I spoke in front of 100 people regularly without having a script!
I did the chess commentaries at the British Chess Championships for a few years.
The grandmasters were next door and I was continually brought in their moves a few at a time.
I would make predictions, play the actual moves and try to explain them.
Sometimes I would challenge the audience to predict the next move. I handled questions and occasionally ventured a joke. (You can tell who thinks they are doing well in their game by spotting the players who are looking at the prize list. )
The games usually lasted 5-7 hours, so it was quite a stint - but I loved it!
Probably about 500 people, live. A few charity things, where I spoke to the crowd for a few minutes, and then introduced the band. Then, I fronted the band, so I have sung in front of that many too.
I’ve done community theatre, musicals mostly, for 400-500 people. Those involved speaking scripted lines, and singing too.
As a ring announcer for the local pro wrestling promotion, it would have been 300 to 350 people.
I’ve hosted live radio, so at any given time, I might have had thousands of listeners. But I wasn’t speaking in front of them, so I’m unsure if that would count.
About 100. Work function. We do this anniversary thing, and you have to give a speech. I think it was my 25th anniversary. One other person on stage. She wanted us to do a duet of Paul Simons ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’. Um, that would be a no. She kinda froze on stage anyway.
I did do the Groucho Marx leg/knee handshake thing with her, nobody got it.
Probably 25 or so in public speaking classes in High School or College.
One thing that chafes me is the saying that public speaking is feared more than death. Now I can see given the hypothetical someone may chose death, but given the real, tangible, and immediate aspect of death I imagine all but the suicidal would pick public speaking.
I learned the hard way that some folks really do freeze when getting up in front of a crowd. I was president of my high school junior Kiwanis (“Key Club”) service organization and spoke in front of crowds regularly. The regional organization wanted us to nominate someone to represent a multi-state area and I picked a very smart but shy fellow who I decided “needed an opportunity to shine.”
He was flattered but willing and I helped him prepare his speech for the convention banquet (probably a couple of thousand in a giant ballroom). I gave him a big windup introduction but when he came to the podium he couldn’t get a single word out. I’ll never forget the look of smiling terror on his face, and I still feel awful about it.
My grandfather was chair of his local Toastmasters (“back in the day”) and used to describe the day he got up to introduce his closest friend, and after a big windup he blanked on the guy’s name.
I used to lead short nature walks and sustainability tours to small groups of 15-20 people, as well as doing pitches for environmental efforts to big classrooms full of college students. It was a lot of fun and I wish I got to do that more. I used to be terribly shy as a kid, but now I love public speaking and can’t get enough of it…
Separately, the biggest crowd I ever spoke to was in my early 20s at a church-run refugee camp in Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina victims. FEMA wasn’t doing enough, so private groups had stepped in to provide relief efforts. I volunteered there with a friend, working their soup kitchen, despite not being religious at all. On our last day there, the pastor gave a speech, and I asked to borrow the mic for a second just to say goodbye.
I told the crowd of maybe a hundred people how much I appreciated the opportunity to serve them, and how despite being an atheist and an outsider, I admired their hospitality and sense of community.
I was immediately bombarded with warnings of hellfire and brimstone and appeals to join the flock. It’s not too late. Hell awaits. God still loves me.
I was quite naive at the time, and didn’t yet know how much religion mattered to some people. Especially there. The shouting continued for several minutes, but I eventually managed to de-escalate the situation and calm the crowd. It all ended up fine. Afterward, an older gent pulled me aside and told me how brave (and stupid) that was. We chuckled and hugged. I left with warm memories of that place and time; the aftermath of Katrina really brought people together in a way that even religion couldn’t push apart.
I have an acting background, but I differentiate performance (where I have a script and a character and a series of rehearsals in a group) from public speaking (where I am myself and I’ve designed my own presentation and any rehearsal is private).
I have done corporate training type presentations for decades, typically in the 30-50 person range, occasionally 75-100, a handful of times 200+ or so. As long as it’s a topic I’m comfortable with, it’s no big deal. If I need to wing it, I get stuck inside my head and stumble around. But I’m never afraid to be in front of people.
On the performance side, the biggest one was doing Shakespeare for an audience of probably 2000. (The house had 3000 seats but was never close to sold out.)
Having worked in radio and TV most of my life, I’ve emceed the occasional concert or event with perhaps a few hundred to a thousand people in attendance. I haven’t done that all that often, but I distinctly remember the first time I was called upon to do so.
It was 1972. I was 20 years old and a parttime DJ at a local Top 40 station. We were the sponsoring station for a concert by a well-known rock band. I was backstage and the only DJ from the station who had shown up. The station manager tapped me on the shoulder and said “You’re introducing the act.” There were 10,000 people in the arena. I went on stage, introduced myself, did a short plug for the station, and then did a “please welcome” intro to the band. Pretty heavy responsibility for a kid. The other thing I remember from that night was that as I returned to the backstage area, a security guard accosted me, said I wasn’t authorized to be there, and tried to throw me and my girlfriend out. I told the guy “I’m from W—! was just on stage introducing the band!” The guy would have none of it. Fortunately, the station manager happened by and saved us from being ejected from the arena.
I understand why speaking before even a small group causes butterflies-in-the-belly for most people. But as long as you’re prepared, you needn’t worry about being judged on your speaking ability by the people in attendance. More often than not, they’re going to be with you. And most of them are probably thinking “I’m glad that isn’t me up there!”
Like others, I’ve done community theater, sometimes in front of 200 to 300 people. But also like others, I don’t really count that as “public speaking.” But I do think that experience helps with the nerves of being in front of others.
In terms of what I would call true public speaking, I’ve done presentations at various professional conferences. Audiences have averaged between 20-30 people. Probably the biggest audience I ever had was about 50.
In-person, around 300 or 400, more than a few times, though those were brief stints as a minor member of an executive team. If you include simulcast across more than a dozen countries, something in the 8,000-10,000 range, though if you can’t see 'em, they ain’t there (or so I told myself). I did a bunch in the 100-200 range before that role.
I truly hated public speaking, had the worst fears, trembling, etc., but along the way a friend with similar issues told me about a beta-blocker (propranolol) that made it much, much easier. At some point I actually started to enjoy it, and then I retired.
Only a small classroom for me, if you’re talking small-presentation length. If you add up all the times I’ve called in to radio talk shows and answered as part of a quiz team in front of larger audiences, it would probably only add up to one small presentation.
The largest crowds were probably 1,000+, generally as an invited plenary speaker at scientific conferences. By the time I was speaking to audiences that size I was senior, respected and had the confidence that goes along with my position in the community.
But I still remember the first time I spoke publicly. It was in grad school and our professor ran a weekly seminar and had students present on something related to their thesis. I was confident until I got up. Then it was a haze of stammering, mumbling, flop sweat and terror.
When I was a senior in high school, I was asked to give one of the sermons on ‘Youth Sunday’, in which the high school Sunday school classes were in charge of the Sunday morning worship service. I spoke in front of probably 350 people. I was nervous as hell, but got through it okay.
During my work career, I regularly gave short ( 5 minutes max) presentations at all-employee meetings in front of maybe 200 people.
And then a few years ago, a good friend passed away. His widow asked me to give one of the eulogies at his funeral. He was well-liked and well-respected, so the sanctuary was packed, well over 500 people. Again, I was quite nervous, but I relayed a couple of humorous memories about the deceased, and the laughter of the crowd helped me relax and get through it without incident.
Not speaking, but I’ve sung in front of about 15,000 at a handful of commencement ceremonies. That’s intimidating enough, but one of those times Quincy Jones was receiving an honorary doctorate. (He did not offer me a recording contract.)
Man some of y’all have done some serious public speaking. I thought my audience of 170 was impressive. No wonder my confidence is high, I’m barely cracking the surface of large groups! I think my public speaking confidence would go out the window if the audience approached 1000.
I’ve done a lot of speaking and presentations throughout my career – plus regularly doing scripture readings at church, a few eulogies at funerals, and being a guest lecturer for college classes a few times. I’m comfortable speaking in front of people (probably my inner ham coming through), and thanks to some training, as well as lots of practice, I’ve been told that I’m pretty good at it.
And, yet, it’s been rare that those have been in front of more than a few dozen people. I don’t think that I’ve ever spoken in front of more than about a hundred or so.
The largest audience was probably around 1500-2000 at graduation.
The largest room was in Glasgow for the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention, held in Glasgow’s convention center. The main room was a 5000 seat auditorium also used for rock concerts, but the panels they expected to get the best attendance were scheduled there.
I was the moderator for one such panel, with several big names on it. We were taken from the green room to the side door because we had to wait since the previous speaker was running over. Unfortunately for us, that speaker was the Guest of Honor giving his big talk. Some guy named Terry Prachett. The crowd wouldn’t let him go.
When he finally stopped, the crowd did not wait around for the next panel. Ever see the faces on big name writers when an entire auditorium of 5000 people files out in front of them? The horror genre has nothing on it.
Because the main room was being broadcast live on a local channel[!], television lights blinded us when we finally got to the platform. I don’t know the final audience number. It may have been just my wife.
And it gets worse. Because Prachett was a singleton they had left one microphone for the five of us to share. The acoustics were so bad that we couldn’t hear one another without the microphone, so the panel had literally no interaction with one another: not the way panels are supposed to work. The show must go on and it did, but it made clear how humilating show biz could be.
About 1500 when I was general chair of a big conference and welcomed everyone at the plenary session. A few years before I had set up a panel of the members of the press who covered us - that was moved to before the conference, with no competition. I led the panel, and we must have gotten 1,000 people.
If we’re going for biggest bombs, back in 1990 or so there was a new IEEE standard called1149.1, or boundary scan. It is now universally accepted, but back then I was on a road show pushing it. We went to a conference in the Javits Center of New York. Which is immense. We got the last session. There were 6 of us on the podium, and 4 in the audience, the only attendees in that entire immense conference center. Spooky.
