Successful Speech Making
Eye contact is a wonderful tool to convey sincerity. It is also useful to help you to stay aware of how the audience is reacting to you. Stay aware and adapt by changing your presentation style and content to keep their attention and interest.
From Tom Antion:
Public Speaking Tip: Say It With Flowers
A speaker friend of mine had a deal with a local flower shop. When he had a program the next day he would buy up all the fresh flowers that did not sell for a dirt cheap price. The flowers were destined for the dumpster anyway so the florist was thrilled to get anything for them. The speaker would arrive to big fanfare throwing flowers into the crowd. Everyone got a flower to take home and depending on the size of the crowd, some would get a whole bouquet. He also sent big bunches as his thank you gift to the meeting organizer. He purposely sent so many that the organizer could not possibly take them all home. His good will (and name) was spread all over the company he was speaking for and the people in the audience had a blast.
I wanted to explore new opportunities and ways of doing things. So this blog has a new address.
Come and visit me at the Personal Best from Pivotal Points blog.
Public speaking tip – Remembering new jokes — Jan McInnis (Jan@TheWorkLady.com)
As a comedienne, I usually kick off my corporate show with 20 or more new jokes I’ve written for the group which means I have to have good, fast memory skills.
A couple of ways I remember these new jokes:
* Starting a few nights before the show, I review 5 or 6 jokes each night before I go to sleep. When I wake up, I know the jokes. (A friend of mine at a university is actually researching sleep and its effect on memory. It really works.)
* I go over them out loud as fast as I can. I also do this with the jokes in my act. It sort of “ingrains” the joke into my head so that when I say it, it rolls off my tongue without my having to stop and think about it.
* I group the jokes according to subject — all jokes about the people together, all jokes about the industry together, etc.
* I use notes. I carry them up to the stage with me, but I make sure I know the first 2 or 3 jokes cold, so I don’t have to refer to the notes in my hand. Then if I do, it’s not as obvious as pulling the notes out of my pocket and I just glance at the sheet, saying, “I took some notes on you guys.” I’ll have a key word or two written on the sheet. And, even if I wrote the jokes ahead of time, it looks like I just wrote them that morning.
This has got my hackles up!!
From a news report …
Hobbit people brainer than first thought
A hobbit-like prehistoric people discovered in Indonesia might be known for their grapefruit-sized brains but they’re much smarter than researchers initially gave them credit for, a new study has found.Research by Australian and Indonesian archaeologists shows that the so-called “hobbits” who lived on the remote island of Flores more than 12,000 years ago probably knew how to make stone tools. You can Read on …
But what sort of arrogance are we indulging in here? What makes us think we have superior brains? Where has it got us – this superior brain – a world polluted, overcrowded with people too busy to even notice the world or humanity?
Did we evolve from the hobbits in Indonesia? Can we return? Is there a compromise?
… It’s from a document called Information Technology and internet culture …
The Internet is a magnet for many metaphors. It is cyberspace or the matrix, the “information superhighway” or infobahn or information hairball, a looking glass its users step through to meet others, a cosmopolitan city with tony and shady neighborhoods, a web that can withstand nuclear attack, electric Gaia or God, The World Wide Wait, connective tissue knitting us into a group mind, an organism or “vivisystem,” a petri dish for viruses, high seas for information pirates, a battleground for a war between encrypters and decrypters, eye candy for discrete consumers of a tsunami of pornography, a haven for vilified minorities and those who seek escape from stultifying real-world locales, a world encyclopedia or messy library or textbook or post office, chat “rooms” and schoolrooms and academic conferences, a vast playground or an office complex, a cash cow for the dot.coms, The Widow Maker, training wheels for new forms of delinquency practiced by script kiddies and warez d00des, a wild frontier with very little law and order, the glimmer in the eyes of virtual-reality creators, a workshop for Open Source programmers, a polling booth for the twenty-first century, a marketplace for mass speech, a jungle where children are prey, a public square or global village, a mall or concert hall, a stake for homesteaders, a safari for surfers, a commercial space much in need of zoning, the mother of all Swiss Army knives, a tool palette for artists, a lucid dream or magic, a telephone or newspaper or holodeck, a monster that has escaped DARPA’s control, The Linux penguin, sliced bread, an addiction, the Grand Canyon, and on and on.
Tips for keeping your cool before your presentation
Stretch to relax. Rise on your toes and reach for the ceiling, with your head back. Tighten your muscles from legs up through abdomen, and then release. Relax the neck and shoulder muscles, letting head loll on neck in different directions.
Breathe to relax. Stand erect, but relaxed and balanced. Inhale while silently counting to five. Hold the breath for five counts, then exhale for five – all breathing is through the mouth. Your diaphragm should move, but your chest should not expand. You can gradually increase the number of counts for each breath to 10.
Relax your Jaw. Let your head loll forward. As you raise it, keep your jaw relaxed. Let it hang open, and smile to yourself at how silly it feels.
Relax your throat. Yawn …. This is how your throat needs to be to speak well – open, and relaxed.Keep relaxing the muscles throughout your body, your jaw, neck and throat until you walk to the presentation area. Then smile! and begin.
For more tips and articles on overcoming public speaking nerves, visit Public Speaking Confidence
I’m fascinated with marketing and the techniques used. I’m also excited by the changes that are occurring with technology, and the way we are adapting to them, so the following piece caught my attention, and all I can say is – it speaks for itself ..
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IMAGINE YOU’RE WATCHING “LORD OF the Rings.” Aragorn, fresh from slaying a host of orcs single-handedly, sits down and has a nice, refreshing Pepsi.
You can imagine the reaction of the audience, especially those fanatics who brought their dog-eared copies of the trilogy to check for discrepancies.Product placement, while popular in the movie industry, simply doesn’t work with every movie.
The same goes for in-game ads, currently touted as a way for video game developers to mitigate the rapidly skyrocketing costs of producing the next big thing–Halo 2 cost $20 million to produce–by providing another revenue stream beyond sales.
The problem is, much like movies, in-game ads simply can’t be placed in every game; fantasy, and sometimes even sci-fi settings, make product placement impractical and even offensive to gamers–and gamers are a constituency that get angry easily.
It would be problematic to include modern products or advertisement in-game in many of the top 20 games by sales as of mid-March–including Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Metriod Prime: The Hunters, and Animal Crossing: Wild World.
From Gaming Insider published by Media post www.mediapost.com
Countdown Clock For Presentations: How To Build It
When training a class or delivering a long workshop, it is always difficult to get people to come back to their desks in due time.
The same happens when assigning a test to be completed within a specified time. Missing a common shared timer for everyone, it gets a little difficult to communicate efficiently to everyone when time is really running out.
In these situations, what can work extremely well, is the use of a digital countdown timer to be projected on the main audience screen. In this way, you need not continuously interrupt or distract attendees to inform them of the remaining time and anyone can see at a glance how much time is left.
Here PowerPoint expert and book-writer Ellen Finkelstein gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to build such a digital countdown clock.
10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking (Paperback)
by The Princeton Language Institute, Lenny Laskowski
Written by an expert in the field, this book has the tools you need to become a relaxed, effective, and commanding public speaker. A clear, concise, step-by-step approach with dozens of inside tips, 10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking will help you:
* Overcome nervousness and discover your own natural style
* Establish an immediate rapport with your audience
* Practice your new techniques daily in conversations with friends
* Write a speech that builds to an unforgettable conclusion
* Expertly blend humor and anecdotes into your talks
* Use special techniques to memorize your speech
More information