Profiling a great speaker: Matthew Nordan

As I mentioned in a previous post, I go to a lot of clean energy conferences. And the speakers I hear run the gamut from fascinating to frightening.

I’d like to profile one speaker whom I’ve heard twice and has consistently been outstanding. Why and how? Let’s take a look.

Matthew Nordan is a Vice President at Venrock Ventures. At last year’s Conference on Clean Energy, he pinch-hit for a canceled lunchtime speaker and gave a rousing 30-minute presentation with no advanced notice. This year, the organizers got smart and invited him to keynote the opening address.

What do I like about Matthew’s speaking skills? I’ve highlighted some take-aways that are applicable to any speech.

He was unexpected. To start with, he played a video game. That’s right: he actually played The Legend of Zelda, live, while standing in front of 200 industry experts at 9:00 in the morning, in order to demonstrate how important it is to recognize what you are up against and choose the right tools. He described this challenge – out loud – while choosing different tools to attack a killer rhinoceros.

He was passionate. He clearly loves the energy industry and isn’t afraid to show it. He easily walked around the stage and energetically used his hands to symbolize different points when discussing the past 10 years of cleantech investing. He used phrases like “This is awesome” and let his eyes and face convey the honest excitement he feels about the industry, reassuring us that its performance is better than it seems. It takes guts to use the phrase “awesome” in front of experts and not risk looking inexperienced.

He was knowledgeable. Matthew knows his technology, his knows his history, and he knows venture capital. It was evident in the way he structured his arguments and it gave him added credibility when he looked objectively at his own industry to provide suggestions for other VCs. When he ran his own numbers to prove his point, his credibility as a speaker helped us accept the credibility of his data.

He spoke in plain English – mostly. While he had quite a few industry-specific terms (it was, after all, an overview of the industry), he put everything in clear, concise English so that everyone in the audience could understand. This reinforces another recent blog post of mine about speaking to the least-knowledgeable person in the audience.

Every speech we hear has the potential to teach us what to do and what not to do when speaking in public. Matthew’s speech modeled some great public speaking skills that we can use no matter the subject or the audience. And when we use these skills effectively, we become very powerful communicators.