Public Speaking Course: 

Listen to Everyone

A great lesson I teach in my public speaking course is to make sure you listen to every speaker who is on before you at an event. Especially don't miss the keynote or general session speakers. When you listen to them you are able to add a polish to your talk and to the event as a whole by incorporating something that was said by a previous speaker or by simply not sounding redundant on your material. 
It also might save you some embarrassment.

I'll never forget several years ago I was doing a breakout session for a big real estate company. We then went to the closing general session an hour later and the big shot keynote speaker looked ridiculous by using the same material I had already stated. He may have been a good speaker, but he did not practice some of the important skills taught in my public speaking course.

People were looking at me and winking.

There were only two back to back sessions going on and it would have been really easy for the keynote speaker to stop by and check out my presentation, or at least find out what I and the other breakout session speaker were going to be talking about. 

Besides listening to as many speakers as you can, where you can learn for future events, remembering what you learned in your public speaking course in this setting requires you to make sure your material is really unique which will help guard you from embarrassing situations.

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