×

TEDxLSU co-founder and organizer Rebecca Burdette explains how speakers are trained to take the stage


For some TEDxLSU presenters, it may be their first time speaking before a large audience. Co-founder and organizer Rebecca Burdette explains how speakers are trained to take the stage


How TEDxLSU presenters are chosen:

“Ideas for speakers come from several ways. People suggest someone or submit their own name. We meet with groups and ask, ‘Who do you want to see on the TEDxLSU stage?’ Someone saw me in a grocery store and pitched a TEDx talk to me right then.

Names we get go into what we call the ‘boneyard,’ which is a list with more than 800 names. We revisit all 800 names every year.

From a list of about 40 possible speakers, we cull it down to 13. It can be like a jigsaw when we’re trying to fit in 13 people. We usually have a theme for each TEDxLSU event, so we look for synergies between speakers. And, we look at other things, such as making sure we have diversity among the speakers.”

On preparing to stand in front of 1,000 people:

“TEDx talks are supposed to be conversational and authentic, so there are no notes and no teleprompter. You have to internalize your talk.

We structure a training program for our speakers, but we don’t coach everyone in the same, formulaic way. It’s an art, not a science.

Sometimes we bring in a coach specifically for a speaker. For example, we’ve got someone who specializes in scientific communication, so she helps speakers translate technical information into something more accessible.

Everyone is excited about the talk, but not everyone is excited about being on stage. We’re really good at coaching the nervousness out of people.

Very few people have been on a stage in front of 1,000 people with lights in their eyes, so we do dry runs in the theater. We work on inflection, body language and the art of storytelling, or how to structure a narrative.

We ask, ‘What are you trying to get across? What idea do you want to share? Tell us the three things you want people to tweet after your talk.’”

Event organizers Melissa Thompson and Rebecca Burdette help speakers prepare for the big day.

Enabling a speech to go global:

“The talk takes place in front of a greater Baton Rouge audience, but at the end of the day, that talk lives on the TED website. So, the talk has to be accessible to the local community, but also to the global community.

We want local references, but also need to be able to reach global events. We ask, ‘Are you being too local?’ One person said ‘jambalaya’ three times in her talk. A person in Australia doesn’t know what that means.

If your talk is about coastal erosion in southern Louisiana, you need to bring in analogies that are bigger than Baton Rouge, like land sinking in Venice, Italy.”

On spreading ideas to the community:

“TEDx talks have become such a part of pop culture. The first thing you see when you Google your name is your TEDxLSU talk, so some people start to think, ‘This is the talk of my life.’

That’s why we prepare for six months to give a 10-minute speech.

When we’re crafting that experience, there’s the notion that this isn’t just a local event—we’re also building a platform to share our local community with the world.

The people up there genuinely are interested in the greater community, whether that be local or global.”


5th annual TEDxLSU is March 11. Buy tickets and view the lineup at tedxlsu.com.


This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.