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Heather Gold
Heather Gold is the turkey baster love child of Sarah Silverman and Rachel Maddow and tours North America as a comedian, speaker, interactive solo performer and social artist.
She brings insights and authentic conversations to companies, organizations and conferences like Google, SXSW Interactive, BlogHer, AIGA, Social Venture Network, Forum One’s Marketing and Online Communities Conference and Overlap 08.
Heather is the creator of the hit interactive show “I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie,” which ran for a year in San Francisco, showed at Ars Nova in New York and was selected by The Oakland Tribune as “Best of the Bay Area.”
Driven to comedy by law school, Gold never does the same set twice. Her unique style—raw and participatory, inflected by confessional politics—is a reflection of her unorthodox artistic path: studies at Yale and Northwestern Law, training at Groundlings, plus years soaking up Hollywood and the geek culture of the Net and Silicon Valley. Heather worked the web since it’s earliest days in 1995, influencing her innovative form of comedy which involves the audience whenever possible, drawing them out and threading and connecting ideas and people.
Heather hosted Austin Gay Pride, has written for Alan Cumming, and hosts her own talk show podcast, The Heather Gold Show which features bold conversations about politics, relationships and big life questions, mingling web celebrities with the avant-garde, with guests including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, blogger Merlin Mann, and twitter founder Ev Williams. boingboing calls her “one of our favorite comedians.”
Heather speaks and performs for venues and colleges and conferences across North America and contributes to media like The San Jose Mercury News, Tech TV, The Learning Channel, The Toronto Globe & Mail, and CBC Radio. She’s been quoted and covered in places like WIRED, Salon and NPR. Heather is one of the creators of EqualityCamp, which brings techies and activists together to organize the current gay marriage movement.
Her recent marriage was recognized, for now, by California and, more enduringly, by Marie Claire. She has pledged to never use the words “leverage” or “synergize” unless it’s for a very important lifesaving purpose.
You can follow her online at
http://twitter.com/heathr and at her website
heathergold.com.
Heather Gold's VizThinkU Workshops:
What can two comedians teach you about making your presentations better? More than you might suspect.
Imagine the work environment of a stand-up comic: Performing in an unfamiliar environment, to an unfamiliar crowd and they know there are at least one or two people out there in that dimly-lit room who probably want to take them down a peg. Sound familiar?
Maybe remind you a little of your last speaking engagement or sales presentation?
While we’ve focused a lot at VizThink on making your presentations look more appealing and be more effective from a visual stand-point, we haven’t spent a whole lot of time on the skills around delivering it – which is why we started assembling this VizThinkU course. While not directly a visual exercise or skill the art of delivering your presentation is a very important component of telling your story. This workshop will introduce you to new ideas about engaging and interacting with your audience as well as approaches to think quickly on your feet and react to unexpected situations.
