Feb 17

Institutionalised Public Speaking

Author’s note: Due to some technical difficuties I’ve had to restore my blog. However, in the process I lost some of my posts and comments. Luckily, I had some of my posts backed up. This is why you’re now reading this post again. Thank you for bearing with me.

Are you coasting along with your presenting? Do you bother to continue to learn and develop your skills? Or is there nothing more for you to learn? Amazingly, in my experience, people who do presentations as part of their job, don’t bother to hone and develp their skills. They reach a certain level and remain where they are. This can be especially true for those who do Toastmasters public speaking.

I wanted to share my views on a post put up by one of my friends from the UK public speaking blogosphere Nick R Thomas. He wrote a warning about not becoming an Institutionalised Public Speaker. He talks about his own experiences as a speaker and trainer working towards his Associate Diploma in public speaking. Continue reading

Feb 06

Public Speaking: Physical Distractions

When you speak, or give a presentation, do you videotape (easier to write than digitally record) yourself. Not for YouTube humiliation, or ego stroking, but for analysis of your performance.

What some people don’t realise is that they have physical distractions that manifest themselves when they are in front of a crowd. In some cases they have these even when they’re not public speaking. Continue reading

Feb 04

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one…”

“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. Continue reading

Feb 03

Christian Bales Out!

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. Continue reading

Feb 02

The Power of Myth for Speakers

Stories and storytelling can be quite a powerful thing when it comes to delivering speeches. Whilst we don’t necessarily have to tell epic stories that go on for many, many days I think that it’s useful for us to be aware of how stories are structured.

We also shouldn’t feel obliged to include all of the elements that I’m going to discuss here. This is just what appears in plays, screenplays, myths and novels. These areas come up again and again. Continue reading