04/08/2026
20 years old, Bulgarian parents, born and raised in Spain — Valencia 😍 — then moved to Germany at the age of 10. She speaks five languages fluently, including Italian, which she decided to learn after Måneskin🇮🇹 won the Eurovision Song Contest. It was CLEAR that her six-week internship was going to be wonderful!😎
But what can we accomplish together in just one month? This year, Beatriz Spasov will begin a degree in Physics, so we put her to work on research!
Between an immersive experience of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and a visit to some training programmes I was finalising, she got to the very heart of Upwords percorsi di comunicazione purpose: increasing the chances that people will achieve their goals through communication competence. And to do this, the starting point is always to LISTEN TO PEOPLE.
In few minutes, we put together a questionnaire and shared it with people close to Beatriz — students, friends, relatives and people she met here in Italy. We received no fewer than 34 responses, which is not bad at all!
💪The results can be summarised as follows: confidence in one’s communication skills and the ability to manage anxiety are central to public speaking. Many people perceive themselves as competent communicators, but under pressure they lose confidence and become increasingly focused on how others are judging them.
Practice and feedback are considered essential. This is also why virtual reality is an INCREDIBLE tool for simulating a real audience, training emotions and behaviours, and receiving feedback through Generative AI (Sophie Thompson docet).
It is only a few pages of an essay [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/public-speaking-survey-ai-era-andrea-liotto-vq75f/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_detail_base%3BwLtmqo9eToyo3wLHEWLW%2Fg%3D%3D].
May life give you everything you dream of, dear Beatriz!
Thank you for giving me that breath of international fresh air that I so often long for, and thank you for reversing the usual narrative: to me, you have been living proof of a young person who is bright, responsible, ambitious, polite and professional.
PS: GRAZIE Marta Peruzzo and Matteo Solivo di per l'opportunità!