“There are no new ideas. Just two old ideas meeting for the first time” - Woody Allen

How important is originality to you in humour? If someone makes you laugh, and laugh hard, do you really care that the joke came from someone else? Does it matter if you’ve heard it before? Does this constitute creative theft?

For starters I can’t imagine anybody using someone else’s speech. If I got up at my next Toastmaster’s meeting and delivered Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech everyone would know that I hadn’t penned it and, therefore, I wouldn’t get away with passing it off as my own. Read the rest of this entry

I wanted to pick up on an audio clip that’s doing the rounds at the moment. Apparently Christian Bale loses his mind and goes beserk on a Director of Photography (DP) on Terminator 4: Salvation. A word of warning this should not be listened to at work and contains enough expletives to make Bernard Manning blush; Christian Bales Out. Read the rest of this entry

In my attempt to try and help level the public speaking playing field I present you with a list of 101 Presentation Hacks. I’ve tried to break them up into categories so the list is slightly easier to digest. For additional information check out my post on interesting research presentations.

Preparation

1. Finding a subject; you either pick it yourself or it’s given to you by your job

2. Find your passion in the subject. If you like it, we’ll like it. Read the rest of this entry

American Chairman and CEO of Decker Communications, Bert Decker, has published a Top 10 List of the Best (& Worst) Communicators of 2008 on his blog. There are the usual suspects as well as one or two surprises. The list predominantly focuses on U.S. politicians with some celebrities on there too. Read the rest of this entry

This is a follow up post to one I made earlier this month found here. This post, including the accompanying video clips, is a little long, so you might just want to scroll through and read the 4 tips that are in bold which I’ve included. There’s been a bit of a delay between posts as I’ve worked out how to use my new toy the Flip Mino that I got as an early Christmas present. I can highly recommend the Mino for its ease of use for recording your speeches and presentations. You do record your speeches, don’t you? Read the rest of this entry