[krschultz]

Great post, especially the concept 'Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory'.

A public speaking ancedote for all those that are nervous at public speaking or currently aren't that good at it.

My father excels at public speaking. He has done many conferences, TV interviews, company all-hands meetings, regular presentations, etc. He is natural, comfortable, excited, etc. Most imporantly, he can really read a room and react to people and tune his presentation on the fly to what interests the crowd.

But it was not always so. When he was in his 20s, he was absolutely terrible at speaking in front of a room. At one point early in his career he was giving a presentation and his boss turned to the HR guy that had hired him and said 'is it too late to undo this one', purposely, loud enough for him to hear.

Over the course of 5 or 6 years he dramatically improved at public speaking.

Public speaking is a learned skill. You can practice it. Do not leave making the presentation to the last minute, finish it a week before hand and practice 40 times. Comfort comes from being prepared. Walk the room beforehand. Check all of your gear and have backups of everything just in case. Be prepared to use no slides so it won't be a completely new experience. Have fewer slides, it makes you feel more naked but the audience won't notice if you get things out of order a bit.

Toastmasters helps. If you are younger, join a debate or model congress club. It's like shooting a foul shot, you just need more reps.

[why-el]

It will be awesome if your dad had a book on what happened in those 5 to 6 years.

Of course I am in no position to provide as useful an advice, since I am still a student and the toughest audience I presented against are themselves students. However, I find the preparing by replaying the presentation to yourself a little daunting. I used to do that and there always seems to be something that goes wrong, especially that I am supposed to have memorized the presentation. I don't really trust my memory that much, so what I started doing is knowing the topic very well, have some general enough guidelines, and just talk to the audience. It's classic improvising and it worked for me up to now.

[krschultz]

I wouldn't say you want to memorize the presentation.

In fact I think the more you write out for yourself, write on your slides, or try to memorize, the more difficult the presentation becomes.

The practice is more about stumbling a bunch of times. I hate when I repeat the same word or phrase within a few sentences of each other. If I notice that I say the same thing twice on one slide, maybe I'll stand there for a second and think of a new way. The next time I practice through I might use a 3rd way, but at least I'm not repeating.

I only really memorize maybe the first two sentences I'm going to stay just to get the ball rolling smoothly, and maybe a final sentence so my exit is clean.

[saraid216]

I'd go so far as to say you absolutely don't want to memorize your speech, unless you're at the level of Important Remarks for Important People like the State of the Union.

Instead, you want to memorize all the key features, jokes, and wry remarks.

You can write out your speech, if it helps. But read it. Out loud. To a wall. About ten or fifteen times. Read it, without looking at the paper (except when you forget what goes next), and without trying to duplicate it verbatim. You'll learn what phrasings come naturally to your tongue rather than your hand, and it'll flow a lot better when you give the speech itself.

[scott_s]

To extend your point on key features: I think of it as memorizing the overall structure of your talk. You may have a dozen or so topics you want to hit in your presentation, and that is what you end of memorizing - not on purpose, but because if you're well prepared, you can't help but not memorize it.

If you know that you want to hit points A, B, C, ..., in your talk, and you know your material cold, then you don't have to memorize how you want to connect A and B, B and C, etc. That is what you re-create on the spot. The practice is important because sometimes you can't connect two points on-the-fly. Practicing your talk at least once will reveal those places, and you can either: figure out what the connecting bits are, or decide you don't want to cover that.

In addition to the jokes and wry remarks, I find that I also tend to replay the same body language in talks that I did in practice.

[mindcrime]

I've given more than a few public talks, and I ran for Lieutenant Governor of NC a few years ago, and did some campaign speeches as part of that... what I have found is that they key is to be able to improvise your entire talk if need be. That is, if you know the points you want to make, and a rough order you want to make them in, you can construct the talk as you go if need be. Then you never have to worry about "forgetting your lines" or whatever. If you can develop this ability to give a speech totally unscripted, you can then choose whether or not you want to use notes or whatever to help you stick more precisely to the plan... but in the worst case, you're never totally screwed with no ability to proceed.

FWIW, when I ran for office, I never memorized a single speech, nor did I use notes. I mentally rehearsed the key points and structure on the way to the venue, and then improvised. Take the fact that I didn't get elected however you want, vis-a-vis the effectiveness of my approach. :-)

[saraid216]

Yup. The key in public speaking is indeed "confidence", but that single word just doesn't sufficiently explain anything.

It's confidence in your ability to convey your point. It's confidence that your knowledge of the topic is solid. It's confidence that your audience is capable of understanding you. It's confidence that you've put the time and effort into making sure that all the previous stuff is true.

[RyanMcGreal]

> Public speaking is a learned skill.

Yes, absolutely. I used to be an utterly wretched public speaker. In the past several years, after a number of public speaking opportunities, I've improved to the point of being not terribly bad at it. My long-term goal is to become quite good at it.