I go to a lot of business conferences and events. I get to go as both an attendee and as a speaker. The more I go to business events, the more it seems there are really only three things that make an event successful: the food, the accommodations and the speaker. I know more than a few people who work as an event planner or a meeting coordinator. They would tell you that a lot more goes into a successful meeting. I know they are right, because the number of details that must be considered and the number of moving parts that need to all be moving in the right direction at the right time is mind boggling.

However when the conference attendees have been back at home and back at work for a week or two, the only things that stand out for them are the food, the accommodations and the speaker.

There are a lot of jokes and a lot of grumbling about conference chicken and yet another Caesar Salad. In my experience it is better to not have any food than to have bad food at an event. I have been to several events that took this tact and I thought they were smart. It is better to have no recollection of the food at a conference than to have a recollection of bad food. I prefer to have a "lunch on your own" than to be served something I don't care for. Enough about food already! I am getting myself hungry.

Getting the accommodations right seems to be pretty easy to accomplish. I say this because I have been to a lot of meetings and very, very few were in places that were not suited for the meeting. Very few have been uncomfortable. I'd say the hospitality business and the meeting planning professionals have done a great job getting us to the point where the facility and the accommodations fall into the column of "low stress" items on the planning list.

That leaves us with the speaker.I have seen and heard a lot of good speakers and a lot of speakers I would not put in that category. Some of the good ones have been people who do not speak on a regular basis, but either had engaging information or had a way of relating to the audience that kept our attention. Some of the less than good ones were people who are well known in their fields and had lots of zeros on the checks they received for their talks.

Here are a few of the well known speakers in no particular order that I thought were particularly engaging, informative and entertaining: John Cleese, Paco Underhill, Colin Powell, James Carville, Vince Lombardi, Jr., Roxanne Emmerich.

I have also seen plenty of speakers who read their power point slide bullet points or read a prepared statement or simply gave out information. You can imagine I am not the only person who finds an experience like this frustrating.

Everyone needs to be a public speaker at some time. Whether you are talking to your kids' teachers, discussing a project with a contractor you want to hire for work around the house, debating policy at work or trying to get satisfaction from the customer service department at any company you do business with, you are a speaker. You need to engage the people you are speaking with so they pay attention to you and process what you are saying. You need to develop some relationship with your audience, so they care about you and what you have to say. You need to pass on good information that will help your audience do better in life. And you need to be entertaining. I do not mean you have to do card tricks or dance while you spin a porcelain plate on your nose. But you do have to create some drama and touch some nerves, You have to make them laugh a little, make them cry a little, scare them a little and give them some hope.

You become engaging when you take command of the venue with your physical presence and show that you have an understanding of the needs and feelings of your audience in the first minute or two. This only works when you are comfortable with the butterflies you get before getting in front of a group and when you learn to have fun with the interaction between you and the audience.

You are seen as informative when you bring subject matter your audience members can care about and frame it in a way that is relevant to their situations. Although the great speaker knows it is not the information, but the lesson that is important. How does the speaker teach the lesson? If the lesson is taught with illustrations, stories, analogies, active demonstrations and participation from the gallery, the audience is entertained and is thinking. When they think, they are processing the lesson so they can make some use of it later.

A good example comes from John Cleese. I loved him when he was in the Monty Python company. He can still get a crowd's attention with his facial gestures and his posturing. This gives him an instant edge. When I saw him speak, (You notice that people typically say they saw a speaker…not that they heard a speaker) he was talking about how people who are so busy working on projects and trying to move fast that they often come up with plans and actions that are not thoroughly considered. He calls this Hare Brain Thinking. This is a great name, because we all have come up with a Hare Brained scheme or two. We right away make a connection to his point and can see ourselves rushing around making a mess of things.

Then he talked about how slow and often unfocused contemplation can lead to great insight and well conceived notions. He calls this the Turtle Mind. Again this is a great analogy because we all remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare and all its implications.

I took a walk along the walking path that follows the creek near my office this morning and saw a big snapping turtle wallowing around in a quiet spot of the water flow. The turtle is a great poster child for thinking things through, for letting inspiration find you while sitting on a rock and for hunkering down to let insignificant activity pass you by.

And so it is that I have kept the lessons and the effect of the Hare Brain vs. the Turtle Mind presentation in the sponge of experience I carry with me every day. I try not to take my Hare Brain ideas too seriously without presenting them to my Turtle Mind for deliberation and review. I try not to take my Turtle Mind inspirations too seriously without first seeing if the Hare Brain thinkers could put them into action.

Another good example of a speaker who could give an audience a lasting effect is Colin Powell. I had a great deal of respect for him as a soldier and as a person. I knew many people from the Bronx as a young man and was thrilled that a kid from the Bronx was one of our military's leaders. Apparently from the things we heard and saw of him as a military leader, he was very good at all the various skills and talents one needs to play such an important role in such a dangerous business.

I saw him speak (again I say saw and not heard) during his brief hiatus from government service when he was promoting his child education and development projects. He carried himself with confidence and spoke eloquently. We all paid attention immediately. He framed the issue as he saw it. He talked of how he had made a success of himself, mostly because of the people that he knew throughout his life. He talked of how the world in which many children grow up in has changed dramatically and there are no relatives, neighbors and friends to help give positive direction, confidence and motivation to kids coming up in the many rough neighborhoods of our nation. Our eyes welled up. Then he made a call to action and rallied us around the cause. He raised a lot of money for his projects that day and helped many people in the audience make a bigger priority of the children in their communities.

I can't say I have done anything earth shattering because of his talk. But we do make sure to hire high school aged kids to work for us every summer and give them a chance to get a great introduction to the business world. If nothing else, the sense of worth they get and the support they feel from the various people they come in contact with while they are here opens up some windows to the world.

What do you do if your budget does not allow for Colin Powell or John Cleese?

Ask yourself what you want from your speaker. What should your attendees go home with? I sometimes have people ask me to speak and tell me the reason they need a speaker for a corporate event is "Just to have someone from the outside". They sometimes say that they can tell the staff what to do, but that the staff will hear it better from someone else. This is an interesting way to look at it. If the company president gets up in front of the crowd and says, "Go write more business and take better care of our customers!", is that enough? Not all company presidents are great speakers, although many are great managers and leaders. Even if they are great speakers, sometimes their staff people are so used to hearing them that the message does not sink very deeply all the time.

So you may just need a different perspective or a different voice saying something similar to make the message hit home. Sometimes you pick a speaker because you or someone you know has read about or heard about the speaker and think there might be some engaging and entertainingly good information in store for your audience. Either way you are placing a lot of trust in that speaker. Because, even if your food is mediocre and the accommodations are less than lovely, a great speaker will save the day and send everyone home raving about the event.

On the other side of the coin, if the food and the accommodations are good and the speaker reads a slide show in a monotone voice with no expression, you are sunk.

I don't mind doing a little shameless self promotion from time to time. So I would say the feedback my audiences have given me would make me think I could help you put on a great event. People seem to think I can relate well to an audience and make my presentation relevant to them. They like my stories and illustrations and find my energy level engaging. I am really not trying terribly hard to master one speaking technique or another, but I do really enjoy the interactions with the audience members. I have always had an affinity for teaching and love to see the audience thinking and processing and absorbing.

One of my favorite activities in High School was the theater club. I especially enjoyed the comedies we put on. There is something very rewarding about pulling off a laugh line and seeing a few people in the audience burst out in the giggles. I can only imagine how much public speaking skill someone like John Cleese assembled during his years of acting. I am no John Cleese and I am no Colin Powell. But I have done and seen some interesting things in my time. I'd like to think my audiences go home with lessons and illustrations they can use as they move forward and that occasionally I have stirred them to action, as well.