This is a comparison between the speeches of two great people: Steve Jobs and JK Rowling. Of course, Steve Jobs' fans won't agree that JK Rowling is comparable to Jobs' greatness, but no doubt, both of them accomplished great success, created a whole new world, faced dead failure in their lives, and got out that just by their talent, both delivered speeches at great universities, Harvard and Stanford. So it's not a sin to compare I guess. Here are the links to the speeches. Don't read the full speeches, just glance at them. You can read them later on after you finished reading this post. Just glance at their length.
JKR's speech at Harvard.
Jobs' speech at Stanford.
What is the most distinct difference that you observed, the difference that told itself to you? Well, what occurred to me was, you look at the length of both the speeches, you would like to read Jobs' speech first. Not surprising. JKR's speech is tiringly long. It reminded me of a post in my brother's blog that ranted about factorials of large numbers. I wouldnt dare to read it given a choice. And Jobs'? Well, you can clearly see it's shorter and more precise, had organisation, that is, organised his speech into three categories. Both their speeches contained details about their lives. But you would want to read Jobs' at first glance. You wouldnt want to read Rowling's.
But their speeches were sort of signature speeches. If you don't know what I mean, imagine you don't know who JKR and Jobs' are. If I told you to read the speeches now, and I told you there is a writer and a tech visionary and asked you to guess them, you would guess them in a nano second! JKR's speech itself looks like a novel!
Now, I'm not saying anything against Rowling. This is just an analysis on what makes a speech readable! Both of them are very great people and for fanatics, may be Jobs was a bit greater! Anyway, from now I'm gonna follow Jobs' example and hit the point, make it short and simple and never beat around the bush.
