Nick R Thomas - A Public Speaker's Blog

Thursday, October 11

Now, I'm all in favour of free speech (advice)

by Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking) on Thu 11 Oct 2007 09:30 AM BST

Free booklet 'How to Make Effective Presentations' with today's Independent

This year has seen some excellent newspaper give-aways which have been very useful for anyone interested in public speaking. In April/May, the Guardian gave away 14 booklets and a CD of Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century. These were very nicely produced and contained overviews from historians as well as the content of speeches from JFK, Churchill, Mandela, MacMillan, FDR, Khrushchev, Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, de Gaulle, Thatcher, Nehru, Aneurin Bevan, Virginia Woolf and Earl Spencer. With a line-up like that, I can even forgive them for never sending the free storage box that I saved up all those tokens for!

Throughout July, the Daily Mail gave away DVDs of the superb documentary series The World at War. Not only did this give me the opportunity to see a brilliant work that I never appreciated as a child in the 1970s but it also contains footage of historic speeches and relaxed, fluent interview clips from 30 years later.

The Independent is currently giving away free pamphlets each day containing extracts from business titles (the same sort of idea as the condensed books that come with the Anthony Robbins Power Talk recordings).They're part of a series called Success at Work and today's is How to Make Effective Presentations. Discounting adverts and title pages, this comprises 15 pages of extracts from Brilliant Presentations by Richard Hall and Effective Presentation by Ros and Antony ('Yes Minister') Jay.

Hall fills most of his 6 pages with tips about conquering nerves, backed up with some fascinating facts about panic attacks.The Jays give a highly detailed analysis of the structure of a sales presentation.

These extracts make both books look very appealing but this pamphlet alone contains a remarkable amount of concise, indispensable information and all it will cost is 80p for today's Independent! Now what could be better value than that (well, apart from a blog which gives ongoing presentations tips for free?)

Public Speaking Tip #48: Watch out for newspaper give-aways, such as booklets, DVDs or CDs, which may be of use for your presentations.

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So let's come right up to date...

by Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking) on Thu 11 Oct 2007 08:06 AM BST

A Speechwriting Challenge Helped by Mind Maps

October may look as if it's going to be a bit quieter as far as speaking engagements are concerned but on the very first day I found myself busy with other work. I got a call from a client who was having a party thrown for him and he wanted a speech written in case he was asked to say a few words. There were just a few problems:

1. This was a 'surprise' party which he was not supposed to know about so he could hardly produce a script! He would therefore have to learn the speech by heart.

2. Because he was meant to appear 'surprised', the speech could not sound too structured/scripted but had to be in conversational language, as if it was something he had been thinking up in the past few minutes!

3. The party was the following evening so I would have to get started straight away with little chance to collect personal information to ponder and write around - just a few biographical facts.

We agreed a price and a deadline. Then he phoned back wanting it a couple of hours earlier than that so he would have more time to learn it!

He rang dead on time the following afternnon and I emailed the 450-odd words I had written. We discussed how he was going to memorise this 4 minutes in such a short space of time and I was relieved that he knew what a Mind Map is...

A Mind Map, an idea most associated with the psychology author Tony Buzan, is a diagram representing ideas around a central concept. Simple Mind Maps are great for speeches because they enable you to arrange brief notes in a logical sequence, working your way clockwise around the page - thus making it very difficult to lose your place. Impromptu speeches can be constructed very effectively using Mind Maps (this certainly helped me when I took my LAMDA Public Speaking exams and, in later years, students of mine who did the same).

I use them when I write a speech for a client, putting down all the information they have supplied and then adding in ideas for jokes, quotations, etc, until I am ready to piece together the finished version. Over the years, I have also found them to be invaluable for exam revision, and planning magazine articles and letters.

The great thing about using them for setting out speech content is that because they are a 'picture', you soon become familiar with where everything is on the page. After a while, you can remember what is in the top left hand corner or the bottom right even without having the diagram in front of you, in fact, if you were to turn up at a speaking engagement and discover to your horror that you had forgotten your Mind Map notes, you could quite possibly rewrite them from memory.

!n 2005, I delivered my presentation 'Public Speaking = the Triumph of Technique Over Terror!' as part of an Awayday for the Central Management Unit of the Home Office and my suggestions regarding using Mind Maps made a big impact.

But back to 2007: I suggested that my client familiarise himself with the script then set it out in brief notes in a Mind Map and memorise that.

Public Speaking Tip #44 (one of the most important I will ever include in this whole blog): Simple Mind Maps are invaluable as aids to devising, laying out and learning speech content - especially at very short notice!

There are many inexpensive books available by Tony Buzan about Mind Maps and their uses.

Inner Wheel Club of Hythe and District

That evening, I spoke on 'My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer' to the Inner wheel Club of Hythe and District. There were no more than 20 there but I got a very good response from this friendly club. Sometimes it can be difficult to get much of a reaction to humour from small audiences but it is so much easier when they are on home ground and in familiar company.

Public Speaking Tip #45: A big factor in audience response is whether or not they know each other.

A Booking Every 11.33 Minutes!

This must be something of a record: on Monday, between 17.01 and 17.35, I took three bookings: one for next March for a club just a mile away which, nevertheless, I'd not heard of before, one for next September for a retirement club who are booking me for the fourth time to in seven years (so I guess they must like me!) and one at two days' notice to cover a cancellation for Bournemouth North Probus, a club I last spoke to in 2001.

Public Speaking Tip #46: A combination of widely-circulated details, a list of several appealing topics and availability at short notice should keep the requests to speak rolling in!

Bournemouth North Probus

Yesterday morning I delivered my talk about 'The One, the Only...Groucho!' to 30 members of Bournemouth North Probus as a short-notice replacement for a coastguard speaker who had to cancel due to work commitments.

The last time I spoke to this club was in July 2001 when they met at a different hotel and listened to their speaker after lunch. On that occasion, I spoke on 'My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer' and although it didn't go badly, I felt that the response was a little muted by my standards (so often the case when speaking after a big meal to a retired audience!)

But this talk showed what a difference it can make when you speak before a lunch (as I have mentioned before, mid-morning is usually the best time for speakers). The response was very good and I was also pleased to observe how I am becoming familiar with the content of this particular talk and relying a lot less on my notes.

Public Speaking Tip #47: Even if your presentation contains a huge amount of information, it is possible to learn it with repeated delivery so that your notes will eventually only be required as a 'safety net'.

Afterwards, I enjoyed a very nice lunch with the gentlemen at the Mayfair Hotel. This very friendly Probus club still needs more members so they are having a recruitment drive. I hope it works for them.

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