Jan 24

Creating Killer Content Off the Cuff, part 2

I never really intended to write a follow up to my previous post Creating Killer Content Off the Cuff, but I have because both myself, and fellow speaker Eric Feng, blogged on the same subject. Eric spoke about the Borden method:

“Ho hum!” (or B-O-R-I-N-G!)
“Why bring that up?”
“For instance?”
“So what?”

and I spoke about how I used a Mind Map in order to quickly create a speech. And I became really intrigued to see how this would work!

With both techniques there isn’t really a lot of time to create a speech, so they are both good to do under pressure. I enclose a copy of my Mind Map.

mindmap-web20

If you know anything about Mind Maps you’ll see that this is not how they are normally done. What usually happens is that this stage where there are mostly circles is the first, idea-generating stage. You get the ideas down as quickly as possible and you try to find how they connect.

Then next stage you would then go on and do a Mind Map proper with the branches and capitalized text providing just a breif encapsulation of your ideas.

But as you can see it was literally just me throwing ideas down on the page because I was busy multi-tasking performing the role of time-keeper as well (and in case anyone’s wondering, I did do the job well).

The speech structure that I use was the traditional Toastmasters/basic speech structure:

– An opening.
– Three points each backed up with at least one example and then
– A conclusion.

In this case I used a technique called “re-open” which Paul Evans author of Instant Speaking Success discusses whereby you end with a mini challenge for your listeners to hopefully spur them into action.

I decided to go ahead and post the Mind Map because of some of the comment exchanges that I had with Eric Feng. I thought that it might be good to see if the Borden technqiue and Mind Mapping can be unified.

Then Eric suggested that I share my Mind Map to see how we can synergise.

(He also mentioned another technique called PREP: Point – Reason – Explanation – Point. This was something that I haven’t heard of and will look into).

But for now it’ll be interesting to see how we can synergise these techniques.

Jan 23

After Dinner Speaking, part 2

I spoke to the President and ex-President at my local Toastmasters club trying to find out how I can go about developing my After Dinner speech that I debuted at the Christmas Dinner at the end of last year. I was hoping that I might be able to use the method that winners of both the humorous speech contest and international speech contest do.

They go around different clubs and work on their speeches before the next round of the competition. But what was pointed out was the fact that the contest winners get special dispensation after winning a certain level. Seeing as I haven’t won the humorous speech contest (yet) then I probably won’t be able to go round to other clubs to develop it. Continue reading

Jan 15

Creating Killer Content Off the Cuff

I was at my Toastmasters club Grosvenor Speakers, this past Monday night. I was in the role of Time-Keeper. For anybody reading this blog unfamiliar with any of the support roles at Toastmasters use the previous link.

I had taken on this role because I have yet to do the role and also I need to complete my Competent Leadership manual (I didn’t previously get myself evaluated when I took roles on in the past hence having to play catch up now).

The president of the club mentioned before the evening began a speaker had dropped out and asked anyone (i.e.: me) if they had a speech. I didn’t have one prepared. Lesson learnt: always have a speech ready to go to pull out of the bag at short notice!

I thought about it for a few minutes and came up with a subject that I was really interested in: Web 2.0. I’m still learning lots about this subject, but I already know a fair amount about blogs, Myspace and Facebook. I am in no way an expert on this subject, but I am certainly passionate about it and a keen student!

So on the back of my club’s programme of events I Mind Mapped a speech. I gave it an effective three-point Toastmasters structure, an opening and a closing. Each point I made, I backed it up with examples.

Every spare moment I had between timing the different parts of the evening (which wasn’t many) I looked over the Mind Map. When I was announced as the second speaker for the evening I took the Mind Map with me and went to the stage.

I glanced at my notes once, just before starting then I launched into my speech.

It flowed smoothly and never dropped a beat. I had a pretty good grasp of my subject, so the information flowed. I did my best not to overwhelm people with detail and bit too technical (believe you me, I’m no webmaster).

I made sure that I opened my speech by getting the audience to raise their hands showing me how many people in the room had heard of my subject. It was just under half. So I knew how I had to pitch it.

Around the 7 minute mark I delivered a memorable closer, which rhymed and got me my only laugh of the evening, and I left the stage.

I got some very nice feedback both from my fellow toastmasters as well as my evaluator. I was complimented on my energy and ability to think on my feet.

My main criticism was that I didn’t allow for any pause for thought. Not that I just rattled through my speech at break-neck speed, but that I could’ve taken the time to create more tension in my audience.

It was a fair comment. However, it’s not going to be something that I am overly concerned about as I was making it up as I went along.

I wanted to make sure that I got my message across and had a clear and definite structure, both of which I achieved. I wasn’t bothered about getting laughs. I wanted things to be as clean as possible.

I saw that over at “The Public Speaking Blog” fellow speaker Eric Feng talks about Crafting a Speech in 60 Seconds using a technique by Richard C. Borden. (Edited to note Eric Feng’s blog is no longer active as at 2019) Whilst I know the technique and agree that it is very useful, it’s something that I think is good to have in the toolbox, but not really necessary.

I think that if you know your subject well enough so your passion comes through, you find an angle on how it applies to your listeners (in my case I spoke about the importance of Web 2.0 in terms of public speaking and toastmasters) and you use a solid structure you can certainly create killer content off the cuff!!

Jan 10

After Dinner Speaking – part 1

A few weeks ago I was asked to do a speech at my local Toastmasters club’s Christmas Dinner. I had lots of humorous ideas and access to a plethora of street jokes, but I wasn’t quite clear on what an after dinner speech was.

I googled the term and found the seven golden rules as written by Gyles Brandreth the British author and M.P. who holds the record for the longest after dinner speech.

I already knew a lot of these tips so it was nice to have them re-established for me. The website Wise Geek defines an after dinner speaker as follows:

“After dinner speaking can be seen as an art in itself. The speaker must have the ability to entertain their audience in a captivating manner. Part comedian, part lecturer, the after dinner speaker should have a certain “wow” factor“.

That gave me a lot more to go on. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a lot of time to create material from scratch and fully react to it like the Killer Stand-up System recommends.

So what I did was come up with a topic that I was interested in and that I thought I also might be able to promote to speaking agencies in the future.

Then I sourced some relevant street jokes and I came up with a structure that would allow them to flow together in a logical order.

From there I incorporated humorous lines that either I had written and used in my old stand-up act, or witty reactions that I’d made a note of from conversations that I’d had. That just meant I went through my ideas notebooks to find those lines and incorporate those too. You do write down your ideas in a notebook, don’t you?

After lots of rehearsal I delivered my speech to my fellow Toastmasters. I nearly “killed them”, but not quite. How do I know that I nearly killed them? Because I recorded my speech onto my dictaphone and then played it, whilst I ran it past the Comedy Evaluator Pro software from the Killer Stand-up System.

Okay, here’s the skinny on this great piece of software. When a performer, whether a speaker or comedian, is in front of an audience there are two things that could be happening:

1) the performer is speaking

2) the audience is responding. the audience response (laughter, cheering, applauding) is referred to as a Positive Audience Responce or PAR.

For comedians the following is often true: headliners are getting 4-6 laughs or more per minute. Therefore their PAR score is in the 30s, 40s or even 50s. An open mike comic often gets a PAR score under 5. So you get the idea.

On the other hand a speaker or presenter who uses comedy aims for a PAR score of 15. So I was very pleased when my speech came in at a respectable 11 PAR.

I’m estimating that it will take me another one or two performances of this speech to get it up to a 15 PAR. That said I do, however, want to reduce the amount of street jokes I use and replace them more and more with my own humorous reactions. So it may take a little longer.

Dec 29

Amazing Public Speaking Skill – The Hancock Manoeuvre

I re-read a great book on public speaking recently and I was reminded of a technique which was the first one I ever used! I’ll give you a brief background on the book and the technique itself before I tell you about my experience with it.

The book I had read was called “Just Say Few Words” and it was by the late British Comedian and After Dinner Speaker Bob Monkhouse. Bob was a great comedian whose style were one-line jokes similar in style to his hero, Bob Hope. According to the book, Monkhouse was at an after dinner event in the 1960s alongside fellow British comedian Tony Hancock.
Continue reading