My Winning Prompts - 1
Many have asked me to share the prompts that won me first place in Prompt-SM (the Swedish National Prompt Championship). In this post I will describe the first task - what was expected of me, how I approached solving it, and what my final answer was.
The task we were given was worded as follows:
Task 1: Transform yourself into a star speaker
Background: Imagine that you are the keynote speaker at a global conference on the theme of space. Hundreds of audience members, both in person and online, are eagerly waiting to hear your insights and perspectives. You don’t just want to deliver information - you want to do it with a dazzling stage presence.
Task: Write a prompt that instructs an AI assistant to help you develop and prepare a speech that the audience will remember.
Given that we had limited time per task (roughly ten minutes), I decided to quickly generate a draft prompt by pasting the given text (shown above) into the AI tools I had available (ChatGPT and Claude), with the added request:
“You are a senior AI expert with many years of prompting experience. Help me generate a prompt that solves the following task:”
I quickly scanned the two resulting prompts and picked one of them to work with. The foundation was solid, but I was missing advice on how to actually perform on stage. I asked the tool to add guidance for that.
Now the prompt was too long - several hundred characters over the limit (which was set at one thousand characters). No problem; I simply asked the tool to shorten the prompt. Just over seven hundred characters - perfect, that left me room for manual edits.
From this shortened prompt I could then tweak things I wasn’t thrilled about, and add instructions I considered important.
To start with, I opened the prompt by creating a persona for the AI. Creating a persona (that is, describing to the AI who it should pretend to be when responding to you) is a general best practice in prompting, and is covered in, among other places, Google’s own prompting advice - Prompting guide 101. Reading the prompt again now, I might have phrased the persona a bit more elegantly, but given the time pressure there wasn’t really room for more than getting down the first thing that came to mind!
I thought it was important that the speech should be delivered in English (given that it was a global conference, the Swedish prompt notwithstanding).
I was also very keen on including a pun - if you can’t allow yourself a bit of dad humor at an international conference, you might as well stay home.
This resulted in the following prompt, which I then submitted to the jury:
“You are an experienced speechwriter with expertise in space science and communication. Help me prepare a 15-minute inspiring keynote speech about space for a global conference.
The speech should:
Be delivered in English.
Open with a captivating personal connection to space that creates an immediate bond with the audience, in the form of a pun.
Include three key insights about space exploration that both surprise and fascinate.
Weave in concrete stories and metaphors that make complex space concepts accessible to a broad audience.
Include an interactive moment where the audience is actively engaged.
Close with a powerful vision of humanity’s future in space.
Also give me:
Suggestions for powerful opening and closing lines
Tips on vocal delivery and body language at key moments
2-3 memorable quotes that can be used
Suggestions for visual aids that reinforce the message
Strategies for handling the Q&A session afterwards
Focus on the balance between scientific credibility and inspiring storytelling.”