Public speaking has become my passion since mid of year 2007. Since then I have been searching for books about public speaking. I am a web-savvy and I always look for answers from google.com. I always love to search website which provides FAQ site. The reason is because most of the answers I can get from the FAQ site.

I have been an avid reader of a public speaking blog by Eric Feng, a remarkable public speaker in Singapore. There was one day, I saw “The FAQ Book on Public Speaking” from his website. This book was written by Eric Feng, Kelvin Lim and Irene Ang. Wow.. FAQ! I love FAQ…. I didn’t know that public speaking skills can be written in a FAQ manner and it can be published in a book!

I have to admit that I was quite skeptical to this book initially. Until one day, I went to MPH bookstore to flip through the book. Oh, this book was something that I have been searching for. Most of the questions that always appeared in my mind, I found them in the book.

There are a total of 75 questions and answers categorized in 13 categories.
- Overcoming your nervousness and stage fright
- Connecting with your audience
- Organize your speech for maximum impact
- Getting your audience interested, influenced and inspired
- Preparing and rehearsing your speech the optimal way
- Speaking from the platform - Dos and Don’ts
- Mastering your delivery on stage
- Overcoming language barriers
- Igniting your passion from within
- Finding your speaking style
- Revealing the secrets of successful speaking
- Winning a speech contest
- Getting up close and personal

Eric is right. “Public speaking is really about enjoying your life and journey, using your experiences and accomplishments, and turning them into stories that you can use in your presentations so as to inspire your audiences to improve their lives.”

Nowadays, at every single moment, I think about public speaking… I’m co-ordinating speechcraft workshop for The Frontier Toastmasters Club and I want to inspire the participants to start and continue their journey in Toastmasters… I have used some of the techniques share in “The FAQ Book on Public Speaking” and the result was quite satisfactory.

If you are serious in public speaking or if you are curious about public speaking, grab this book NOW - “The FAQ Book on Public Speaking“

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The first session of 9th Speechcraft Workshop has finally begun. There were a total of 10 participants in this workshop, including 4 new members who have just joined The Frontier Toastmasters Club recently.

“Speak powerfully, speak impressively, I can do it!” was the theme for the workshop. Every participant was asked to say it loud to the audience. A yellow A4 paper with printed theme was placed in front of each participant in order to imprint the message deeply into their mind.

Through the introduction from the participants, I have learnt that they all came for the same objectives, which were to improve their communication skill and to conquer the fear of public speaking. I could feel the fire and desire from their heart to chase for improvement in their communication and public speaking skills.

Everybody comes from different background. We have participants from England, India, Philippine, Malaysia and Singapore. We have participants working as a nurse, IT professional, engineer, programmer, business analyst and student. It was quite a fascinating moment while everyone was sharing their views during table topics session based on their own perception.

I look forward to listening to 10 speeches about themselves in the coming session. I believe it will be a very thrilling and mesmerizing session!

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Photo by: Yann!s

In this month of March, I have gone through four FIRST TIMEs in my life.

The first FIRST TIME was my endeavor to take part in a MANDARIN humorous speech contest. It was the first national mandarin humorous speech contest held in Singapore, organized by Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry. In the first round, there were 60 contestants and I was fortunately to be short-listed into second round. Only 16 contestants were selected. Unfortunately, I lost in second round. Contestants from China took me to the cleaners. 7 out of 8 short-listed contestants were from China. Nevertheless, this was indeed a great learning experience for me. I have learnt that there are some differences between crafting a Mandarin and English speech; I have discovered some different speaking styles from the contestants.

The second FIRST TIME was to set up a booth in The Frontier Community Club to promote Toastmasters Speechcraft Workshop. I just got the idea while I was inside a train heading back to home. I thought… Hey, why not setting up a booth to promote my club workshop? I immediately asked the person-in-charge in the Community Club and the Community Club was quite supportive. I got a positive answer. Never try, never know… During this session, I noticed that actually there were a lot of people who were searching for help in conquering their fear in public speaking and this group of people, most of them didn’t know about Toastmasters Club. I have a plan to set up a booth regularly as my club marketing campaign. I think this campaign will not only benefit the public but also to my club members to learn how to explain the benefits of Toastmasters to the public. It is like a real life example for them to apply their communication skills which they have developed in Toastmasters Movement. And most importantly, it is a great satisfaction if we could successfully help people to conquer their fear in public speaking and transform their life.

The third FIRST TIME was my first time to serve as a judge in an International Speech and Table Topic contest. I noticed that being a judge is neither a difficult task nor easy task. Being a judge, I got a true experience of the process in how I allocated points to each contestant. Good speakers are selected by experienced judges. Not-so-good speakers are selected by inexperienced judges. I believe I have made the correct choice as my preferred speaker was emerged as Champion eventually.

The fourth FIRST TIME was to coordinate The Frontier Toastmasters Club Speechcraft Worskhop. The first session was conducted today. Of course, there are some rooms for improvement and I will try to take note of them and have a review after the whole session. I have discovered one thing. A lot of participants thought that they have fear in public speaking and could not think of any topic to talk about. But actually, most of them have already possessed a certain level of speaking skill. When they spoke, the flow of the content just came out naturally. It was only the mindset of “I have fear in public speaking” that holds them back. Being a coordinator of the workshop, injecting public speaking information to the participants is only part of my responsibility. My main responsibility is to motivate them and nurture positive mindset to them that speaking in public is actually not as fearful as they imagined.

FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, FIRST TIME, how many FIRST TIME have you faced in this month? What have you learnt from you FIRST TIME? Think about it…

In any aspect in our life, we will face a lot of FIRST TIMEs. Some people are trying hard to avoid them. For me, I find that by pushing myself to face as many FIRST TIME as possible, I have become a better person.

LET’S WELCOME FIRST TIME!

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I was browsing TED videos on presentation and found this video clip unintentionally. I would like to give this performer three WOWs… “WOW, WOW, WOW!!”

His name is Kenichi Ebina. He is a self-taught dancer who blends hip-hop, martial arts, modern dance and magic in his performances.

I was thinking, in speaking arena… Maybe we can try toblend something out of speaking into our speaking presentation. Perhaps, magic? dance? or… think about it! You may get an idea to make your presentation a creative one in the future!

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Photo by: cw

Contest rules are designed and meant to guarantee the process of the contest. For example, no photo can be taken during the contest; this is to prevent participants get distracted by the camera flash or audience’s movement.

I have to admit that I dislike one of the contest rules very much. That is no video-recording during the contest. Some of the contests are not so strict on this rule and in fact most of the time, nobody will care whether you video-record the contest.

Since last year August, I video recorded most of the speeches that I have made. It is a very powerful educational tool for me. I can do a review of my own presentation over and over. Sometimes, I also feel that no video-recoding is a waste. After spending days or weeks or months of preparation for only a 5-7 minutes presentation, at the end, you could only bring back the smile and claps from the audience. Why not bringing back your presentation and memory in video format?

I have good and bad days, not only me; actually everybody has his good and bad days. I have discovered that the videos that I have taken in my good days can serve as a confidence booster to me. Whenever I have doubt in whether I can be a good speaker, I can always view back the GOOD videos of myself. It’s a good thing to collect your own video.

Recently, I was competing in a speech contest where I was strictly prohibited to do video-recording. I was so frustrated and disappointed. I just wanted to video-record my OWN presentation, not others. As a good organizer, if no video-recording is allowed, I would suggest him to get his own video team to record the whole process and sell or give away the CD to the contestants and audience.

I understand that in some events like concert and performance, no video-taking is due to copyright issues. Will I infringe any copyright issue in taking my own presentation? Some people may argue that who knows you are only taking your own video. Ok, fine. Rules are there to be obeyed. I have no authority to alter the rules. After all, having a contest video team is the best way to please the audience and contestants, if not, at least me.

There is no perfect rule. Sometimes, when we design rules, we have to think of whether the rule does serve the main objective of the event. To me, a speech contest is a learning hub, it’s not a place where we really fight with each other and treat each other as opponents. No, no… It’s a learning hub.

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