a thought for speakers

[Dick Dunn]

henry at zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) on a pet peeve:

> There are few things that annoy an audience more, or give them a lower
> opinion of the speaker, than the following.  Speaker starts out giving a
> leisurely and interesting presentation of his material.  Halfway through,
> he realizes he has ten more minutes to cover 80% of his material.  He goes
> into frenzy mode, desperately trying to touch all the bases in his work,...
...
> If you're going to ask an audience to listen to you, do your homework.
[time your talk]

All well said.  A simple way to keep yourself close to the correct time and
proportion for each topic is to subdivide your talk.  Say you've got 25
minutes to talk--that might break into 5 minutes of intro and conclusion,
10 minutes on one important topic, 5 minutes on each of two lesser topics.
The 10-minute chunk might need another subdivision if you're having trouble
keeping the time right.  Just put the times alongside the topics in your
outline, and check your progress against the "schedule" periodically. 
That way, if you're rambling and losing time, you'll see it soon enough
that the correction can be minor (dropping a few lesser points here and
there to get back on schedule) instead of the wholesale panic Henry
describes.  If you're less comfortable speaking to a large group, add more
time checkpoints so you have a small enough error that you won't worry
about it.  It's good practice to learn to track the time while you're
talking...since speaking involves mental juggling of several balls anyway
(speaking, listening to yourself for mistakes, gauging audience interest/
reaction,...)
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.