We Need a Speech…

One of the trickier types of speech to write, and one that you should consider carefully before accepting, is the speech given by experts to experts.

It is one thing to have an expert, say — a medical specialist — give a status report on the current state of diabetes research — at a fund-raising gathering. It is a fairly easy proposition to interview diabetes scientists on the subject which you then translate into plain English. On top of that you would add the standard bit of promotion to encourage the audience to contribute financially to the cause.

Now let’s say you had that same medical researcher but this time he is giving a keynote speech, opening a three-day medical conference on the latest innovations in diabetes research and everyone in the audience is an expert on the topic as well. Now you have a real problem on your hands. You start out your research as you might have with the fundraising speech. You would do some basic Google research on diabetes, and then track down some experts to interview before you talk to your speaker.

Now it gets difficult. The problem is you don’t know what you don’t know, and so how can you ask intelligent questions, the answers to which you might want to plug into your speech. Unfortunately your interviewee doesn’t know what you don’t know either. From experience I can tell you that after a long interview I’ve asked a question “is there anything else I should be asking you?” Dumb question. It sometimes elicits some fill in the gaps information. More often it is this the rather stunned and understandable silence.

This is where the God question comes in handy. The God question takes various forms – usually prefaced by the phrase ” If you were God…..” followed by words that might elicit a more voluminous response. For example, ” If you were God where would you put the emphasis on diabetes research?” Or “If you were God doling out research funds where would you put them?” Or “If you were God and the government came to you for advice about finding a cure for diabetes, what would you tell them?” This accomplishes two things. It gets them talking about the subject in terms that you might not have thought of, and the conversation can go from there. And they are happy to wax philosophic on the topic since it is unlikely you are going to quote them as God. It is, in short a conversation starter, although I reserve the asking of it until near the end of the discussion.

So, remember the God question. A very useful tool when you are really worried about not knowing what you don’t know!

May 21st, 2008
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