Gender and Delivery

Well, I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but apparently something is wrong. The reason I say that is because when I listen to speakers talk, I listen to the message. It makes no difference to me whether they are a male of a female. Maybe because I'm older and look at the world differently than most others. I listen to what people are saying and not how they are saying it. Especially this time of year with all the politics and the adds. What and how people say things can be deceiving. One of the big issues in politics these days revolves around the woman's vote. So, how else can you reach out to woman? Put them in political adds. With this, it's even more important to listen and think and even read about the issues. Women can be used to make the simple minded people think that what they are saying must be important to women because a woman is saying it. It makes it very easy to use women to manipulate voters.
  Regarding the issues of gender and delivery in the book, I don't think that pitch and volume are an issue with women. Maybe because when I listen to women, they are usually talking into a microphone and on TV. The only way other way I can apply those situations would be to those who speak in class. I have not seen much of a pitch or volume problem but maybe because it's a small room.
  Earlier in the article, it explains that woman are judged on what they wear where a man would be given a higher status just because he's a man. I cant disagree with this more. Even though it does say "much has changed over the years", I can never remember a time that I felt that way.

F.D.

Self Evaluation #2

I got an A- on my last speech. I'm good with that as a grade. I had, however, prepared for an A++ by spending some countless amount of hours getting ready for it. But, that's my style, over work and under perform. That has always been one of my issues when I prepare for something. I always over prepare and over think every step of the way.  That leads to creating doubt and then I go back and redo it. Most of the time if I had just left it alone in the first place, it would have been just fine. In the end, I feel that the execution went as well as it could have.
   When I chose the subject, I was excited since I knew a lot about the subject I would speak about. I had just spent 3-4 years researching the subject and I had just spent the last 8 months actually preforming a hands on project. Later, as I prepared for the speech, I had found myself not as informed on the subject as I had once thought.
    I believe in the end I got my point across. My goal was to explain how solar energy works, make some pros and cons and explain how to get solar if someone wanted it. I am a big supporter of solar energy and I had been hoping I could inspire others to go solar . I had looked into it a long time ago and now it seems it is cheaper than it has ever been.
    With every speech I give, it seems to get easier. I have found that a good outline is important. My comfort level with speaking in front of people has gotten better too. I believe it's about structure, experience and knowledge of the topic. If I were to have done it differently, I would have done a single rough draft then let it sit for awhile before rewriting it. I kept writing and rewriting right away and at times, lost track of what I was trying to do. If I were to follow this one concept, I think I would have been able to improve my content and delivery.
    The differecne between this speech and last was of course the power point. I have never done power point before. This was a challenge. However, when I consider my goal, using power point was a good thing. This was also a bad thing. It definitely cut into my time for preparation. having to use power point was very time consuming. I tried to implement using a laser pointer but this proved to be a distraction from my focus on the content and delivery. I don't think I'll try that one again.
   I though my eye contact was good. When I read my grading paper, apparently it needed improvement. On a scale of 1-10, I would have given myself an 8. I'll have to work harder at it and try and keep in mind a goal of a 10. I agree with the grade of A-. I worked for a higher grade but it all came down to execution. For example, I had planned on being within the time limit, but as before, I went over. I had practiced 10-15 times. The last 5 I was under time. However, I strayed off course and went off script. I have to stay on course next time.
   I made sure I mentioned 4 citations in my speech. I also made sure they were in my power point. This was an area I messed up on last time. So, I made sure to include them in my notes as well.
  In all, I feel this last speech was better than my last. Probably because I had a little more passion and personal knowledge of the subject. I also think the power point helped deliver my message better than the demonstration speech. I'm looking forward to using the things I have learned from these speeches on my next speech. Even writing these self evaluations has given me some things to think about when I prepare for my next presentation.

Digital Slides Do's and Don'ts

I guess I should have looked more closely to this section. I did my power point early. Then, I read someone else's post and saw they wrote about this same section in the book. I then re-did much of my power point. Now that I read the part about the do's and don'ts, I think I was OK to begin with. Either way, I'm sure I'll get a lot out of watching everyone else's speeches. I am an over thinker and an over doer'. I have spent dozens of hours on this speech to the point where I believe it's going backwards. I did like the examples they have on page 221. I went back and removed some of my bullet points. There were many of them and I think I was still able to get my point across. That way, I was able to make the fonts bigger and easier to read. On page 220, it talks about write your speech THEN do your power point. I kind of did that and kind of not. I wrote then rewrote the speech. Then I started doing the power point. I struggled with concepts and messaging. So, I did all the power point, then worked much of the speech around it. Now that I've gone back and forth so much, I'm not sure where I am. I think a good nights sleep and a fresh look at it in the morning is in order. I'm a wreck and should be on some type of prescription to just not worry about this so much. I feel like I'm back discussing my fears at the beginning of the semester.

Public speaking event I've been to

Probably one of the most significant public speakers I have heard was a guy from the National Weather Service. He came to fire behavior class I was taking and spent 2 days explaining how weather happens and how it affects fires. If not for his seemingly endless media displays, it would have been very boring. Instead his diagrams, pictures, charts and actual videos of weather and fire behavior were fascinating. These images captivated all of us and we actually not only paid more attention, we learned a whole bunch. His advantage was that he had been doing the same presentation to the same category of audience for 10-15 years. So, he had honed his Craft very well. One of the more interesting videos he showed us was a time lapse video of what's called"The Day of Transition". That's the day that, after the winds have been blowing from the land(high desert region) to the ocean for 4-5 days during the Santa Ana Winds, they turn 180 degrees and blow from the ocean to the land in the course of about 4-5 hours. This is the day most injuries to firefighters occur. Having actually seen it in the course of about 2-3 minutes was amazing.  It was a very humbling demonstration. only through media was this possible.

I can't think of anything this guy could have done to have improved his presentation. It was about 16 hours long over 2 days and we all enjoyed it very much. Like I said, without presentation media, it would have been very boring and nobody would have stayed awake. I can't think of anything that had detracted from the speech due to the media presented. He was an accomplished speaker and knew his audience. Everything fit together very well. I felt bad for the guy who taught the last 2 days. By comparison, he was boring and unexciting.

F.D.

Ethical Responsibilities

The questioned asked was what are the speakers ethical responsibilities in the world of digital and audio files. It is clearly asking if it's OK for a speaker to alter files when they are preparing their speech. Right away, most people would say "No Way!". I say, most likely not, but, it all depends on the speakers motives. If the speakers intent is to manipulate a topic to convince the audience to think or feel a certain way because the alternative may not make his case because the original, unaltered file would not bring about the desired effect, than I would say no. This happens all too often. Now, an exception might be that of, lets say, late night TV shows. They often take public figures and current events and play with the pictures to make a joke. as long as it's obvious that it's a joke, then in my opinion, no harm, no foul. Some times they take a series of statements a person makes (usually a politician) and string them together to make them sound funny. Same thing, it's obvious that it's supposed to be entertainment so that's still OK. The problem would be if it's supposed to be inflammatory or create a controversy to a person or event. Another category where it might be OK, is if whatever image a person has to show, if that image is not real clear or the need to highlight a particular aspect of it is needed, than there should not be too much of a problem with that. If a speaker does anything to alter an original picture, audio file, song or taped conversation, then the ethical thing to do is to include that in their presentation somehow and explain why they made a change. Anything but full disclosure would be improper.

Speeches About Processes

My speech will be about a process. I'm not sure if this is an easy or difficult choice. When I first stated I would do it, it's because I have a good amount of knowledge about it. Now, when I'm putting together my outline, I'm finding that I'm struggling with the complexity of it. I usually have a problem of over-thinking things. This leads to a tremendous amount of wasted time in the preparation phase.The explanation of this process is well illustrated on page 253 of our text book.  Basically, all I have to do is "facilitate the audiences understanding of the process or explain how audience members can engage in the process themselves". This helped make it sound easier than my own definition of the requirements needed to successfully deliver this speech. The next page goes further to explain that the speaker needs to decide whether to just inform the audience of a process or actually expect them to do it. Luckily, this is simply a "to inform" speech. To actually do it would require an entirely different approach. hopefully, it' will turn out better than I think at this point. As I said, I over think things most of the time and I've already spent many hours working the outline forwards and backwards to the point where I'm almost back to the beginning.

Intro and conclusion components

My speech will be about solar energy. The components of my introduction are as follows:1) Get your audiences attention, 2) Indicate purpose and thesis, 3) Establish Credibility and 4) Preview main points. I plan on getting their attention by showing how easy it is to get what I'm talking about and how it applies to them. Here:s my thesis: " Thesis Statement: Solar Energy could be the future of energy resources because it is easy to install, cheap and renewable". I will establish my credibility by showing a picure of the system I just personally installed. I will then take the 3 main elements of my thesis and make them my main points (Easy to install, Cheap and renewable) . That will make up my intro.  As far as my conclussion, I'm still working on it. The elements of the conclussion are as follows: 1) Review main points, 2) Reinforce Purpose and 3) Provide closure. What I'll probably do is remind them that of how easy it is to install solar. The cost has come down a lot over the years so it's much cheaper now than ever before. One of the best parts of solar energy? It's renewable and plentiful. It's an almost endless source of energy. To show an example, here's a small part of the body of my outline: "Every second, the sun pumps out 9.192 × 1010 megatons of TNT of energy to earth (Williams)". Hopefully, all this will come together over the next 2 weeks. Time flys by and it seems that this speech will be here in no time.

FD

Speech buddy 9.1,9.2, 13.1A and 131.B

I watched the videos and wish I had gotten more out of them that would help to prepare me for this blog. The first video was about techno music. I think the speaker did fine but I was not really pulled into his speech much. I think his intro fell flat (to me). Maybe because I don't have much of an interest in the topic but I found myself disinterested. Well spoken, good format and probably hit all the right points. He had a very specific conclussion.

The next speech was about Kodak Cameras. I liked her intro by taking a picture of the audience. This brought me into the speech and I was interested to hear more. I think the advatage this speech had was she was giving the speech one sentence at a time. This worked well for editing and made it look pretty smooth. I used to have a browning camera and liked the detail of the history of Kodak. Her conclussion was cleaver; she took a picture of the audience just like she did in the introduction.

The last speech was about kosher food. This was a more realistic class room speech. I think she did ok but she spoke way to fast. I became over saturated with information (to me). I still got a lot out of it. I liked the combination of poerpoint and an easil with poster board. The inro and conclussion went well together. I had jewish friends growing up and never paid much attention to the whole kosher thing. I found this speech entertainingly informative.