I’m always thinking and talking about Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course to complete strangers! Yesterday while heading to the airport, my driver and I struck up a conversation. He asked me what I do. I said one of the things I do is teach public speaking to techies.
Then he asked where I teach, so I said online.
He immediately scoffed, and asked, “How effective could an online course on public speaking be?”
This wasn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question.
A lot of people are interested in the Confident Communicator Course, until they realize it’s online. Then they decide it’s not for them, because they think:
“It’s probably a series of pre-recorded videos.” Or, “Some boring webinar format.”
“Unlike an offline course, it’s probably hard to interact with the instructor and other students.”
“It probably won’t help me get over stage fright and deal with the nerves.”
Sound familiar?
We get it. And frankly having sat through some of those online courses, we decided we didn’t want to teach one of them!
We decided to take a different approach with our course to ensure that students, like you, are engaged, and more importantly, experience results at the end.
So for the past three years, we’ve been teaching the Confident Communicator Course as an online course. Here’s how it’s different:
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, classes are LIVE and interactive.
There are no pre-recorded classes. Karen and I show up to every single class and teach it live and online. We ask you to fill out a brief profile at the beginning of the course, so we can tweak each lesson to meet your needs.
We host a live lab session once a week. This gives you a chance to practice the material we’ve covered in class, and we provide individualized feedback.
For some labs, we do interactive exercises as a group.
You are encouraged to ask questions during class time. If you have more, you can ask them on a Slack channel and we’ll respond within 24 hours.
We do record all classes and labs for you to re-watch in case you miss something.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll get a chance to practice in front of an audience of you peers.
While it’s true that you won’t deliver your talk on a big stage in our course, you do have to do a 5-minute lightning talk at the end. Many students have said preparing that lightning talk and delivering it online to an audience of their peers was a great dress rehearsal. When they finally went on stage, they felt ready!
Moreover, a lot of presentations are hosted online via webinars or video calls. And companies are asking employees to train their teammates or on-board new customers by creating pre-recorded videos. And of course, we all want to sound polished on a podcast interview!
Our course let’s you practice being engaging when you aren’t physically present with your audience.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll receive individualized attention.
Unlike MOOCs or other online courses where there are a lot of students present, making it hard to interact with the instructor, our course is capped at 50 students. This gives us time to address your needs and concerns.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll get time to practice and incorporate feedback.
We’ve designed the course to span 6 weeks to give you time to let the techniques we teach you sink in through ongoing practice, and by receiving direct feedback from us.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll learn and interact with peers in a safe environment.
We provide a safe sandbox where we encourage you to practice, make mistakes, and learn from your peers.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll leave with a talk + a proven process.
During the 6 weeks, we walk you through a number of techniques and practice sessions that help you build up to your final lightning talk, which you deliver on the last day of the course.
In Femgineer’s Confident Communicator Course, you’ll get to focus on improving communication skills that are relevant to your career in tech.
We do start with public speaking basics. Then focus on concepts relevant to your career in tech such as being brief without sounding rushed, engaging mixed audiences, telling effective stories, communicating complicated technical concepts, being a non-native English speaker, and more.
We pride ourselves on providing a comprehensive program. We offer it online because we want to provide cost-effective and convenient training for busy professionals in tech.
Onsite in-person training can cost as much as 5 to 6-figures. In addition to the training, companies have to pay for the trainers’ travel + accommodation. This can be prohibitively expensive for companies with tight training budgets.
Traffic and other commitments make local training programs challenging to attend during your busy workday.
These are the reasons why we offer our course online.
You can easily attend our course from your cubicle or a company conference room twice a week, in-between meetings, during your lunchtime, or as a nice break in the middle of your workday.
Over the past three years, we’ve worked hard to design and deliver a comprehensive course that transforms students into confident communicators, and we look forward to transforming you too!
Now until Friday, February 15, 2019, the course is open for registration
You can find out more details and register for the course here.
If you’re one of those savvy people who wants to ask for sponsorship or reimbursement from your company for attending this course you can find a brochure here, which you can download and forward to your boss for approval/tuition reimbursement. Or if you are looking to share this opportunity with your colleagues, you can find an email blurb here to use to write an email or post to an employee board.
