Thanks for your help, everybody.

**Hamish** · 12th October 05, 06:08 PM

I am so pleased that it all went, for the mainpart, so well. We performers (!) are often very dissatisfied with our shows, but members of the audience seldom notice our slips (and I am not talking about Underkilts, here!).

Although I have done a lot of drama work, and one TV commercial back in the '70s, I am hopeless at public speaking as myself - I like a character in which to hide! Having said that, I have been invited to speak to two women's groups soon about my 'Kilt Kollection', and I can see that this is not going to be easy without a display of kilted mannequins and/or a good audio-visual show. Actually, it is not going to be easy at all, and I am starting to worry about it, so I might be coming to you for help before the day(s)!

**KiltedCodeWarrior** · 12th October 05, 07:52 PM

Originally Posted by Iolaus

...We have our speeches video-taped, and in watching the tape I'm hoping I'm being my own worst critic.

Iolaus, don't worry, you will be! I can almost guarantee, given that the talk went long and nobody complained, that no one else noticed any problems.

Congrats again!

**yoippari** · 12th October 05, 08:09 PM

Friday my public speaking class is choosing topics for our "Process" speech. Basicly it has to be how something is done, made, or... something. Anyway I want to do a speech about kilts at some point. The teacher said to pick something we are interested in and I already used my sword in progress for my introduction speech. It's good to hear a kilt speech go over so well and that just gives me a little more incentive. Of course if all else fails I could talk about anything in my signiture, but why?

Part of the whole public speaking class deals not with just speaking in front of crowds but just communicating. I usually have a lot to say and I always venture off onto other tangents which lead to other trains of thought before I get back around to my initial topic, though sometimes by that point I may have forgotten the point I was trying to get across. My problem is that I have too much information and the teacher will deduct points for not being within the 5-6 minute time limit.

**KiltedCodeWarrior** · 12th October 05, 08:28 PM

Originally Posted by yoippari

Friday my public speaking class is choosing topics for our "Process" speech. Basicly it has to be how something is done, made, or... something. Anyway I want to do a speech about kilts at some point. The teacher said to pick something we are interested in and I already used my sword in progress for my introduction speech. It's good to hear a kilt speech go over so well and that just gives me a little more incentive. Of course if all else fails I could talk about anything in my signiture, but why?

Part of the whole public speaking class deals not with just speaking in front of crowds but just communicating. I usually have a lot to say and I always venture off onto other tangents which lead to other trains of thought before I get back around to my initial topic, though sometimes by that point I may have forgotten the point I was trying to get across. My problem is that I have too much information and the teacher will deduct points for not being within the 5-6 minute time limit.

Yoippari, I know you have probably already been told to "tailor" your presentation to time or content, but maybe I can offer a simple approach to help gauge the time to deliver a presentation. Kilt making, or really any process, can easily take significantly more time to describe than just 5-6 minutes. Heck, you could spend that much time talking about writing a shopping list, let alone something like kilt making! I think that your challenge is not having enough material, but limiting it to the time alloted. Try this, develop your presentation using Powerpoint slides for each major topic. Then allot time for each slide. In the business world, it is common for each real slide, not an overview of the topic or a Q&A slide, to take 1-3 minutes! If I am doing an hour presentation and I have more than 15 real slides, I begin to get concerned about the time I have available. 5-6 minutes may seem like forever when creating the presentation, in reality it is a barely enough time to introduce yourself and the topic you will present.

RJI