I get to do cool things. I get to ride fire engines for a living. My high school prom was held in a German castle. I’ve been to Capitol Hill and talked to politicians. It’s not that I’m a cool person; I’m just cool by proxy. I happen to be in places where cool people are, doing cool things, and I get included.

This last Saturday, I was again in a cool place, with cool people, doing cool things. I did my first ever TEDx Talk. Wow! It’s kind of a “dog catching the car” moment. I started the year with the goal of doing 3 TEDx talks over the next 5 years. I figure what a cool way to end my working career. Putting together something I learned to share with others. This year, I even broke down that goal by applying to 10 TEDx Talks. The TED mainstage wouldn’t have a reason to reach out to me. You must be a big name in your field to get that call. But the TEDx stages, locally produced events, that I can apply for. I would have a better shot.

When I got the email stating that I was in TEDxWoodbridge, it still took a while for me to process how cool this would be. Then last Saturday happened. As we finished up with an event held in a small theater room with about 60 people in it. It started to hit me. It happened again between the people shaking my hand, talking to other speakers, and taking pictures galore. I did a cool thing by being cool by proxy.

I want to take a minute and thank everyone who helped me get to this day. Not going to list people by name; don’t want to be embarrassed if you thought your name would be there and it’s not. But I do need to acknowledge that I got to do a cool thing, thanks to a lot of cool people.

Thanks to:

  • All the people that gave me a place to practice
  • All the people that gave me feedback
  • All the people who have helped me to deliver a message in different forms
  • All the people that came out, or at least wanted to

Because of countless people, in a month or so, I’ll be able to share that talk with all of you so you can help me share it with the right people who need to hear it. I’ll post the link on my other blog, Stories, Jokes, and Talks with Folks. Until then, be sure to tell your story, on purpose.

Published by Nick Baskerville

After years of being an instructor in the military and the and the fire service, I realized I needed to improve my delivery. My students needed me to improve delivery. But how do I improve my delivery? Simple. I finally took a member of Toastmasters up on the invitation to come to a meeting. It wasn't long until I joined. Along the way of improving my skills at delivering a message, I came to understand that of all the ways to get a point across, telling stories is the best way to get it done. Around this time, another friend from Toastmasters told me about The Moth monthly story telling shows. What better way to test out my theories on storytelling. It's in my travels there to the shows that I found more and more shows, and classes, and events centered around storytelling. Despite how many people know about the storytelling world, not many people know about the storytelling world. So now, I'm out to tell the world about storytelling.

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