technozid

I love public speaking. Passionate presenting in front of 5, 50 or 500 people is what I truly enjoy. So I was very happy when I got asked for a speaking engagement last Saturday. The presentation had to be held in front of a group of just 10 people, but they were probably the toughest critics one can think of. I am pleased to report that it went very good, and that I managed to include them in Q&A and even practical breakouts during my gig.

In a funny coincidence, I stumbled across an article with public speaking tricks today. I support most of the tricks mentioned. They work well. Here are my three secret soup ingredients when it comes to public speaking:

1. Speak LOUD
   In smaller rooms and with smaller audiences, I usually do not need amplification, because I talk significantly louder than many other speakers I have met. The trick is to find a volume where you are not shouting yet and still have full control over the nuances of your voice. Not only will speaking loud help the audience to understand you. The main effect is that a loud and clear and steady voice will give you an aura of authority and expertship. As a side effect, it will force you to breathe regularly, which helps you to relax and makes your thoughts more clear.
2. Speak SLOW
   Some people suggest you should treat your audience as if they were a bunch of 5 year olds. I do not like the implications of that – it’s a disregard of your audience. However, what works for me, is to speak slow. Real slow. And then a bit. Of course you need to adjust to your audience, but still – speak slower than you would normally do in a conversation. Again, this helps your audience to follow you, but it also helps YOU to plan your sentence ahead, in order to avoid gaps. Especially useful in a Q&A track.
3. Make eye contact
   Secret sauce ingredient #3 is equally important. I usually pick 2-5 people from the audience, and keep eye contact with them. It’s really not important who you chose, but if there are important people in the audience (prospective clients for example), pick them. Otherwise pick the ones you think look most sympathic or attractive. Members of the audience you will NOT pick, won’t realize they were not picked, but WILL realize you keep eye contact with the audience. Shift your eye-contact among the people you picked in a random pattern. Actually, don’t think too much of it, it will happen automatically. The effect is that the audience gets the impression that you CARE about them, and that you want them to take something home with them from your presentation.

Those are my 3 golden rules for presentations. More general rules include to be well prepared, to know what you talk about, the make a full body presentation, with walking, gesticulation, leaning against things. I even sat down on stage edges occasionally, to address the audience.

Public speaking can be great fun and is definitely a rewarding experience. Next time you have to do it, remember my 3 suggestions.

Have fun!

So this blog was not touched since July 2007, and in those 17 months there were 75k successfully intercepted spam comments. Bandwidth is far too cheap it seems.

BoingBoing has a post on the person who photographed the new Harry Potter book. The person obviously forgot to manipulate/erase the EXIF metadata, so the camera type and serial number is known. The real dynamite (at least for me) lies in the quote of a Canon official:

“From what we know, the device is one of the original Rebel cameras, probably a 350D, and given that they’ve been out for three years, it’s likely the owner would have had it cleaned or repaired in that time.”

Pardon? You must be kidding, don’t you? In a 3 year timeframe, that camera had to be sent in for maintenance at least one time?

I just replaced my old analog Canon camera – which I had for 10 years – with a Fuji digital camera. My old Canon NEVER got maintenanced in all these years!

Today is the fourth day after a bicycle accident I had. Fortunately it happened without another party involved – otherwise it might have been even worse. I cycled downhill and had to take a right turn at a crossing – a spot I pass twice each day. Since it hasn’t rained since April 1st the crossing was dusty with dirt an pollen. However a municipal cleaning machine has just passed and sprayed some water on it. The water formed a greasy coating with the dirt/pollen, so my bicycle lost traction and I slammed to the ground and slid accross the crossing. I am covered with bruises, and my left knee was bleeding heavily and was quite swollen. I had to go to the hospital and they took 3 x-rays of the knee. Fortunately nothing is broken, but the swelling only subsides very slowly. On Thursday and Friday I could barely walk at all. Today on Sunday there is still some substantial swelling, not to speak of the battered look which looks as the leg comes right out of a Zombie movie…

For the first time in many years I realized a few days ago that St. Patricks Day is coming up – usually this only occurs to me a couple of weeks later. I was looking forward to spend the evening today in one of our three Irish pubs in town and have lots of music, lots of Guiness and lots of chat. And then I found out that I had a dentists appointment for yesterday – to get a “wisdom tooth”(?) removed. The procedure was planned for 5-10 minutes, but then it turned out that the tooth was not really cooperative, so that in the end three(!) people worked on me for 45 minutes. I got anesthesia of course so I felt no pain. Nevertheless it was quite exhausting and stressful for me. And a couple of hours later the anesthesia wore off and that is when the “fun” really started for me…
Today it feels much better, but I’m still taking painkillers and I am very cautious what I drink and eat since the wound is still pretty raw. If it continues like that I would be ill advised if I’d join St. Patricks Day tonight, at least in the pubs in my town. However I have seen a few places in Second Life where they celebrate it too. Maybe a virtual St. Patricks Day is better than none at all.