Have you ever had your 90 minute custom keynote cut back to 60 minutes, then to 30 minutes, then to 10 minutes…and it still didn’t matter because the audience was too drunk to hear it anyway? Tell us the details. Have you had your best-ever presentation dissolve into mush as the sound system dissolved into a show of flying sparks and electronic squeals? Give us the dirt.

We’re asking our veteran speakers to contribute to this section of the web site. We have all had experiences that no one could have warned you to look out for, problems large and small that had to be dealt with on the spot. Sometimes our instincts steer us to a victory. But very often we lose the battle that day while winning the war later on. So we are equally as interested in your experiences where you lost for the moment, but where the lesson learned was more valuable than the momentary stumble.

Here is what we ask:

• Let yourself be vulnerable. You’re among friends here so you don’t have to be the hero of your own stories. At least not all of them.
• Try to focus on the experience and the lesson. If you feel you need to spell out the lesson learned, that’s your call to make.
• Be pointed. Let’s keep these in the 200 to 400 words range to encourage people to click through a variety while online.
• If you have several experiences to tell, tell them separately rather than running them together.
• We are not looking for lessons newer speakers could get anywhere else. This is not a collection of "Tips for New Speakers" (Develop a niche; write a book; call your mother; stop to smell the roses). And please, this is about speaking, not traveling, so no suitcase packing tips! Everything here should be based on a personal experience where you had to learn a hard lesson. It could be funny, could be sad, very likely was painful; but you grew from it.
• Unlike SpeakerNet News, these are presented as permanent archive posts, not a current edition to be replaced in two weeks.
• We are not looking for requests for information or tips here. SpeakerNet does a better job of that than we can offer here. We are here to tell, not to ask.
• Send your entry to the GLAC office.