The point was that before I watched this speaker in action, I still retained some of my naive belief that being a good speaker depended a lot on having good ide

The point was that before I watched this speaker in action, I still retained some of my naive belief that being a good speaker depended a lot on having good ideas. So when observing the super-duper speaker in real time confirmed what I'd noticed after the fact about the pretty-good speaker at the conference, I was more sure of it.