Baldwin Berges (LinkedIn profile) spent years in the investment world, helped companies raise money, and is now helping them clarify their messages, making complex ideas simple to understand. In this interview he talks a bit about speaking at conferences, and gives some tips to other speakers.

As you’ll hear, he’s a big supporter of professional conduct, remembering that your job is to make sure you make the conference organizer, and, more importantly, the sponsors, look good. They want to ensure the audience really enjoys its time there, and you need to make sure you support them in that.

Also, he shows the true mark of a professional, paying attention to details like making sure his clicker (the remote that advances the slides) is working. I imagine that Baldwin has very, very few technical problems (“sorry people, please bear with us while we try to figure out how to get this video to work”).

One of the main messages flowing through the interview is the need to realize your speech is not about you. Whether he is talking about thinking of needs of the conference organizer, or the needs of the audience, he is always driving home the point that your first thoughts should be of the needs of the other people in the room.