Strategic thinker, keynote speaker, walking ideas bank and professional cage rattler, Dion Chang is one of South Africa’s most respected trend analysts and founder of Flux Trends, which takes the unique view of “trends as business strategy”.
Ahead of the upcoming Innovation in Speaking (Un)Conference, Dion delves into his journey with speaking, one that he says began by accident. Through his career in trends analysis, speaking was a required skill that came with the territory. But, when it comes to presenting, there is nothing ordinary about that way he (and his team) at Flux does it.
From a creative media background, Dion says that presentation has always been important to him. He explains that it is a performance, an art and that all parts of the performance should be planned and considered as such. This extends from the transition of slides to stepping up the visuals of a virtual presentation. Additionally, and importantly he affirms that content should be good, fascinating (something changing and different) and the overall impact should have its own persona and style.
At the conference Dion will be sharing what it means to think differently, and how to apply to this business and your speaking engagements. The pandemic that turned everything on its head is something he believes should reframe our focus, our content and the way we do things – so that we do not get left behind (stuck with an outdated offering) in the virtual realm.
With things continuously evolving, Dion highlights that we should do we everything we can to stay relevant and offer new perspectives in light of the current landscape.
Passionate about bridging the mindset of corporate companies that are stuck in a rut, he is actively in involved in ‘Innovation Tours’ to help old school thinkers and organisations break into new and unique opportunities. He says that if we can get people to think differently, we can open up a world of possibilities.
One of Dion’s most profound life lessons is that in order to make something relatable (to an audience) you have to be willing to give of yourself. If we think about this carefully and choose what ‘personal’ aspects we bring to our audience, we will ultimately build closer connections and our content will have greater impact.
Finally, Dion advises all speakers to have empathy and to be authentic and real, so that we stay relatable. Although, through the pandemic we lost the physical touch aspect, we need to replicate it virtually as a speaker – and he will be showing us how to reframe content to be more relatable and a little bit vulnerable too. Be able to laugh at yourself.
You do not want to miss Dion Chang at the Innovation in Speaking (Un)Conference from 9-11 April. Get your tickets here.