Stewart McCure

Writer, performer, management consultant

England

An Australian living in London.  A self-employed training consultant to the global health care industry.  A producer, director and performer of improv comedy.  A trustee of an adult education charity in West London.  A writer and occaisional blogger

 

 

David Heinemeier-Hansson

May 11, 2010  /  Stewart McCure

Yesterday I went along to the Regent Street Apple Store to listen to David Heinemeier-Hansson speak.  I'm not a programmer so until yesterday he was someone who existed only on the edge of my radar.  This was the descriptor for the talk: -

David is the developer behind the hugely successful software Ruby on Rails and Basecamp. Join him as he discusses 37signals’ business manifesto, co-written with Jason Fried, Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever.
It was a free talk so that he could spruik his GTD book so what was there to lose?  As with any other free event nothing but my time.

Even an hardened stand-up would label the lecture theatre at the back of the Apple Store 'a tough room'; substandard acoustics and an audience full of nerds accessing the free WiFi but that doesn't begin to explain the underwhelming non-event that followed.  A profound inability to engage with the audience, an absence of stagecraft and a monotony of delivery all gave the impression that the speaker was focused on nothing more than his final PowerPoint slide and the customary yet desultory round of applause.

Leaving aside the props that Heinemeier-Hansson gets for being sickeningly fluent in English, he wasted my time.  The content of the talk was not so much 'how to improve my personal productivity' but rather 'how to behave if I worked at 37signals'.  I was less likely to buy the book at the end of the talk that at the beginning.

When will people realise that all public speaking is performing?

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tags / Disclipline, Facilitation, Marketing, Momentum, Performing