space. A space where you can safely explore and tune your inner strength to build the mental resilience that will help you live an awesome life and also do well on public speaking/storytelling.
How much?
£3 a session. Please carry exact change as it will save us all some time and to keep it simple there will be a box where you can drop the coins yourself.
What to expect?
-Get to know the 'EASY' framework that we use everyday to coach our business
clients on data storytelling
-Loads of opportunities to stand before a bunch of people and speak
-Personalised feedback on your speech to improve further
-Watch and learn from other speaker's learning journey
-Not a serious business workshop as we are totally a bunch of non-serious but sincere-to-our-art folks
How it works?
(This is a 100% do and learn meetup as the focus is on self improvement and skill development.) 2.5 hours workshop to learn some theory and apply it practically.
1. Short warm up exercise to shake your comfort zone. (be ready to explore the real you)
2. Introduction to 'EASY' framework by one of our folks. (I will share a video before the event so that you can watch this before coming in so that we can save that time for practising. Also, as I found the framework I tend to get into too much detail and I want to avoid it. Hence the video.)
3. Individual slots for attendees to stand up and face the audience.
(only 2 options:
a. You can choose to speak up OR
b. Stay calm to just get comfortable in facing the audience first.)
4. Feedback on your experience from you, me and a couple of other attendees. (Your feedback is very important as it will help you to reflect on your actions which will make you learn quicker.)
5. Casual catch up after the meetup.
Just thought of sharing a few more relevant lines:
Public speaking is a very useful skill to develop in life. It not only helps you to do things such as presentations at work and university but also develops your inner qualities in other areas of life allowing you to improve your social relationships with people, as you learn how to express yourself better. Even if you are not interested particularly in public speaking, we guarantee that by attending this session you will build confidence.
Embraced imperfection,
Vijay
