Friday, June 17, 2011

Is your speech freshly ground or stale from a jar?
















Freshly ground peanut butter is great when compared with the staler, sugary stuff that comes out of a jar. (I get mine at the bulk food section in the WinCo Foods supermarket downtown). Similarly, a freshly prepared speech with your own content, tailored for a specific audience, is far better than a stale one borrowed from other sources.

On Tuesday I gave an Introduction to Stainless Steels and Corrosion at the NACE Intermountain Section meeting in Salt Lake City. I’d previously spoken to their Sun Valley Symposium in January 2010. Only 6 people in the audience (mostly officers) of 30 had heard my presentation before.

I had updated my discussion of service environments to include the drinking water for the Salt Lake City metro area. Their surface water sources are mountain streams and melted snow, but during the summer they also depend on ground water from wells. Each stainless steel can tolerate a certain chloride content (depending on temperature) before crevice or pitting corrosion becomes a problem.

Professor Stephen Boyd has discussed several ways for keeping your speech material fresh.

2 comments:

Dorothy said...

I would like to hear more of Boyd's presentation to judge his success as a public speaker, especially since his subject matter is technical.

Richard I. Garber said...

Based on his background I'd expect Professor Boyd to be quite compelling. He is a memner of the National Speakers Association and has their Certified Speaking Professional certification. Also, in 1970 he won the Toastmasters International Speech Contest (World Champion of Public Speaking.