[laurieg]

As someone who had gone from severe shyness to comfortably talking in front of a variety of audiences, the simple truth is that the more you do it the better you get.

As far as I know there aren't any clever tricks that don't involve drugs.

There one positive is that practice compounds. 20 talks isn't double the experience of 10 talks it's 10 times more. The change for me was quite sudden. Going from very nervous to reasonably comfortable quickly. I spoke to other performers and they said their experience was similar.