Adam EglerTED Talk

Ueli Gegenschatz soars in a wingsuit

“I started, uh, with paragliding…”

Ueli’s talk was dramatically differentfrom Sir Ken’s from the moment he started.

Rather than having a poignant opening line, he simply explained the act of paragliding in his strong Swiss accent.

“…From there, I started with skydiving…”

“…I went on to, eh, free flying…”

While Ueli was continuing todescribe free falling as a more“three-dimensional form of skydiving” in his broken english,I was beginning to question the purpose of his talk, but I was intrigued by the escalation of the intensity of the many sportshe had tried.

“…From free flying I went on to sky surfing…”

“…and from there I went on to wingsuit flying…”

“…and from there I went on to wingsuit flying…”

“…and from there…”

with all the skill and knowledge from paraglidingand all the different disciplines in skydiving I went on to B.A.S.E. jumping.

B.A.S.E. jumping is skydiving from fixed objects.

BuildingsAntennasSpans (bridges)Earth (cliffs)

“It’s the ultimate feeling of being in free-fall”

“My goal was to discover new places that nobody had jumped before.”

Ueli was the first to jump from multiple mountains, including the Matterhorn in the Pennine Alps.

In 2008, Ueli B.A.S.E. jumped the Eiffel tower.

By this point I had begun to realize that Ueli’s talk was not trying to persuade me. Instead, it was giving his audience a chance to experience an extreme lifestyle through his unique life story.

“With all this knowledge, I also wanted to get into stunts.”

Such as jumping froma paraglider…

…sky surfing from a hot air balloon…

…and B.A.S.E. jumping from a moving truck on the highway.

Ueli followed up with a video…

His video followed him through most of a dive in a flight suit, and really helped share some of the experience he has pursuing the closest thing man has to flight.

“In the following video you will see, that I’m much better flying a wingsuit than speaking in English.”

…and finished with some questions.

“How do you land a wingsuit?”“Parachute. We have to open a parachute just seconds before, well, I would say impact. It’s not possible to land a wingsuit yet.”

I enjoyed the questionnaire at the end of the presentation. It was a comfortable finish that seemed conversational, and helped to show more of Ueli’s personality, which helped his talk as a whole.

Project Questions

- I believe Ueli’s purpose for his talk was to share the dream of flight with his audience as best he could.

- Although his introduction was not particularly captivating through his language I found that I was interested in seeing what his escalating experiences were leading to. His use of visuals played a major role in sustaining that interest as his talk continued.

- Ueli’s speech had a fairly repetitive structure, and due to English not being his first language, the dynamism of his delivery suffered a bit. I would give him a 2/5.

- As Nancy Duarte suggests, Ueli’s talk towed the line between exhaustive and dramatic writing, finding it’s stride in an explanatory style by introducing the audience to his own experiences with different extreme sports while still giving the visual and factual support to understand his experiences.

- Having seen Ueli’s talk, I would like to employ aspects of how he brought character into his presentation by connecting his topic to himself and connecting himself to his audience.

Ken Robinson vs Ueli Gegenschatz

Ken and Ueli had very little in common.

Ken delivered his speech from a single location and used a variety of tones and volumes to emphasize his points. He prefered to deliver his speech without any media for support.

Ueli was moving about the stage, relying heavily on his visual media to interest his audience.

Although predominately different, neither of them relied on notes to lead them through their presentations.

Classmate Tips

- Based on Ueli’s talk, I would suggest trying to keep text out of your visuals as often ad possible.The audience build a stronger relationship to a presenter who shows their personality through telling the stories of their visuals rather than having the audience read them.

- It was also helpful to have Ueli explain what was being attempted in each of his visuals, as there are sometimes aspects of a professional’s life that those in other professions are not familiar with.