Every year the Table Topics Bunny hops by and leaves a stack in my “IN” basket. Did he visit you this year? (He comes on February 22nd in memory of Dr. Ralph C. Smedley’s birthday).
Actually we either make them up ourselves, or look at some excellent compilations of ideas that are out on the Internet.
Mark LaVergne presents 101 Ideas for Great Table Topics
Kathleen Wong describes
52 Table Topic Ideas for the Whole Year
Sherrin Ross Ingram discusses 50 ideas for
Variety in Table Topics
At the end of a detailed educational presentation on Fabulous questions and fearless answers Janice Dirkschneider lists 20 Table Topics Ideas
Monday, June 30, 2008
Answering questions: "off the cuff", extemporaneous, or impromptu speaking that also is known as "Table Topics"
Answering questions is a form of impromptu, extemporaneous, or “off the cuff” speaking that is an important skill. Every meeting of Toastmasters International has a portion devoted to Table Topics. I find Table Topics much more difficult than doing a prepared speech. The one to two minute period for answering the question feels like forever to me! Here are some articles about tactics and strategies.
An impromptu speech is like a jazz solo it takes thought and lots of practice to do it well.
George Torok discusses Triumphant Table Topics.
Dave Wheeler describes some Table Topics Strategies – Use your head to speak on your feet
The most provocative nontraditional appreoachs clearly are: to LIE, CHEAT, or STEAL.
This post was updated on July 21, 2017 to replace several broken links.
An impromptu speech is like a jazz solo it takes thought and lots of practice to do it well.
George Torok discusses Triumphant Table Topics.
Dave Wheeler describes some Table Topics Strategies – Use your head to speak on your feet
The most provocative nontraditional appreoachs clearly are: to LIE, CHEAT, or STEAL.
This post was updated on July 21, 2017 to replace several broken links.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Don’t be a “Flip Chart Charlie”
Flip charts are so simple to prepare and use that no thought is required. It’s quick and easy! Just pick up a marker and start writing. Nothing could possibly go wrong!
But wait a minute. How can you give your audience a truly memorable flip chart presentation?
1 Use flip charts only when you will have more than twenty people seated more than fifteen feet away from the easel. Some of the audience should see a chart that looks no larger than a postage stamp.
2. Start preparing your charts in the last hour before your presentation.
3. Make sure that your lettering is too small to read easily. Less than two inches tall is good, and less than one inch tall is even better.
4. Cram your entire message on your flip charts. Don’t just list the main points.
5. Make sure to use more than seven lines (with more than seven words) on each and every chart. People just love details.
6. Put the most important information on the bottom third of the page so people in the back of the room cannot possibly see it.
7. Keep reducing the size of your letters to indicate the headings, sub headings, sub-sub headings, sub-sub sub headings etc. With enough levels you can give your audience a free eye exam.
8. Be sure to use whatever markers are lying around. Light orange is good, but yellow or pink highlighters are even better.
9. Use every page on the pad. Bleed through from magic markers adds attractive little clouds of color that will accent your words.
10. USE ALL UPPER CASE, AND REPLACE CAPITALIZATION JUST BY USING BIGGER LETTERS.
11. Print illegibly and let your words flow gently downhill towards the nearest river or ocean.
12. Flip to the next chart before your audience can read to the bottom of the current one.
13. As you point to your chart, be sure to turn away from the audience. Mumble so softly that even the front row can’t hear you.
Of course, the thirteen points listed above are purely tongue-in-cheek. Flip charts are excellent visual aids for presentations. There is no projector bulb to burn out. There is no fancy software to worry about. There is also no complicated hardware to connect. Where can you find out about using flip charts effectively?
Lenny Laskowski has an excellent web page on
11 tips for using flip charts more effectively
If you’d prefer a prettier version of the same information, it can also be found as an Acrobat .pdf file
Barry Weissman wrote an excellent article in Industrial Safety and Hygiene News
about flipcharts
Marie Wallace also discusses flipcharts in her Guide on the Side series
Robert Lucas wrote the Big Book of Flip Charts. He has several interesting articles posted on his web site:
Successful flip chart usage
Five super tips for enhancing flip charts with color
Using flip charts to make your message visual
Spicing up your flip charts with graphic images
Transporting flip charts effortlessly
This post was inspired by two articles Glen Kerfoot wrote in Training & Development magazine way back in 1966, “The search for flip chart charlie” and “The cure for flip chart Charlie”
But wait a minute. How can you give your audience a truly memorable flip chart presentation?
1 Use flip charts only when you will have more than twenty people seated more than fifteen feet away from the easel. Some of the audience should see a chart that looks no larger than a postage stamp.
2. Start preparing your charts in the last hour before your presentation.
3. Make sure that your lettering is too small to read easily. Less than two inches tall is good, and less than one inch tall is even better.
4. Cram your entire message on your flip charts. Don’t just list the main points.
5. Make sure to use more than seven lines (with more than seven words) on each and every chart. People just love details.
6. Put the most important information on the bottom third of the page so people in the back of the room cannot possibly see it.
7. Keep reducing the size of your letters to indicate the headings, sub headings, sub-sub headings, sub-sub sub headings etc. With enough levels you can give your audience a free eye exam.
8. Be sure to use whatever markers are lying around. Light orange is good, but yellow or pink highlighters are even better.
9. Use every page on the pad. Bleed through from magic markers adds attractive little clouds of color that will accent your words.
10. USE ALL UPPER CASE, AND REPLACE CAPITALIZATION JUST BY USING BIGGER LETTERS.
11. Print illegibly and let your words flow gently downhill towards the nearest river or ocean.
12. Flip to the next chart before your audience can read to the bottom of the current one.
13. As you point to your chart, be sure to turn away from the audience. Mumble so softly that even the front row can’t hear you.
Of course, the thirteen points listed above are purely tongue-in-cheek. Flip charts are excellent visual aids for presentations. There is no projector bulb to burn out. There is no fancy software to worry about. There is also no complicated hardware to connect. Where can you find out about using flip charts effectively?
Lenny Laskowski has an excellent web page on
11 tips for using flip charts more effectively
If you’d prefer a prettier version of the same information, it can also be found as an Acrobat .pdf file
Barry Weissman wrote an excellent article in Industrial Safety and Hygiene News
about flipcharts
Marie Wallace also discusses flipcharts in her Guide on the Side series
Robert Lucas wrote the Big Book of Flip Charts. He has several interesting articles posted on his web site:
Successful flip chart usage
Five super tips for enhancing flip charts with color
Using flip charts to make your message visual
Spicing up your flip charts with graphic images
Transporting flip charts effortlessly
This post was inspired by two articles Glen Kerfoot wrote in Training & Development magazine way back in 1966, “The search for flip chart charlie” and “The cure for flip chart Charlie”
Saturday, June 21, 2008
He ought to be good, he’s using my act
In a previous post on June 4, 2008 I discussed “Learning Hand Gestures from YouTube Videos”. I did not remember then where that idea came from. It probably actually came from an article by Carmine Gallo titled “YouTube your way to better speaking”.
The article originally in appeared in the August 8, 2007 issue of Business Week
It was later reprinted in Toastmaster for October 2007, which is where I read it last fall.
Mr. Gallo points out several great speakers, and even some specific speeches. He mentions two business executives he particularly admires: Steve Jobs of Apple and John Chambers of Cisco.
The title for this post is something one comedian said long ago about another “borrowing” his material. It may have been Fred Allen complaining about Milton Berle. Although you can learn a lot from others, you still need to find your own unique style of speaking.
The article originally in appeared in the August 8, 2007 issue of Business Week
It was later reprinted in Toastmaster for October 2007, which is where I read it last fall.
Mr. Gallo points out several great speakers, and even some specific speeches. He mentions two business executives he particularly admires: Steve Jobs of Apple and John Chambers of Cisco.
The title for this post is something one comedian said long ago about another “borrowing” his material. It may have been Fred Allen complaining about Milton Berle. Although you can learn a lot from others, you still need to find your own unique style of speaking.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
DIA - Drowning in Acronyms
DIA is an acronym that now means “Drowning in Acronyms”. DIA originally stood for the Defense Intelligence Agency, but now it just describes their mode of speech. DIA and the rest of our government (and much of industry) talk glibly about UAVs and IEDs, and so on. They know what this alphabet soup of abbreviations means. To them it all is quite obvious.
They forget that we do not understand most of what they are saying. If you absolutely must use an acronym in a speech, then please take a few seconds to define it. As a general rule please AAIP (Avoid Acronyms If Possible). Your audience will thank you.
Some of the most obscure acronyms are drifted names for technical societies. An acronym originally stood for the name. Then the name changed, but the acronym did not. Presumably this is due to the complexities of American trademark law. However, it is just wonderful for confusing outsiders. For example, I am a member of TMS which originally was The Metallurgical Society. Now TMS actually is The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society.
It gets worse. Over in Great Britain there used to be the Institute of Metals, IOM. Now it is IOM3, meaning the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining. The newer alphanumerical soup is worse, and should be avoided even in Business to Business (B2B) communication.
They forget that we do not understand most of what they are saying. If you absolutely must use an acronym in a speech, then please take a few seconds to define it. As a general rule please AAIP (Avoid Acronyms If Possible). Your audience will thank you.
Some of the most obscure acronyms are drifted names for technical societies. An acronym originally stood for the name. Then the name changed, but the acronym did not. Presumably this is due to the complexities of American trademark law. However, it is just wonderful for confusing outsiders. For example, I am a member of TMS which originally was The Metallurgical Society. Now TMS actually is The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society.
It gets worse. Over in Great Britain there used to be the Institute of Metals, IOM. Now it is IOM3, meaning the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining. The newer alphanumerical soup is worse, and should be avoided even in Business to Business (B2B) communication.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Life after “Death by PowerPoint”
Don McMillan has a hilarious, four minute comedy video on “Life After Death by PowerPoint”. It shows what you should not do. Most of us unfortunately have been victims of similar PowerPoint presentations. You can watch Don either on MySpaceTV
or on YouTube with added subtitles
What should you do with PowerPoint? Mike Futty recently has briefly discussed how to avoid “Death by PowerPoint”
On the same site is a longer presentation, a 34-page e-book, by Craig Douglas Strachan on Putting the POWER into Powerpoint
or on YouTube with added subtitles
What should you do with PowerPoint? Mike Futty recently has briefly discussed how to avoid “Death by PowerPoint”
On the same site is a longer presentation, a 34-page e-book, by Craig Douglas Strachan on Putting the POWER into Powerpoint
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Jargon versus clarity: The only thing we have to fear is significant anomalies
In his inaugural speech Franklin Roosevelt famously said that: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”. He did NOT say that the only thing we have to fear is significant anomalies.
An anomaly is something abnormal or irregular. “Significant anomalies” is internal NASA technical jargon for major discrepancies that might lead to problems. Would we want to hear about insignificant anomalies? We probably would not. Somewhere inside NASA though somebody is looking to try and catch them before they grow to become significant.
Technical jargon has escaped from inside industry and government and now is being inflicted on the outside world. They know what it means, but the rest of us are scratching our heads. Jargon usually is the enemy of clarity in speaking. Steve Adubato discussed this problem in an article titled Lose the jargon, clarity is the way to go
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that for the last twenty years I have been figuring out why things busted or rusted. In technical jargon I could say that I conducted root cause failure analysis (or RCFA). My part of the puzzle starts from looking at the materials and processes used to make a component, product, or system. When I talk with a client, I often say that: “It was made right. We better look at how it was used to see why it broke (or rusted).” I have learned to resist saying that “Chemical and metallurgical analysis of the component revealed no significant anomalies.”
An anomaly is something abnormal or irregular. “Significant anomalies” is internal NASA technical jargon for major discrepancies that might lead to problems. Would we want to hear about insignificant anomalies? We probably would not. Somewhere inside NASA though somebody is looking to try and catch them before they grow to become significant.
Technical jargon has escaped from inside industry and government and now is being inflicted on the outside world. They know what it means, but the rest of us are scratching our heads. Jargon usually is the enemy of clarity in speaking. Steve Adubato discussed this problem in an article titled Lose the jargon, clarity is the way to go
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that for the last twenty years I have been figuring out why things busted or rusted. In technical jargon I could say that I conducted root cause failure analysis (or RCFA). My part of the puzzle starts from looking at the materials and processes used to make a component, product, or system. When I talk with a client, I often say that: “It was made right. We better look at how it was used to see why it broke (or rusted).” I have learned to resist saying that “Chemical and metallurgical analysis of the component revealed no significant anomalies.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)