I've never been a person to get up and be in front of an audience, the thought of it scares the f*ck out of me, but for some reason I wish I could.
I'm really much at home when I'm speaking with people face to face, just not when it's more than one

So seeing this course has got my intrigued - https://www.coursera.org/course/publicspeak

It will be interesting to see what the out come is.
The instructor seems interesting enough (some of those instructors on other course are sooooo dull)

Anyway, thought it might be of use or of interest to some here.
Enjoy

P.S. I am really liking these online courses, and hoping the open university version in the UK will be on the same par if not better - http://futurelearn.com/

There are no secrets to becoming a great public speaker other than you must:

1. Practise public speaking.
2. Get expert feedback about your public speaking.
3. Incorporate that feedback into future public speaking.

©Me



I would say you will gain very little from a public speaking course on the internet about how to speak in public. You will gain 1,000x times more from joining something like Toastmasters International. Dirt cheap and they have chapters all over the UK. Prepare to sh*t your pants every meeting...but that's the point 

Find opportunities.

The first time I had to give a formal conference presentation, I couldn't eat for a day (okay, it was my first time and it was in a foreign language, so it was exceptionally hard).

Anyway, I used to get really keyed up and always go to talks like I was going to the gallows.

Then I became a National Park Ranger for two seasons (and still do about a day a week). After giving an average of 2 presentations per day, ranging from 15 mins to 2 hours, I've given perhaps 500 public presentations over the last few years. My comfort level is completely different at this point. New topics still get me a bit keyed up, but not that much and I have gotten way better at it.

As a scholar, you're awlays presenting new research, so you never have a chance to practice a talk. As a ranger, of those 500 presentations, I have probably covered only about a dozen topics. So I could practice a given talk many, many times and watch how people respond, play with the timing and the emphasis and minor variations in detail and see how it affects the audience.

So my experience says
- giving lots of talks will help a lot with the nerves
- giving a handful of talks many, many times will help a lot with the craft.

This is something I seriously have to work on.  I am really very group shy.  A history of dyslexia, an overly developed super-ego and working independently on the internet has all conspired to exasperate the problem.

Quote from: littleman on June 24, 2013, 06:07:28 AM
This is something I seriously have to work on.  I am really very group shy.  A history of dyslexia, an overly developed super-ego and working independently on the internet has all conspired to exasperate the problem.

I can relate to all of these:

1. over-developed super-ego. I'm honestly not totally sure what that means, but if you mean a very strong internal editor that says "That's still not good enough" and that compares your work not to what others do so much as to perfection or to what the absolute best do... then CHECK.

2. hermit-like existence working on a computer in solitude? Check

3. history of dyslexia? Check. In my case no serious reading difficulties, more a matter of being a slow reader and constantly tearing up checks because I put stuff in the wrong spot (this behavior, by the way, is a more reliable indicator of dyslexia than reading problems). Family history of major dyslexia. CHECK.

OK... so here's the positive take on these.

1. People who are too comfortable make terrible speakers. I was really struck by this at the last Pubcon. Many presentations were absolute crap. Some participants don't even edit their slide decks to customize it for this particular conference and just whiz through the slides that aren't relevant with an offhand ("[slide] OK, I'm not going to talk [slide] about that today... [slide] [slide] [slide] let me see... [slide] [slide] [slide] [slide] [slide] Okay, as I was saying"). Having some level of super-ego that makes you want to give a decent talk is an asset.

2. Hermit-like existence. Speaking is actually a chance to break out of this. Once I got over the sick feeling in my stomach, the reason I keep working part-time as a ranger is because I find it's healthy for me to keep that group thing in the mix. A talk that goes poorly is unquestionably not fun, but given #1 above, talks almost always go better than I expect and meeting and talking to people afterwards has become the real pleasure and payoff for speaking.

3. This is the important one. Dyslexics are almost always creative people with a slightly offbeat or different view on things. All those odd things that you think, that you don't *mean* to think, but can't help thinking, that seem routine to you, are strange and interesting to the audience.

Yale has an entire center devoted to the study of dyslexia and creativity - http://www.dyslexia.yale.edu/

>Family history of major dyslexia.

Same here, on my father's side.  Oddly enough, it only seems to affect the men in my family.  IMO it is a mixed blessing, in some situations it feels like a curse but I know it does help with creativity.   There are a ton of dyslexic independent SEO types, might even be a majority.

Apologies - this is totally OT

Quote from: littleman on June 24, 2013, 11:22:22 PM
seems to affect the men in my family. 

I was looking up signs of dyslexia and one of them was "scooting" instead of crawling (so going feet first on the butt instead of on all fours). I told my sister this b/c her daughter, who was about 10-12 by the time I saw this list, had been a scooter as a young child. My sister said "Yeah, tell me something I don't know. When she was learning to write, she would write an entire letter in perfect mirror image. You could hold it to a mirror and read it no problem. I would tell her 'that's a mirror image' and she would go back and try again and have it all normal."

But yes, mostly a male thing in my family. I was lucky in that while I had serious issues only through kindergarten and then a fantastic first-grade teacher caught me up on reading and I never fell behind again in my life.

I keep saying I'm dislexic but then it's possibly lazyness

Littleman and Chunkford,

Go here:
http://themoth.org/posts/episodes/0902

Listen to "Man and Beast"

This is one of the best, most moving public speeches I've ever heard. Until about age 20 the speaker was such a bad stutterer he could only talk to stuffed animals in his closet. If you haven't heard it, it will blow your mind and realize that if he can do it, you can do it... if you have a compelling reason.

I'll give it a listen.  I know James Earl Jones use to be a stutterer too and that his voice is partially a compensation for it.

Talking about stuttering, always meant to watch the Kings Speech - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/