Here’s a site I’m working on that has information that should help.
http://www.nosweatpublicspeaking.com/

Be sure to check out the information on Mind Mapping for developing, practicing and delivering a great speech.

That’s the premise behind the Ignite format, which has been propagated worldwide courtesy of O’Reilly Media (publisher of Make magazine, as well as all those technical books with the animal drawings on their white covers).

Speakers have no choice but to unclutter their presentations, with fun and interesting results.

Check it out on YouTube by searching for “Ignite” and the name of a host city (such as Seattle, Portland, Boston, NYC, or our very own Philly). As one of my friends noted, “It’s like speed dating for you brain.”

Part I: Tell your audience what you’re going to tell them.
Part II: Tell it to them.
Part III: Tell them what you just told them.

Now, I know that sounds ultra-symplistic, but remember that they are not going to retain every word that you say, and to be persuasive and compelling they have to come along for the ride.

I hope that helps someone out there.

1. Such a script is a *script* (as in a play) and should be written for spoken delivery not for silent reading. This may mean several rewrites as sentences are restructured (shortened, simplified, reordered), contractions and natural colloquialisms introduced, “writerly” vocabulary removed, and so on. It must sound, when delivered, like a polished version of how the speaker would *talk*, not how the speaker would write.

2. The speaker needs to glance down, take in a sentence or two, then look *up* and deliver those sentences without further reference to the text. (Sure, there will sometimes be variations to the text – these will probably represent an improvement – and there may even be slight deviations and spontaneous additions – all this is good.) This strategy lets you avoid the awkward slips and misreadings that come from “reading aloud” from a text and not taking in whole sentences or chunks of thought at a time.

I was introduced to these two principles by a radio broadcaster.

For many years I worked in a performance-based school and, beginning with 6th graders, we had them make a 20 minute solo presentation on their project. Part of that was presenting to their audience (a panel of their parents, administrators and two or three of their teachers). Part of it was responding to questions from the panel.

After watching over 2000 student presentations in the past 10 years, I always train students to:

* Practice, practice, practice! Give your complete presentation to the mirror, the family, the dog, a tape recorder or even to the stuffed animals on the bed.

* Speak slower than you think you need to. We process slower than you can speak. This becomes really obvious when someone tries to just read a speech to us. Thus, the next rule:

* Use visual aids as a focus point for the audience and an anchor point for you. Face the audience but glance and gesture to your visual aid in order to visually guide the audience as you speak. Bullet points are simple for the audience to focus on, yet they serve as a security blanket so you do not go blank or get out of order. You should know your material well enough to talk to the audience instead of read to them.

* Don’t try to memorize word-for-word. You tend to rush breathlessly through the speech just to get it out and you risk getting out of place and having to start over, and over, and over. Pause, breathe, slow down.

* If it helps nervousness, imagine that your family, those who love you best, are in the audience. Use eye contact with the audience, remembering that you OWN them! Say anything with enough confidence and they will believe you.

* Avoid wearing anything that you might play with and distract the viewer. Have a friend watch you practice and give you a body language critique. People who shift restlessly on their feet, who pace, who click their pens, play with their hair, or talk to the wall behind us drive the rest of us bonkers.

*Have a definite ending. The most common mistake I see students make is that they practice the first part of their speech but fail to plan any kind of strong ending. They often trail off with ” And,so, well.. um…yeah…”

* Turn off your own electronic devices and for goodness sake, don’t take calls during your presentation. The worst presenter I ever saw was an education teacher who took three or four calls from her family during each lecture!

//Eighth grader voice// So, that was my essay on how to unclutter a speech. I hope you liked my essay. The End. //Eighth grader voice off//

That is a failure of communication.

Many blessings,

Art Gonzalez
Check my Squidoo Lens at: Quantum Knights

Maybe I mistakenly wrote “astrology” instead of “astronomy” because I’m a Sagittarius;-) Thank you both for pointing out that error. I really appreciate it! Yes, it was an *astronomy* class at the Univ of CA…

Sue from Unclutterer

I’ve spoken publicly about a dozen times and loved it! what helps me is to move around and engage the audience quickly with a well-rehearsed joke and to ask rhetorical questions to get them thinking. I gave up on starting with real questions b/c most audiences are too timid to be the first one to answer any questions without knowing what I’ll do with their answers. As they get warmed up to me, I begin to ask more questions meant for real answers and they usually are engaged enough by then to begin offering answers. If not, I tell them what I guess they are thinking and they usually nod in agreement.

Humor is fantastic if you can do it. But it must look spontaneous. Only a lot of practice can make it seem that way. Study comics. Most of them tell the same jokes hundreds maybe thousands of times and make it sound totally fresh each time! It’s not cheating; it’s entertainment. And who doesn’t want to be entertained when they think they’re going to get a dry speech? ; )