The second Pan African Speaker Summit  that took place from the 4th to the 5th of August was hosted  by Voices into Africa in partnership with five speaker Associations namely Professional Speaker Association of Southern Africa (PSASA), PSAN (Namibia), CANASA (Cameroon), ZNSA (Zambia) and VSAI (Virtual Speakers Association International). It is the only speaking conference by speakers in Africa and for speakers in Africa.

The purpose was to share and demonstrate skills of professional speaking to speakers across the African Continent and collaborate as different speaker associations to share resources and demonstrate to the rest of the world what incredible talents and wisdom is available within Africa.

We had attendees from South Africa, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and also India, Germany and Netherlands.

There were seasoned speakers from around the African continent with a variety of topics geared towards supporting speakers in Africa to reach new heights and new markets.

It kicked off on Friday evening with a workshop presented by Bruce Wade and Charlotte Kemp titled LEARN HOW TO SURVIVE IN A SEA FULL OF FISHES. This value-packed and smoothly delivered presentation touched on how to  niche, position, publicize, sell, upsell and resell yourself

TOPIC: From Passion to professional

NUGGETS: Nobody really wants to hire a professional speaker, what the people want is an expert on something who is good at speaking. Passion must be supported by a professional approach.

TOPIC: Beyond the box

NUGGETS: Creativity is a mindset. To go beyond the box requires a daring spirit that can seek to reconfigure the box and even let go of it, after all, who actually decides what the box is?

TOPIC: Presenting technical information using story-telling

NUGGETS: To capture the attention of an audience while doing a technical presentation, structure it like a story with the following parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution and even illustrations.

TOPIC: Elephants don’t leave legacies, they live them!

NUGGETS: Life is what you make of it, a legacy is what you make of your life. It is the good things that you do in touching people’s heart all day, every day.

TOPIC: Africa is the World

NUGGETS: The title mama Africa is significant. We must create the ink that will like African stories because until the lion learns to write, the story will always glorify the hunter.

TOPIC: Future proof yourself with freelance mentality.

NUGGETS: Show your value, do what you said you would do. Have a do or die mentality and take true ownership of what you are doing

TOPIC: Walk the talk- Skills required to develop a sustainable speaking business

NUGGET: In addition to having public speaking and communication skills, business, marketing and selling skils,networking and relationship building skills, we must harness our anchors to be able to overcome negative voices especially the internal ones.

TOPIC: Beyond Technology

NUGGETS: There is still a bright future for professional speakers, People still want people so AI will not replace speakers. Hence, return to humanity

TOPIC: Curating  universally relevant epistles

NUGGETS: The universal human language is emotion,so create empathy using emotion while considering cultural relevance on the global stage.

TOPIC: Learning to speak with energy

NUGGETS: Energy is the most valuable gift. A person’s energy determines the impact he makes so be responsible for how you show up

TOPIC: Leveraging your speaking for your personal and entity brand

NUGGETS: Our speaking abilities, if harnessed well can add so much value and positioning for both our personal and entity brand.

TOPIC: The shift- transitioning from employment to full time speaking

NUGGETS: To transition smoothly, read the right books, attend seminars, look for mentors, travel, build relationships and do self evaluation

TOPIC: How to be a Tall tree in the Marketplace

NUGGETS: We have to leverage on analytics and AI tools to gauge market trends, audience behavior and other relevant metrics which can enable speakers to be more precise in serving the target audience hence be a tall tree

TOPIC: Increase your impact

NUGGETS: Speaking is servant leadership. Inspire. Be a category of one. Over prepare, under promise and over deliver. Be authentic. Celebrate shared memories. Keep to time

TOPIC: Three things the rest of the world can learn from Africa

NUGGETS: At their core, Africans are determined, they have love for one another and they get excited over little things.It is our duty to keep fostering it.

TOPIC: The formula of Persuasion

NUGGETS: As speakers, we are educhangement officers. We speak to educate, bring a positive change and entertain. Persuasion is a powerful tool to use other than threatening or bribing

TOPIC: Collaborative Intelligence: Why collaboration unleashes the potential of Africa’s professional speaking industry

NUGGETS: Understand why people book you- if you focus on those that love you, you become complacent, if you focus on those that hate you, you become demotivated- so avoid the two extremes.