On February 23, 2016, Doug Stewart posted a recording to YouTube titled “#TEDxRaleigh Blab with Jason Goldberg & Michael Penney.” Stewart was one of the presenters for TEDxRaleigh 2016. Here he sat down with two of his fellow speakers about a month before the event. The recording runs just over an hour.
What it was
Blab was a live group video-chat app that was popular for a short time in 2015 and 2016. Hosts could open a live conversation with a few guests on camera while an audience watched and commented. Stewart used it to introduce some of the people his audience would see on the TEDxRaleigh stage.
His description of the video is one line long:
TEDxRaleigh coming March 19th, 2016. I had an opportunity to chat with two of my fellow presenters.
Doug Stewart, YouTube description
The video is an open conversation among three people preparing to give TEDx talks at the same event. The full recording is here for anyone who wants to hear how Michael talked about his talk and his work in the weeks before he gave it.
Why it mattered then
TEDxRaleigh 2016 was Michael’s first TEDx stage. Speakers in that position spend the weeks before rehearsing and shaping their message. Talking it through in public with other speakers is part of how the talk comes together.
It also shows the way speakers in a TEDx class often helped each other. Stewart used his own channel to build interest in his co-presenters, not just himself.
TEDx events use the TED conference format, but each one is organized independently by a local community. In Raleigh that meant local speakers like Stewart, Goldberg and Penney, and much of the promotion before the event came from the speakers themselves.
At the time Michael was best known as the co-host of the Cigars and Sea Stories podcast and a contributor to BloodStripes.com. The TEDx invitation put a Marine infantry veteran in front of a much wider audience than either of those projects had reached.
Looking back
One week later, Stewart posted a second, longer one-on-one conversation with Michael, “A conversation with an Entrepreneurial Marine.” On March 19, 2016, Michael gave his TEDxRaleigh talk, “What’s your IED? How to add value in explosive situations.” The TEDx Talks channel published it that June. “TEDxRaleigh speaker” has been part of how he is introduced ever since.
Blab itself is long gone, but this recording survives on Stewart’s YouTube channel.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
Work with Michael
Marine veteran, TEDx speaker and author of the 5 Paragraph Business Plan. Bring him to your stage, wear the gear, or catch him live.