Public speaking events

Last blog was all about, if I remember correctly, conversation. This follows on.

It’s a different approach when we’re public speaking. We have a whole block of time where we are being expected to speak and entertain … and take questions. The idea of a public address is to inform and have visual aids to help get information across. But we should also be setting ourselves up to be knocked down, to take questions that put us on the spot. If we are addressing a group, as opposed to having a casual conversation with someone, we are speaking to a subject on invitation, in detail. Specifically we are there to air a whole raft of ideas on the subject (we’ve been asked to speak about). It’s a good idea to have a simple programme of what is going to be covered in the talk, handed out before the talk takes place.
When public speaking we are attempting to reach two types: those who want to hear and those who don’t, or at least who don’t necessarily agree with us. We owe the first group the best we can offer, but the second group is the main challenge. They usually help us realise our shortcomings by posing difficult questions to catch us out. I should say, to challenge us. For our part, we must do the homework (no getting round that!) so that we can feel confident and can reasonably justify what we are saying.
The responding to comments and questions should be handled carefully. Not in a put-down manner but in a “that’s-an-interesting-point-you’ve-made-there” type of way. But just as important, our arguments should be able to spark the imagination and ultimately swing them around. What we’re not trying to do is make them feel stupid for their lack of knowledge or guilty about their own lifestyle or health issues or uncaring for supporting factory farms. It’s tempting to go that way but overall, we’re trying to be up-beat rather than confronting, trying to paint a picture of a bright future ahead, where animals aren’t being exploited and where we might enjoy a plant-based diet.
Obviously we have to believe in our own arguments but we must also promote them optimistically … and have our facts and references at hand, so that we can talk with some authority about health issues, ethics, farming, the environmental angle, world hunger and vivisection, whilst giving directions to useful web sites and books, etc – all this, so that no one can accuse us of being too emotional, uninformed or unprofessional. Or indeed uninteresting or not useful. From the audience’s point of view, a talk should be worth giving up ones time to attend and from the speaker’s it should seem to be the most passionate and enjoyable thing that could be being done.
A talk shouldn’t last more than 20-30 minutes, and whatever time we take to say our piece an equal amount of time should be made available for questions and comments from the floor (and prior note of that time balance made clear in the accompanying program that’s been placed on their seats). Some want to ask questions but some quite validly want to make comments. By having a pre-set time-ration mentioned *, to stop people taking over (and boring everybody witless with their own diatribe), questions or comments need to be *succinct, then everybody who wants to say something gets a go. A timer is useful for keeping to the set times announced at the outset – how long approximately the talk is going to last, time allocated for Q & A, any breaks, and the actual time the event will finish, etc. A really good idea is to have something to eat and drink in the middle or afterwards so that, for those who want to, they can have an informal chat or just time to catch up with friends.
Perhaps to prove our point about the need to ‘go-vegan’, nothing is better than some food samples. It’s a great opportunity to introduce some tasty vegan snacks and have further information for those interested - books, booklets, fact sheets, DVDs - available. But may I suggest that if it’s all kept as far as possible free-to-attend and not a sales pitch for merchandise (perhaps to have a donation box available to cover costs), then the event won’t look like a money-grubbing exercise. Our motives, for going to the trouble of setting up this sort of event should appear to be unutterably pure.