I was inspired to write a companion piece to an article that Lisa Braithwaite published over at Speak Schmeak - rewards of ending on time. If you haven’t checked it out, make sure that you do.

I wanted to talk about my own experiences with speech timing and also provide some some tips on funny presentations. Read the rest of this entry

Here’s a post about the 3rd project in the Humorously Speaking manual. The first video in this series is viewable here Humorously Speaking 1. and the 2nd post is here. There’s more to creating humour than just comedy writing techniques; this video goes “beyond the rule of three”.

As I’ve said before, if you want to learn to be humorous, this video is can help you add humour to your presentations whether you’re a member of Toastmasters International or not. This clip is 18 mins long, so you may want to set aside some time to watch it. Read the rest of this entry

Google Wave, the future of emailing, is coming. You might be thinking: “hang on, what’s a Google Wave?”

Imagine this…

You’ve got a presentation to create for work and ordinarily you’d go to your co-worker who loves doing speeches and ask her to check out your speech and you email it to her. Read the rest of this entry

It only seems like yesterday when I was writing a post about BBC 2′s new reality
TV talent show The Speaker. In fact it was about 4 weeks ago. They ended up
broadcasting two episodes a week, rather than one per week for 8 weeks. It was actually an interesting show in the end and the final and some strong young speakers in it.

As some of the reviews of The Speaker have said, and I am inclined to agree, it felt a little bit icky when they got taken to Malawi to meet children who were poverty-stricken so that the young speakers could have a topic for their final speech. Good little life experience for the speakers maybe, but a bit heavy-handed I felt. Read the rest of this entry

Here’s a post about the 2nd project in the Humorously Speaking manual. The first video in this series is viewable here Humorously Speaking 1. This video is especially useful if you’re considering doing the Humorously Speaking Manual. Remember also, that the Humorous Speech Contest comes up once a year.

This vid is also a good way to introduce hmour to your speeches and presentations. If you need funny introduction, or maybe a funny story to end with, have a butcher’s… Read the rest of this entry