May 25

32 Essential Skills Every Humorous Speaker Should Have

I’ve been inspired by fellow blogger Andrew Dlugan’s post 25 Essential Presentation Skills for Public Speaking.  audience-laughter
I think in order to help you learn to be funny, these are some of the skills and humour techniques that you should have. Some directly relate to giving a speech, whilst others involve external factors. You’ll see what I mean below.

I know that there are some people wonder: “should you be funny in a speech?” I think it really depends on the circumstances and topic of your speech. For the most part I would say yes. Humour is a great way to connect with your audiences and have them remember your message. One of the essential skills below addresses this very idea.

Can you think of any more? If so, leave a comment below.

1. Create Large Amounts of Humour – duh, seems obvious, right? We should be able to create a large amount of humorous material that we can draw upon. Material created by your own sense of humour, not lifeless techniques on paper. Continue reading

May 19

Launch of Speaking Pro Central

Recently I was invited to participate in the launch of a new speaking site: Speaking Pro Central. I felt honoured and privileged to have been asked. We are now 24 hours after the launch as I write this.

The aim of the site is to collect and organize the best content from blogs, and other sites about all things speaking. Speaking Pro Central will collect the information in a place where it’s easy to find current and relevant content.

Go on over to the site, have a mooch around. Continue reading

May 16

President Obama’s 2,000 Year Old Speaking Secret

If you have to make presentations as part of your job you might be able to pick up some useful tips from this post. This post is a kind of follow up to my post Lessons from President Obama’s Inaugural Speech.

This is also a great post for those who are working their way through either the Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual (project number 9 “persuade with power”) or the Persuasive Speaking Advanced manual.

You see much has been written about Obama’s speaking skill. He has routinely been compared to great speakers such as John F Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. He uses rhetoric and oratorical skills that wouldn’t be out of place in Ancient Greece or Rome. Continue reading

May 07

John Cleese Bemoans British Comedy

John Cleese recently reunited with the cast of Fawlty Towers in order to promote two documentaries about the sitcom which is now 30 years old. But he said that people wanting to learn to be a comedian or comedy writer didn’t put in as much hard work as they did back in the 1970s. He criticised the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a wealth of talent any more. Continue reading

May 05

World Laughter Day 2009

So this past Sunday was World Laughter Day. It it connected to laughter yoga, which you can read more about over at my post about the Science of Laughter. It’s the first Sunday of every May. Their website says: 

“Laughter may be the best medicine, but how can we laugh at a time like this? Some people think that the tensions and conflicts in the world make it no laughing matter, but psychologist and author Steve Wilson, president of the World Laughter Tour, Inc., headquartered in Columbus, Ohio,  and those in the new laughter movement disagree”.

The idea is to get “the world to lighten up and laugh more”

Unfortunately I didn’t realise it was World Laughter Day until after the event. But luckily I managed to watch a comedy DVD on Sunday and have a good ol’ laugh anyway.

World Laughter Day seems mainly connected to laughter yoga, but I think that it might be worth expanding to include other disciplines and forms of generating laughter.

What do you think? Is World Laughter Day something that we should all embrace once a year?

Check out the World Laughter Day site.