Public Speaking for Geospatials: Storytelling, Networking & Presentations - Juraj Holub

When did you find your talent for public speaking or speaking generally?

will be a little bit nostalgic and personal uh at this point and i like to say and i really really mean it from the bottom of my heart uh the reason and one of the reasons why i'm doing what i'm doing is my grandma she has been an exceptional um teacher at the high school and she was teaching geography and biology classes and she was so incredibly passionate about uh teaching, which to me is the other side of the coin.

It's the second side of the same coin, basically.

She was so passionate about teaching that decades, and I mean like 50, 60, 70 years later when I meet random people in the street and they find out that my grandma was actually teaching them, they say like, okay, your grandma actually transformed my life, literally.

And she was so passionate about teaching biology classes that in the morning she went to the butcher just to pick up some organs, you know, from the dead cows and she brought them to the classroom for example a heart and she put it on the on the desk and said like okay kids now we're going to dissect the cow's heart you know and something like and and people went just completely crazy because she was just so spontaneous and all over um all over the teaching she absolutely loved that that that part of her job and i think she's been a very inspirational person to me throughout my career but to bring it to the present day

So sorry, I would like to ask you because that shows like the biggest heart of the teacher doing all this stuff in addition to just reading from the book, right? Was she also a good speaker?

She was an excellent speaker.

She was absolutely one of the most brilliant communicators that I have ever known.

Throughout my childhood, she was telling us all about the stars.

She was incredibly passionate about the nature.

And once again, it was not only about telling you things.

And I think this is one of those things um you know things that make great communicators great is that they do not only tell you things they show you things and they get you to do those things so as we were you know joining this uh summer trips to the to the nature over here in in slovakia to the mountains she used to take us out as kids and and we're standing right below a beautiful starry night.

And she was pointing her finger to all those constellations and telling us about the space, about the stars, about the vastness of it.

Or some other day, we would just go on a hike and she would pick up a grasshopper and just describe the grasshopper to us as kids.

And at the end, she actually ate the grasshopper.

She was a very like a...

She was...

Bear Grylls.

Exactly.

Bear Grylls type of a lady.

So what I'm trying to say is that great communication is not only about telling people people about the things.

It's about showing them, getting them to do those things.

And on top of that, there is one more ingredient, which my grandma possessed very much, and it was passion.

You have to be passionate about what you talk about.

And she was incredibly passionate about biology, about geography, and about things around us.