Public Speaking - being well prepared

1142: 

If we are speaking about Animal Rights in public, we need to establish how the audience is - hostile or warm.  We need to be ready to adjust our tone accordingly.  They might be friendly at first and then go cold on us if we start to become boring or start haranguing them.  They may be hostile at first, until we can show we are friendly and have something useful to say.  But whether friendly or unfriendly the audience isn’t under any obligation to stay, so it’s best NOT to lecture them.

         

If we want to win an audience over and hold their interest, we need to encourage them to think seriously about what we are saying.  To do that, there’s nothing better than showing we’ve spent time preparing the talk, with videos, pictures, examples and stories.  Out of respect for this unknown group of people, I’d like them to think I’d gone to some trouble, to prepare a variety of approaches, to accommodate the message I’m trying to get across.

My first aim would be to make it impossible for the audience to be bored - this being a subject which is difficult and confronting (and ‘serious’), my collection of information and ideas should move along at a lick.   Importantly, there need to be examples of how I personally experienced the transition to veganism and animal rights.  This is not to show my wonderfulness or self-discipline, indeed quite the opposite.  We lose no face by admitting personal difficulties we might have had, because they are probably the same ones as those being envisaged by each member of the audience, as they listen to us.

         

The content of the talk might consist of information about animal exploitation and about the implications of a vegan lifestyle - standard facts - but if we want to hold an audience’s attention, one thing must be established early on; they need to know how long we are going to be talking.  By keeping the talk to 20-30 minutes and by reminding listeners that questions and comments are going to be asked for (and by keeping a timer ticking along beside us, to remind ourselves how much time we have left) the talk is never allowed to become an open-ended ramble.  Any audience, to such a talk as this, is effectively trapped in their seats.  I therefore try to keep this in mind throughout.  And this takes precedence over everything I want to say.  On no account should one ever become excruciating for an audience.