Public speaking and the importance of not killing yourself through over-preparation

by Lee Hopkins on March 5, 2006 · 4 comments

in Uncategorized

great tips on public speaking from the great Dave SheaCSS wizard Dave Shea gives some handy hints and tips garnered from extensive public speaking experience.

Every single tip is a gem and worthy of noting, especially the one about the futility of over-preparedness of your speech. You should always leave room for invention, creativity and spontaneity.

So recently, I’ve realized a few things that I think are making me a better speaker. I’ve stopped spending ages coming up with finely-detailed outlines of each presentation, and instead I’m leaving more to real-time interaction. I’m still no Veen or Molly, and likely will never be, but at least I’m comfortable in my own methods now, and I think that’s the real key to presenting well.

Equally worth reading are the comments to Dave’s post — currently there are 31!

Hat tip to Roy Hammans over on the Visual Being blog.

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  • http://www.technologyevangelist.com/ Ed Kohler

    Great tips. Speaking in public is hard enough without trying to stick to a strick outline. Spending that energy on tracking audience feedback would be a much better strategy in most situations. Hit the high points, have some stories that you can use to get across those points, and call it a wrap.

  • http://www.technologyevangelist.com Ed Kohler

    Great tips. Speaking in public is hard enough without trying to stick to a strick outline. Spending that energy on tracking audience feedback would be a much better strategy in most situations. Hit the high points, have some stories that you can use to get across those points, and call it a wrap.

  • http://leehopkins.net/ Lee

    True, Ed, they are great tips indeed. Using stories to make your point is also a superb strategy — ‘stories’ are my preferred method of capturing and keeping an audience’s interest.

  • http://leehopkins.net Lee

    True, Ed, they are great tips indeed. Using stories to make your point is also a superb strategy — ‘stories’ are my preferred method of capturing and keeping an audience’s interest.

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