Just 25 years ago, we had no web. Ten years ago we had no smartphone. Just imagine what we’ll have 20 years from now.
SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn/take away from your presentations?TCHONG: First and foremost, I want them to be excited about the future. These are exciting times, and the future will abound with simply incredible things. Just 25 years ago, we had no web. Ten years ago we had no smartphone. Just imagine what we’ll have 20 years from now. It will be mind-boggling. So, it’s an ideal time to be alive and to be able to participate in this massive societal revolution.
Secondly, I want them to experience first-hand some of the incredible developments that have already taken place and those that are happening as we speak. To see the big picture, you need to have a bird’s eye view of today’s morphing landscape, and that’s what I do; I connect the dots. My talks take you on a roller-coaster ride through the landscape of now that you will not soon forget. You will learn how society is evolving and why, and you will see the remarkable platforms for disruptive innovation that Ubertrend waves offer.
SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How do you prepare for your speaking engagements?TCHONG: I research endlessly. I spend three to four hours each day reading and researching. I’m currently writing two books simultaneously so you can imagine my workload. Each talk requires 12 to 16 hours of dedicated research and each presentation I give is tailored to a client’s market. I just spoke at a sustainability conference, where I dug up their challenges from two years ago and gave them my cutting-edge POV. You can imagine how happy the client was with this effort above and beyond the call of duty.
SPEAKING.COM: Have you had any particularly memorable speaking engagements/unusual situations arise while on the road?TCHONG: In 2006, I gave a presentation in the employee cafeteria of Diageo in New York. It went well, but I would not recommend a casual venue for an important message. My most exciting presentation was interviewing Dennis Rodman in front of a large digital marketing crowd at my own conference during the dotcom boom. Another adrenalin-pumping gig was a presentation to 1,500 realtors at the National Association of REALTORS Leadership Summit and one for Carlson Hotels at Disneyland Paris. Suffice it to say it was not a Mickey Mouse talk!
My talks are mission-critical for attendees who seek a decided advantage in business development or the reinvention of a company trajectory.
SPEAKING.COM:
What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?TCHONG: In general, my best audiences are stakeholders who are vested in quickly propelling their careers or organizations by better grasping how humanity is evolving and why, and why innovation is key to success. My talks are mission-critical for attendees who seek a decided advantage in business development or the reinvention of a company trajectory.
SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote speaking topics are your favorites and why?TCHONG: My current favorite is “Unbox Your Thinking to Create Innovation Breakthroughs,” because innovation has become paramount due to increased global competition, China, the Internet, and Apple. But I’m also very proud of having been the first speaker on the circuit dissecting “The Changing Social Dialog” in 2007, way before anyone was aware of Facebook, let alone Twitter. That evolved into “I’m Going To Tweet You Up” in 2009, the same year Twitter started scooping our world of news.
SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?TCHONG: It happened purely by happenstance. A colleague, Steve Roth – the entrepreneur responsible for Adobe desktop publishing courses under the Thunder Lizard brand – and I were brainstorming a new internet advertising conference, so we came up with “Web Advertising,” where I keynoted. That one exposure immediately landed me a paid engagement at Canon USA and before you know it I was doing 30 presentations a year.
From three-year-old Jennifer who tells her father that it takes too long to develop photographs to that Indiana man who walked off a San Diego cliff this past Christmas, my presentations are full of vivid illustrations of our changing scenario.
SPEAKING.COM: How do you keep your audience engaged and actively listening during your keynotes? Do you use case studies or personal stories in your speeches?TCHONG: I’m a story teller. From three-year-old Jennifer who tells her father that it takes too long to develop photographs to that Indiana man who walked off a San Diego cliff this past Christmas, my presentations are full of vivid illustrations of our changing scenario. I also add a big dose of humor to my observations, including funny cartoons, videos, animated GIFs plus humorous quizzes, which keep audiences glued to their seats. I then rivet them with innovation case studies like that of Joy Mangano, a divorced mother raising three children, who went from a rainy parking lot selling the Miracle Mop to a 14-bedroom house. Stories like these emphasize that anyone has the ability to identify a known pain point and the power to do something about it. As a final push, if time permits, I offer a review of my favorite digital tools, which attendees can use to boost their productivity and innovation quotient or “IQ.”
SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients achieve?TCHONG: I frequently hear that I inspired attendees’ digital marketing, social media, cloud or mobile application initiatives. Or galvanized their innovation efforts to improve their competitive edge materially. For example, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh came up with the concept of reinventing Downtown Las Vegas after one of my talks at Zappos University and a story in Vegas Seven.
In my innovation workshops at the University of San Francisco and UC Berkeley, I’ve helped students brainstorm breakthrough products. In fact, I can say without braggadocio that workshop students helped develop a next-generation social network – one that would engage users and reward them for their engagement by increasing their social currency.
Take that, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter!
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