Two More Fave Speakers from #HOWLive 2017

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Last week I posted tweets and pics from 2 of my favorite speakers at HOW Design Live 2017. 

This week I'm posting two short excerpts from Maureen Adamo's beautifully written and comprehensive recap of her favorite HOW Design Live 2017 speakers. (Read Part 1 here.) Enjoy and join us next year in Boston, April 30-May 4, 2018 -- details at HOWDesignLive.com

Speak to be Heard: Communicating Your Best Ideas
with (the lovely,) 
Eleanor Handley

“We come into the world knowing
how to use ourselves, and somewhere along the way we constrict ourselves.”

You’re already good at communicating. You just forgot how to do it. Kind of like how we were born weird and open and passionate and creative, and then life happened and we pretended to be different people. To help us start using our voices again, Eleanor Handley reminds us that how we sound is more important than what we say — a concept any Eddie Izzard fan would be familiar with.

Spoken communication is more physical than we allow for and she offers three rules: It comes from using more of ourselves, not less (don’t confuse being authentic with being small), great communication comes from focusing more on the other person, and you do not need to feel confident to project confidence. So there’s no reason to delay your public speaking career until you feel like a big enough badass, ok? 

Handley says since we have most control over what we do, more so than being able to stop a particular thought or feeling in the moment it happens, we can work to improve communication with specific actions and habits. Do some deep breathing exercises before a presentation, make sure to warm up your vocal cords (you can pretend you’re talking into a cell phone to sneak this into your schedule, if you need), and remember to pause anywhere there is a natural stop in your speech, like periods or commas between lengthy phrases. The silence isn’t as long as it feels like it is to you, and it gives you a moment to breathe and think about the words that come next.

(Watch Eleanor's presentation on YouTube here.)

Change. Change. Change.
with (the lovely) 
Alina Wheeler

“He was always leaving the earth,
always going other places.”

An obsession with David Bowie is a unique kind of gift, especially when you’ve studied the man and the magician to the extent Alina Wheeler has. The session she presented was an electrifying homage to his genius and his legacy, imparting his life and art as one who has gone before to show us the way. The musically-punctuated presentation rocked through Bowie’s many personas, encouraging designers to become masters of their image, inviting the continual reinvention of identity and passions. Possibilities are endless, Wheeler and Bowie say, and nobody does it alone. Build creative collaborations, and use them as fuel for your own fires. Always keep moving and know when to come, know when it’s time to go. And because the legend made what he loved up until he knew it was time to go, he lived it well: “It’s never too late to become what you could have been.”

Read the entire Recap -- Part 1 here.

And watch Alina's presentation on YouTube here

Next year will be even better -- won't you join us in Boston, April 30-May 4, 2018 -- details at HOWDesignLive.com

 

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