On Friday 25 October, Nicole Stubbs, Co-Founder and CEO of First Access,  spoke at PopTech 2013. I knew it was coming, and I watched it live on line. I knew it was coming because Nicole has consulted me. We have had Skype sessions, both before and since this speech.

That opening is fabulous! Some sort of dramatic physical action like this is an excellent way of grabbing the audience’s attention, and it also is a sound hump-busting device.

This is a wonderful example! I love the cavalier way she takes these precious items and strews them around her on the floor. It puts me in mind of a supermodel on a catwalk, dragging a priceless coat behind her on the floor. Oh, how I’d love to lay claim to that brilliant piece of theatre, but I cannot! She showed it to me the first time we spoke. I loved it then, and I love it still.

I might be able to lay some claim to the steadiness of her hands during it: the camera closes in for a tight view, and at the height of her hump there is no trembling. There is a way to make sure of that, and she has read my book, The Face & Tripod. She has really read it: she quotes lumps of it at me with frightening fluency.

• 0:43 I think I’d like one more sentence. I say, “I think” because my already knowing what all this about, it’s difficult for me to know whether the point she is making is completely clear to those hearing it for the first time. The point is made clear very shortly afterwards, but I felt it possibly needed a headline.
• 2:48 – “awkward if you don’t…” got a nice laugh. I wonder whether adding “humiliating if you do” might have introduced a bitter-sweet tinge.
• 4:09 beautiful pause.
• 6:08 we on-line are given a long shot and we see the slide behind her. It’s a good one – an alliterating triad and she’s doing the right thing by speaking through it without looking at it and surrendering her focus.
• 7:22 A hiatus! Or is it? Has something gone wrong, or is this a huge dramatic pause? If the latter, does it work?

Shall we try to find out?