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OK, full disclosure. This post has nothing to do with public speaking. But hey, it’s my blog, so I get to bend the rules from time to time.
I couldn’t let the day go by without acknowledging the fabulous effort put forth by the Canadian Team at the Vancouver Olympics. With 14 gold medals, we topped the standings for the first time and set a record for the most gold medals won by any nation at any Winter Olympics.
And no gold medal was more anticipated, more desired, more vital than the one earned by our men’s hockey team in its 3-2 victory over the United States.
Photo courtesy of Andy Mills
It was one of the most exciting games I have seen – and I have seen many. When Sidney Crosby netted the winner on a great pass from Jarome Iginla at 7:40 of the overtime period, our house erupted. And even though we now live in Switzerland, we could feel the energy reverberating from Canada.
Photo courtesy of Christopher Bevacqua
Crosby’s goal will rank up there with Paul Henderson’s goal in the 1972 Summit Series and Mario Lemieux’s goal in the 1987 Canada Cup.
If you are not Canadian, it is difficult to appreciate the significance of the game of hockey for us. Many countries are mad about football (soccer); some are focused on several sports (for example, baseball, basketball and American football in the United States).
In Canada, we might play and follow other sports, but none is on par with hockey. It has no equal in our national heart and mind. It is a sport that is uniquely woven into the Canadian psyche. It is our game.
Photo courtesy of Christopher Bevacqua
Roch Carrier wrote, “Les hivers de mon enfance étaient des saisons longues, longues. Nous vivions en trois lieux: l’école, l’église et la patinoire; mais la vraie vie était sur la patinoire.” (“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating rink – but our real life was on the skating rink.”)
Stephen Leacock said, ”Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.”
Hockey is a part of what it means to be Canadian. And it was good to get back in touch with that part yesterday.
Photo courtesy of Andy Mills
Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. Statistics will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.
I recently came across a great example of how to put statistics into context: The Cosmic Calendar by the late, great astronomer, Carl Sagan. Sagan, who was passionate about the universe and its creation, wanted to convey the history of the cosmos in a way that could be grasped by the average person. No mean feat when you consider that we are talking about a mind-boggling 15 billion years. I have trouble keeping track of time in a single week.
To put things into context, Sagan developed the Cosmic Calendar, which compresses the entirety of eternity into a single calendar year on Earth. The result is fascinating and makes us realize just how late we are to the party, for according to the Cosmic Calendar:
- Things began with the Big Bang on the very first second of January 1st.
- Right now is the last second of the last minute of December 31st.
- Each month represents a little over 1.25 billion years.
- Each day represents 40 million years.
- Each second represents 500 years.
- The Milky Way was formed in May.
- The sun and the planets were formed in mid-September. Life arose soon after.
- The first multi-cellular organisms didn’t show up until in November.
- The first vertebrates appeared on December 17th.
- On Christmas Eve, the dinosaurs arrived. By December 29th, they were extinct.
- Our human ancestors made their appearance around 10:30 p.m. on December 31st.
- At 11:46 on December 31st, humans made fire.
- We only began to domesticate plants and animals at 11:59:20 on December 31st.
- All of recorded history happened in the last ten seconds of the last minute of December 31st.
- The pyramids were built nine seconds ago.
- The Roman Empire fell three seconds ago.
- Columbus discovered America one second ago.
- If the average human lifespan is condered to be 75 years, the average person will live 0.15 seconds.
I don’t know about you, but I find all of this incredibly humbling. I also find that it puts the history of the universe into a context that makes it more accessible.
As speakers, we might not have to explain the vastness of the universe; however, we often have to explain other complex matters. Be like Carl Sagan. Look for ways to put complex information into context so that your audience will understand and remember what you said.
For those of you interested in learning more about the Cosmic Calendar from Carl Sagan himself, you might enjoy the video below.
This morning I had a surprise. An unpleasant one. When I went to check the activity on this blog, I was greeted with a message that it had been suspended for violating the WordPress terms of service.
Now, a dozen thoughts raced through my mind as I tried to figure out what had happened. But then I reminded myself that this problem, although serious, is nothing compared to the problems faced by billions around the world each day. I wrote a message to WordPress Support and offered as much information as possible to help them.
Within four hours I had an email from WordPress apologizing for the mix-up and putting things right. A big Thank You to them. Problems happen and it is nice to know that WordPress stands ready to respond quickly.
By my calculation, the blog was down for around 15 hours – most of which, mercifully, I slept through. I am sorry if this issue has caused any inconvenience and thank you for all the support that you have given my blog since I launched it last year.
As soon as the issue was resolved, I was reminded of Vincent Vega, John Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction. There is a scene in which he has just saved Mia Wallace (played by Uma Thurman) from a heroin overdose. As he drops her off home, he says in a voice filled with exhaustion:
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go home and have a heart attack.”
Now that this matter has been resolved, I think that I’ll take the lead from Travolta, but not based on the scene mentioned above. No, right about now I am feeling more like Travolta in this earlier scene in Pulp Fiction:
Yes, it is snowing on this blog. (Either that or Martin, Barack, Winston and John have a bad case of dandruff.)
Just a little feature that WordPress allows its bloggers to add at this time of the year. Hey, why not? It’s a nice touch and Christmas is coming. Ho! Ho! Ho!
I am recently back from four weeks of vacation in Canada. It was great to see family and old friends. For most of the time, I did not have regular access to a computer. It was very nice not to be in front of a screen every day.
But now it is back to work and that includes regular writing on this blog. Look for a new post soon.
I have to thank my brother Greg for giving me the idea for this post. Greg sent me an email about an application called Wordle. It was created by Jonathan Feinberg, a Senior Software Engineer at IBM Research.
The Wordle website describes the application as “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.” Pretty neat toy.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of word clouds, scroll along this page. In the widget bar on the left, you will see a section called “John’s Tag Cloud”, under which are several words of different sizes. Bloggers often add “tags” to their posts that list the key subjects covered. In this blog, the tags listed beneath the title of each post. The more tags there are for a given word, the larger that word appears, relative to others, in the tag cloud.
With Wordle, you can run an entire document through the application and come out with a word cloud for that document. This can be a very interesting exercise when it comes to speeches. Let’s use one of mine as an example.
You can watch the speech that I gave at the Toastmasters District 59 Conference in Dusseldorf here. (Yes, it might be a thinly disguised attempt to boost my number of views to Susan Boyle-esque levels, but what the heck, it makes the point.)
Now, take a look at the word cloud that was generated based on the text of that speech:
"Look Mom! My first word cloud!"
In my speech, I used the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 – when enemy soldiers climbed out of their trenches and celebrated Christmas together – as a metaphor for us to climb out of the psychological trenches that we dig for ourselves and which prevent us from taking chances in life. You can see the words that featured prominently.
With the click of a button, Wordle gives you a snapshot of your speech. If you want to emphasize certain words, this tool provides you with an interesting perspective. Of course, there is more to good speech-writing than just adding or taking away words, but with Wordle, you get a neat little site map that lets you know where you stand.
Moreover, you can create nice souvenirs of your speeches. According to the Wordle website, “[y]ou can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.” Pretty cool.
Wordle is also educational. To end on a fascinating political and historical note, Jonathan Feinberg has analyzed every Presidential inaugural address in an effort to see what was distinctive about each one. You can see the results here.
Many thanks to those of you who have visited this blog since it was launched just over a week ago. I appreciate the support and comments.
The most common suggestion was to switch from a black background to a white one in order to make the posts more reader friendly. Although I liked the old black background, I did find the font too small.
So we have a new look. I suspect that I will fiddle with the layout some more in the days and weeks to come, but I will endeavour to ensure that it is easy on the eyes.
What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.
One of the greatest public speakers of ancient Athens was Demosthenes (384 – 322 BC). His speeches have been studied for centuries. Not only do they provide insight into the culture and society in which Demosthenes lived, they also provide wonderful examples of his oratorical skills.
As a young boy, however, Demosthenes was the very antithesis of a polished public speaker. He was shy and had a weak voice. On top of this, he stammered. In fact, Plutarch, another notable from ancient Greece, would describe Demosthenes’ voice as being characterized by “a perplexed and indistinct utterance and a shortness of breath, which, by breaking and disjointing his sentences much obscured the sense and meaning of what he spoke.”
According to legend, to remedy these shortcomings, Demosthenes worked very hard. He built himself an underground room where he studied speeches from the great orators of his time.
To overcome his speech impediment, he used to talk with pebbles in his mouth. To strengthen his voice, he would recite verses while running. He also would walk along the seashore and practice speaking above the roar of the crashing waves. In so doing, Demosthenes strengthened his speaking voice and his confidence, and went on to become one of the greatest orators of all time.
Demosthenes Practising his Oratory, Jules-Jean-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy
I like that story, whether it actually happened or not, because it speaks to a deeper truth. Public speaking is something that is within the grasp of everyone. Public speaking is a skill that we can improve.
Of course, we are not all Tony Blair or Barack Obama. We will not all have the opportunity to address nations from the podium (something for which many of us are grateful, I am sure). But we are called to speak in public in a myriad of ways all the time: delivering a presentation to clients; raising a toast at a wedding; running an office meeting; motivating the players on your local sports team before the big game. All of this is public speaking, and it is a skill that we should endeavour to improve.
Polls show that one of the most important qualities that employers look for in a candidate is the ability to communicate well. We can all learn to communicate well if we take the time to learn a bit about the craft, and if we practice.
My hope is that this blog will provide you with useful insights into, and tips on, the world of public speaking. And, perhaps, it will get you a little bit excited (in a good way) about standing up in front of people and speaking to them.
This blog has been a long time coming, but it has now arrived. Special thanks to three good friends who are all great bloggers: Catherine Nelson-Pollard; Alistair Scott; and Melissa Miller. They have provided great advice on blogging and even greater encouragement to give it a go. They have also set a high standard to which I aspire.
And so it begins.
