A TEDx Talk in Belgium

Posted on 20 March 2025 by Carla Francome

On the 6^th March this year I did a TEDx Talk in Leuven, a town about half an hour from Brussels in Belgium. The project was an interesting journey from start to finish – from getting access to excellent coaches, to working out how to learn a speech off by heart. And it taught me something I hadn’t quite realised before – that if you really want to succeed in public speaking, it’s true what they say – preparation and practice is everything.

The talk came about completely by chance – someone I follow on LinkedIn shared a post from some contacts of theirs, who were looking for TEDx applications. I fired one off on a bit of a whim, without even realising the details- that it was being organised by students at KU Leuven, a prestigious university, and that it would therefore be in Belgium…!

I thought it would be fun to do a talk about clowning - about how I grew up in a family of clowns, and that I still feel I do a form of clowning today. My father was Colin the Clown when we were growing up, and my mum and I did children’s parties for many years as The Clumsy Clots. My childhood was flooded with juggling, magic, modelling balloons and stilt-walking.

I now do marketing and communications for Ctrl O, but clowning is still part of my life today, I feel. All those years performing helps with my confidence when doing presentations, and striking up conversations from scratch on exhibition stands. It’s also made me feel more comfortable sharing moments where I’ve felt a bit ridiculous, even within a work day.

The students organising the event had teamed up with the local toastmaster club, and I was assigned a speech coach, Philippe van Gucht, a local data scientist, AI expert, and all round genius human. He’s also the Immediate Past President of Leuven Toastmasters club, and certainly knows his stuff when it comes to speeches.

He had some excellent questions on our two teams calls. Who was my speech to be aimed at? What was the core message I wanted to get across, and what would my call to action be? His questions led to all sorts of anecdotes and ideas popping out of me – around my main message of how clowning can be incorporated into daily life – even if you have a bit of a serious job.

I realised that when I’ve embraced moments of feeling ridiculous and posted about them on social media, I’ve been surprised by the positive response. My call to action was about people sharing their embarrassing moments a little more- because I’ve found that authenticity can draw people to us, and encourage others to be more open too.

I wrote it all up, ready to test it out, and headed to a read- through session on a Friday night in February. After a pleasurable trip on the Eurostar and a local train, I arrived in Leuven, a beautiful and peaceful town with bicycles everywhere. One of the main cafe streets is pedestrianised, and everyone I met was very friendly. It’s essentially a student town, and plenty of people were strolling and pedalling around. Several of the students helped direct me around the town, walking out of their way, and having a friendly chat as we went.

That evening I headed to a student building to test out my speech. The audience would be a mix of students and members of the Leuven toastmaster club. I was excited to meet Marta Rozycka, the lead organiser. At just 23, Marta was juggling organising this event with a Masters in Electronics Engineering Technology, and has also been granted an internship at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands.

I stood at the front and delivered this brand new speech, and even doing it to 20 friendly faces felt intimidating. But to my immense relief, there were places where people laughed, and afterwards they said I didn’t talk too fast, and didn’t have to change my delivery too much.

The notes that came back were precise, and extremely helpful. My speech coach Philippe gave useful feedback, as did Thomas Blaye, another former president of Leuven Toastmaster’s club. They liked my chaos and energy, they said, and enjoyed the jokes, but said I needed to talk more about the awkwardness I felt, and generally make sure my stories and messages were more precise and practised.

The best piece of advice was to run through my speech at home, just as if I was doing it on stage- standing up, no notes, and going through the pictures at the right time. I needed my speech to feel second nature, they said, and also it had to be under 18 minutes, or it wouldn’t get on the TEDx YouTube channel.

I went home with a clear plan, and spent a little time each day tweaking my speech and rehearsing. Then there was a few days of learning, and a weekend of running through it with various family members, and we were off, I headed back to Leuven on the train. The event venue was stunning and imposing- a huge sandstone building, with a gorgeous theatre-like space. It was hard not to feel intimidated here. We did dress rehearsals, and I’d be on last.

The five other speeches were very engaging, from whether 5G is dangerous, to how to cope in a crisis from an expert in the military, and then I was up. Standing on stage, I looked out on a lot of smiley faces willing me on, especially Marta in the front row, and it made me feel at ease. In fact, it wasn’t that different from all those times I’d stood on stage as a clown. The fifteen minutes flew by, and I actually quite enjoyed it. Then Marta got up to speak, and talked mainly of her relief of all the things that could have gone wrong, but didn’t!

Afterwards we were given trophies and hand-written notes by the team. I was frankly amazed at what the organisers had pulled off, from showing complicated presentations to making sure the event was filmed correctly, to making sure no-one slid on the big red dot on the floor. (Okay I did slip on it once in the rehearsal, but a spot of gaffa tape saved the day).

Reflecting on the event, I thought about how much a team can achieve when they pull together, and how much advice from others can improve things.

For future public speaking and demos, I will prepare prepare prepare - it was the best advice I got. No more winging it. Mimic the real environment, and run through it. This is something that we’ve been doing more as a team at Ctrl O too, testing out talks and demos on each other, and giving ourselves a good few days to run-through things.

The speech should be on the TEDx YouTube channel in a few months, and in the meantime, if you would like a software demo that is well prepared, and might contain the odd joke, do get in touch!

Carla Francome