Need a great speaker or host?

Heather’s a black belt in engaging audiences in a meaningful and authentic way. – Jerry Michalski

I give entertaining keynotes and also make authentic conversations happen at companies, organizations and conferences like:

Google, SXSWinteractive, TEDxBayArea, UX Week, WebVisions, Institute for the Future, YLE (Finland’s BBC), Connect Up (Australia and New Zealand’s gathering of non-profits) ConveyUX, O’Reilly’s Web 2.0, BlogHer, AIGA, Web Directions South 2013, Social Venture Network, DUX, WordCamp San Francisco, Forum One’s Marketing Online Communities Conference, Overlap and Code for America. I’m also often asked to moderate, host panels or conferences or interview people. I make every talk as specific to the people I’m addressing as possible, and I include them whenever possible.

I’m represented for universities by Jean Caini at Speak Out Agency. To bring me to your company or conference, get in touch.

Nerd, Know Thyself

Thinking about emotion is like trying to learn how to ride a bike by reading a book. In order to really understand interactions between people, you need to employ your own emotional awareness and emotional experience. Feeling is a critical capacity to build, especially as machines get better at doing everything else. This talk shows you how to use the moment to build emotional capacity and how performance and comedy can use more than your thinking self to make better experiences between people.

How to Tummel: Design for Conversation

Community evolves from conversation. How do you create conversation for many people? How do people genuinely connect with each other and with you or your company? Innovative comedian Heather Gold explains basic differences between presentation and conversation and the assumptions underneath each. More entertainingly (and usefully) she demonstrates these ideas by creating a great, relevant conversation in the room so that all can feel the difference.

Google Talk below. Notes on The difference between Presentation + Conversation (PDF)

Selected Video and Past Talks

The Web As Performance Art (51 min. audio)
WebVisions, Chicago, 2012

When the things in my life that were too big to fail, failed. (4 min. video)
Opening provocation at Doug Rushkoff’s ContactCon, NYC, October, 2011

We’ve outsourced our sense of self to institutions that fail.
Part of what it takes to develop into a whole, healthy person is to know that you’re seen. That unmet need is what drives the growth of the Web.

Tools for Tummeling – WordCamp Keynote

What do we need for healthy online social space?
San Francisco, August, 2011

I am not my keywords.

SXSW, Austin. March 2011

#WITH, Bard College
Hannah Arendt Center at Bard: Being Human In An InHuman World Conference, October, 2010

Our culture, including our economy, needs to shift from people doing things TO another, to doing things WITH another. The social era of technology makes this even more important. This talk/performance shows what that looks like.

Authenticity is the new Authority

O’Reilly Web 2.0 Keynote, San Francisco
March, 2009