Monday, January 01, 2007

NPDA Conference

Senior Care, our other family business in Oklahoma, has been involved with the NPDA (National Private Duty Association) since it started 4 years ago. We're charter members and have enjoyed attending every conference so far. When NPDA leadership called a month or two ago to invite me to emcee an open forum of questions and answers, I was a bit apprehensive to accept. Public speaking hasn't really been a strength of mine. One on one, I can talk with anyone, but don't give me a lectern and put me in front of a few dozen people. It's hard to connect with a group and I think that's what gets me. You don't get feedback from the entire group.

Anyway, the conference brochure came out on the NPDA website, so I thought I'd paste my little write-up from page 6 here.
Wish me luck! Of all the sessions I could have been asked to lead, this must be the easiest. I mean, I don't need to prepare or anything! It's just emceeing the questions from the crown and answers from the crowd. Maybe I should look up some crowd-control techniques? =) Seriously, though, it's caused me to reconsider joining Toastmasters to work on public speaking. I understand that public speaking is one of the top fears universally and in my case I'm sure it's mostly just due to inexperience.

We're heading out to lunch with Holly's family, so I don't have time to do it now, but I've been working on my Goals for 2007 and I'll mention some of them here later.

Oh, here's an interesting side-note. Did you know that Google has an alert service that you can use to constantly search for specific terms, like your name or business name? Very helpful! You can see more about it here.

1 comment:

SES said...

interesting bro! Sounds like a great way to experience something new while challenging yourself and continuing to develop a valuable skill, public speaking. I'm sure you'll be great.