When I was in primary school (late 1960s) I was part of a stage play project that involved both stage performances in front of hundreds and also being on TV. That more or less demolished any sense of stage-fright. Then in the early 1980s I studied drama and did more stage performances (e.g. David E. Freeman’s “Creeps”, Tom Stoppard’s “After Magritte” and Ellis and Boddy’s “The Legend of King O’Malley”)
Now at 61 years of age, I’ve been in front of audiences large and small mostly as a public speaker or M/C. I do get a bit apprehensive from time to time but as someone said to me years ago, “There’s nothing wrong with butterflies provided they fly in formation.”
How’s everyone for speaking in public spaces? (Being interviewed by @jonathanmiddleton doesn’t really count as it’s just you, a camera and a microphone.)
My dad was an amateur magician, He had me up on stage helping him when I was very young, so a large audience doesn’t intimidate me. I went to technical school for broadcasting. Aside from getting my 1st Class FCC Radiotelephone license, the “soft” part of the course involved classes for being a radio personality. As an extra-curricular, I read the news for some local radio station during the Oklahoma state fair. I did fine, but it disabused me of wanting to be a radio personality, because of the off-hours work it would involve.
I did a lot of group training when I was a telemarketing manager, but the groups were probably never more than a dozen or so people.
It probably won’t surprise anyone that I don’t mind talking.
Took me a little while to get used to big crowds but I quite enjoy it now. I’ve done my fair share of conference talks but found that I generally enjoying emceeing more, as there’s no real preparation needed, there’s less intense focus on your, and you get to interact more with speakers and the audience, and be a little more sense-and-respond.
One of my proudest moments was doing a live coding an app as a Ruby conference talk in front of Matz (who created Ruby) who was very complimentary afterwards
