skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Some people can’t tell the difference between a puffin and nuffin. The iPhone 4 to be recalled: it’s true - the Daily Mail says so was the title of a blog post by Karen Blakeman on June 27th. The online version of that newspaper fell for a Twitter post from a parody of Apple CEO Steve Jobs that claimed:
'“We may have to recall the new iPhone. This, I did not expect.”
The Mail story only was out for a few hours before they took it down. What happened to fact checking? The tweet source was clearly labeled as a parody. If they had read more from there, they also would have found that:
“I heard the CEO of AT&T got married recently. The service was great but the reception was terrible.”
“My kids use iPads as placemats.”
“I think we've exhausted the letter ‘i’. It's time to move on to ‘j’."
“I'm not sure what's worse: Being placed on the back of the ‘TIME 100’ cover or being pictured next to Sarah Palin.”
“What's the difference between Google and the oil spill? One is a slimy uncontrollable disaster. The other is an oil spill.”
“So why does Stephen Colbert get an iPad before you? Well, because, next to me, he's America's greatest treasure.”
According to Beverly Beuermann-King the week from July 1 to July 7 is Freedom from Fear of Public Speaking Week. It includes July 4, so a slightly Photoshopped patriotic poster is mandatory.
How should you celebrate? Remember the helpful motto “Don’t Panic!” According to Douglas Adams it appears on the cover of that mythical electronic encyclopedia, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 
In today’s cartoon Dilbert found that his audience had fallen into a PowerPoint induced coma. Many people are wishing that they also had said coma instead of the now trite “Death by PowerPoint.” A coma is slightly funnier but much less final.
His audience look more like they are in a hypnotic trance. Too many bullet point slides, consecutive pie charts, or animated slide transitions are probable causes. Clip art is fine, thank you. After all, we are discussing a cartoon.
Martin Yate wrote a plethora of job search books whose exaggerated titles include the phrase “Knock ‘em Dead.” His reader’s intent really was just to temporarily stun some of the HR department.
First impressions based either on appearance or speech delivery may be dead wrong. In the photo from 1921 the man at front left is Albert Einstein. The hunchback to his right is Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a famous electrical engineer. The shifty looking character between and behind them is Nikola Tesla, another famous electrical engineer.
In college I remember how radically my classmate’s first impressions of the professor who taught them the introductory materials science course were revised after they attended a second class. Jack Low was short, gray-haired, and very soft-spoken. After the first class some even suspected he might be senile.
During the second class a student asked about the difference between two related concepts: the proportional limit and the offset yield strength. Jack put one foot up on a chair and spoke extemporaneously for five minutes about what, how, and why. He explained both concepts more clearly and in much more detail than was in the textbook. Jack concluded by noting that the superficially attractive idea of a proportional limit was much less useful to engineers than the easier to measure offset yield strength.
Later we found out that Jack had been doing research on metallurgy for a decade before we were even born, and also had been head of the metallurgy department at Penn State University.
In his memorial tribute from the National Academy of Engineering it was noted that:
“Jack Low played an exceedingly important leadership role in both the science and application of metal deformation and fracture through the years 1940 to 1977, a period when physical and mechanical metallurgy underwent a tremendous forward advance.
He has played a major role in that advance, both through his own research and through careful and diligent training of those students fortunate enough to have worked with him. His students particularly remember his low-key, but extremely penetrating review and critique of their work and ideas.
He was a recognized authority on the relationship between microstructure and fracture processes in structural alloys, and his publications on such topics as temper embrittlement, the role of inclusions and dispersoids, and cleavage processes in the fracture of high strength steels and aluminum alloys are universally cited.”
On page 14 of his book Working the Room, Nick Morgan notes that:
“These gestures were important because of how speeches were delivered until the advent of radio and television in the mid-twentieth century. It’s important to remember that public speaking was a form of mass entertainment. Most speeches were delivered without amplification to audiences in large halls or outdoors. As a result, a style of speaking developed that involved grand rhetoric, big, dramatic gestures, and voice projection.”
In a blog post on June 8 Jim Anderson described how the introduction of public address systems early in the twentieth century led to the demise of wildly theatrical hand gestures. Once everyone in a large audience could hear clearly, there was no longer a necessity for gestures as a backup form of communication to those far away from the speaker.
Triode vacuum tubes (or thermionic valves) were patented in 1908. They were a key component for audio amplifiers. By 1922 there was a public address system in the US Capitol. A red-tinted photo of the control room is shown above, as is a pole-mounted horn loudspeaker from 1923.
A web page for the Museum of Public Address has many more photographs of early equipment. I was surprised to read that back on December 30, 1915 a Magnavox public address system was used at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco for a remote wire broadcast by the California governor, Hiram Johnson. The governor had a severe cold, and spoke from his home. This predated commercial radio, which began in Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920 when KDKA broadcast election returns. Manufacture of radio receivers led to the mass production of loudspeakers.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s most movie theaters in the US were being equipped for sound films, and thus large amplifiers suitable for public address systems were mass produced.
The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson is often quoted as having said something like:
“What you do speaks louder than what you say"
or perhaps:
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say”
or maybe:
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say”
or even (according to John F. Kennedy):
“What we are speaks louder than what we say.”
According to Ralph Keyes’s book The Quote Verifier, what the other Ralph actually said (in Letters and Social Aims) was:
“Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”
Thunders is a much more powerful word than the longer and less specific “speaks loud” (or loudly). In his book The Devil’s Dictionary Ambrose Bierce defined quotation as:
‘The act of repeating erroneously the words of another”
I prefer Emerson’s original words. How about you?
In a detailed 2009 blog post Andrew Dlugan discussed Are Your Speech Gestures Too Small, Too Big, or Just Right? He pointed out that the size of the gestures usually should match the size of the audience. An exception is in a large room, when a magnified image of the speaker appears on one video screen, and prepared images such as PowerPoint slides appear on another screen.
In this special case the gestures can be much smaller and still be effective, as is summarized in the image shown above. If the speaker is not prepared though, he may appear like an angry fairy-tale giant with beanstalk issues, as shown below.
Back in 1994 Successful Meetings magazine had an article by Dona Meilach about what to do When Your Presenter is Larger Than Life. She gave advice for preparing the speaker, the video cameraman, and the meeting planner and then conquering the big room.
The speaker was advised to practice to eliminate nervous gestures. Don’t rock from side to side. Don’t move your tongue to wet your lips - you’ll look like a lizard. Instead, get a drink of water before you begin speaking. Wear solid colors rather than detailed patterns that will flicker. Don’t wear photochromic glasses - they will become dark under the bright stage lights, and your eyes will be hidden completely. Women should wear simple jewelry and avoid long, dangling earrings. Also, please don't sneeze.
The cameraman was advised to place the camera high enough to avoid up-the nostril shots of the speaker, or getting the audience’s heads in the images. Check that the lighting for the speaker doesn’t spill over and wash out the screen images.
Finally, the planner was advised to have a session for preparing the speakers, and enough time for the audiovisual staff to set up properly. Consider the room layout, and placement of the podium and lectern. Avoid camouflage from complicated or very dark backgrounds.
