Ueli Gegenschatz gave a TED Talk about his experiences with extreme sports like paragliding, skydiving, and wingsuit flying. While his English skills limited the dynamism of his delivery, he engaged the audience through videos demonstrating his skills in wingsuit flying and other stunts. His goal was to share his dream of achieving human flight through escalating extreme sports and accomplishments like being the first to jump from certain mountains.

1. Ueli Gegenschatz soars in Adam Egler
TED Talk
a wingsuit

2. “I started, uh, with paragliding…”
Ueli’s talk was dramatically different
from 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.

3. “…From there, I started with skydiving…”

4. “…I went on to, eh, free flying…”
While Ueli was continuing to
describe 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 sports
he had tried.

5. “…From free flying I went on to sky surfing…”
“…and from there I went on to wingsuit flying…”

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

7. “…and from there…”
with all the skill and knowledge from paragliding
and 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.
Buildings
Antennas
Spans (bridges)
Earth (cliffs)
“It’s the ultimate feeling of being in free-fall”

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

9. “With all this knowledge, I also wanted to get into
stunts.”
Such as jumping from
a paraglider…
…sky surfing from a hot air balloon…

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

11. 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.”

12. …and finished with some questions.
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.
“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.”

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.