A motivational speech from Vince Poscente - Olympic Speed Skier

This week I was photographing the Worldwide sales meeting for Micron Corporation in San Jose, CA. On the first day of the conference, they had a motivational speaker come to open the meeting and get people fired up. The speaker was a gentleman named Vince Poscente and he did a great job. Who is Vince? He, at the age of 26, decided to take up speed skiing and in 4 short years made it to the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France.

Vince made a great entrance into the room, running down the center of the crowd, and jumped onto a chair on the stage. (Luckily I had just repositioned myself into the front row in the middle of the group and grabbed this motion shot of his entrance.)

He hopped up on the chair and took everyone on a speed skiing run with him. He talked about the experience of staring down a really steep hill and the challenge ahead of him.

He tucked himself into position and recounted his experiences on the slopes.

Reaching speeds of more than 130 miles per hour, Vince talked about the need to focus on the goal, while still enjoying the ride. 

Everyone enjoyed his presentation and learned from his experiences. I enjoyed the speech and also enjoyed capturing the different emotions that he portrayed during his hour long motivational presentation.

At one point, Vince talked about his motivation to become an Olympic athlete. He was a young child and saw the opening ceremonies of one of the Olympic Games on TV and thought "I want to do that." At that point, I thought "I totally get that!" as I thought back on my determination to photograph the Olympic Games for the first time with only five years of professional photography under my belt. Sure...different side of the action, and I was not marching in the opening ceremonies, but as a photographer, it was an Olympic moment for me!

If you want to learn more about Vince, you can go to his web site at: http://www.vinceposcente.com/