The six sessions 🎯 · from the sentence to the questions after
The running case is Noor Haddad, a constructed team lead of a nine-person support operations team, preparing a ten-minute slot at her first company all-hands. She is invented for teaching, and every page says so. Alongside her, every build-along runs on a talk of your own.
One idea worth the room
A talk carries one idea. The throughline in the words of the person who named it, the one-sentence test, the cut list, and how much a ten-minute slot really holds.
🚪 Session 2 · coreThe first thirty seconds and the last line
An opening that gives the room a reason to care, a close that is not "any questions?", and what Mehrabian's 7-38-55 actually measured.
💓 Session 3 · coreNerves are physiology
What a racing heart is doing, the "get excited" reappraisal study read at source with its replication record, and where "people fear speaking more than death" came from.
⏱️ Session 4 · bench nightThe pace bench
How fast real speakers talk, from 2,299 TED talks measured in your browser. Paste your own transcript, list your fillers, test "speak faster to fit more in", and press the break button.
🖼️ Session 5 · deeperSlides that support, not compete
When a slide helps a listener and when it splits their attention, what identical on-screen text did to learning in a controlled study, and the 10/20/30 rule labelled for what it is.
🎤 Session 6 · deeperRehearsal that works, and the questions after
Rehearsing out loud and on the clock, predicting the questions you will get, answering the one you cannot, and the final run-through before Noor walks on.
Your passport 🎫
Clear all three quiz questions in a session and it gets stamped. Six stamps means you can find the one sentence a talk is for, open and close on purpose, read the evidence on nerves without overselling it, measure your own pace, cut a slide that competes with you, and rehearse in a way that changes the talk. Stamps live in this browser only.
What this is not, so you land in the right place 🧭
| If your question is | Go here instead |
|---|---|
| How do I structure a message, an email or a two-minute spoken update in a meeting? | Communication ↗ |
| How do I design the slides and the story arc of a deck? | Visual Storytelling ↗ and AI PPT ↗ |
| How do I run a workshop or a meeting where the room does the talking? | Facilitation ↗ |
| I have to stand up in front of a room and say one thing well, and I want to know which speaking advice is real. | you are in the right place |
A talk to a room. The idea, the opening and close, the nerves, the pace, the slides and the rehearsal. Message structure, deck design and facilitation are taught next door and linked from here rather than repeated.
Choose your path 🗺️
Three doors into the same conviction: one idea, said so the room can keep it.
What is honest here 🧾
Speaking advice travels with famous numbers, and several of the most famous do not say what they are quoted as saying. Each claim on these pages carries its status.
| Claim | Status |
|---|---|
| Every bench figure: pace, sentence length, pause marks, fillers, the break button | Really computed in your browser from derived counts for 2,299 one-speaker TED talks (Kaggle, rounakbanik/ted-talks); no transcript text is shipped |
| Whether faster speech is understood less | Not measured by the bench, and said so on the widget; one 1970 study of machine-compressed speech is read at source in session 4, with its limits |
| "Words are 7% of the message" (Mehrabian 7-38-55) | Misquoted scope. Mehrabian's own page limits it to feelings and attitudes; session 2 shows what that means |
| "Say 'I am excited' before you speak" | Read at source, with its one direct replication, which did not reproduce the observer ratings, taught alongside it in session 3 |
| "People fear public speaking more than death" | Traced in session 3 to a 1973 survey reported in a London newspaper, whose original report could not be read; a 2024 survey puts the two fears within three points of each other |
| The 10/20/30 rule of slides | An opinion, from its author's 2005 blog post, with no study behind it |
| Noor Haddad, her talk, her transcripts and her numbers | Constructed, for teaching |
The knowledge map 🧠
The whole path at a glance - hover a session to spotlight its concepts, click any node to jump in.