Public speaking is what I do for a living. I do off-site presentations for a zoo, which means that me and my assistant pack up twenty or so animals and take them to schools, daycares, parties, seniors residances, etc etc etc.
The biggest shows I’ve done have been for school assemblies and probably covered well over 500 people. The smallest are the birthdays at ten or so.
My presentation lasts for a full hour and I’ve got the added complication of dealing with live and sometimes very lively animals! I’ve been bitten, peed on, scratched and licked. I’ve had animals refuse to cooperate in every way possible and I’ve had audiance members do everything from scream to throw up. (Small girl, too much cake.)
I love every second of it! It helps that I’m a natural ham and I know my subject completely. I also know my safety procedures and boundries EXTREMELY well. Working with animals, that’s top priority.
My advice, since everyone else has done such a though job on preparation, is to make eye contact with as many people as possible. Everyone in an audiance wants to feel like they’re a little special, like the presenter noticed them. Even a second of direct contact will make them think of you as a really great speaker. Also, humour never hurts, but do make sure it’s age and position appropriate. I have a bit of trouble because my shows are all ages from infant to senior, but a clean and appropriatly timed and placed joke is usually a good thing.
Finally, have fun! Don’t be afraid to smile! People WILL respond to a smile.
Part of being in the civil engineering biz is giving technical presentations; whether at work or at conferences. I’ve spoken in front of groups from less than 10 people to probably groups of 200+.
I agree with others about the points of being prepared and practicing. One thing I constantly have to remind myself when speaking is to slow down! Honestly, I can condense a 1 hour talk into 20 minutes when I get on a roll. Heh.
1000 or so college students. Usually, in a situation like that, I couldn’t see my audience anyway, except for the back few rows, because of the lights. All I did was make sure I followed a natural course, and drank water.
Which reminds me, your water bottle is your friend! There’s nothing worse than drying up and choking onstage. Tissue or a hanky should be within reach too. Apart from sneezing, depending on the venue, it can get pretty hot under lights. Check your shoelaces. I move around a lot while speaking and I have had 'em come undone. If you have a mic cord, be aware of it. The little lapel clip mics pick up EVERYTHING, so if you forget something, DON"T CUSS!!!
I gave a talk in front of about 100 or so people last year, for an event given by my professional organization. I was terrified beforehand, and started a thread here to get encouragement, which did help a lot. I was pretty scared right up until I got up there, and then, like magic, I wasn’t scared at all.
I do believe the key was rehearsing what I was going to say until I had it cold. I had a powerpoint presentation I was showing, so I printed it out a week before the talk and brought it with me on my drive to work. I wrote in bold marker at the top of each slide what I wanted my opening sentence for that slide to be, and used that to work off of. I have an hour’s drive each way, so I could get through the whole thing a couple of times on each drive. Then I brought that copy of the presentation with me, and flipped through the pages while I gave the presentation. When I saw the opening line on each page, it brought it all back to me.
So, my advice is to rehearse a lot…it feels kind of silly doing it sometimes, but it’s totally worth the effort.
Whistlepig has given some good basics. I have had audiences of up to 7500 or so. After a certain number (somewhere in the low 100’s) more doesn’t really seem to matter to me. The hardest audiences for me are those where I know people in the audience somewhat well, but for the most part speaking in public is no longer a scary thing.
In the past few years my audiences have been in the low 100’s range. Fortunately the presentation topics have been in areas where I feel comfortable.
Try to be interesting…I personally never tell jokes, but do attempt gentle humor…much like my everyday life. Perhaps the lesson there is to be yourself.
But…let me hasten to note that I put off taking speech until my senior year in college, and was terrified of public speaking. I finally decided that upset stomachs and sleepless nights were not fun, and that the audience was more interested in what I said than sitting in judgement of my personal appearance and quirks. Once I figured that out, public speaking was not a huge problem. But that’s me…your experiences are your own.
Best wishes and good luck! You will do better than you think.
I would say that I am a somewhat shy person but for some reason I have little trouble speaking in front of larger groups as long as it is a topic I am knowledgeable about, like something related to my job for example.
I regularily speak to groups of 30-50 people. Sometimes it is students when I help teach a section on a course at a University or talking to people from the pharma industry or presentations at scientific conferences.
I think the biggest group I’ve spoken in front of was 200+. I had expected a crowd of about 50 max and was a little surprised at the high turnout (I was speaking at one of several parallell sessions at a conference). While I felt a bit nervous I got over it since I felt that I knew my subject backwards and forwards.
I agree with the previous posters that there really is not that big a difference after a certain size. 30 or 200 would probably feel the same for me.
About 300–400 people. You get used to it by doing it. Audiences of 20 to 2,000 people probably wouldn’t make me very nervous any more since my job is a kind of public speaking. If you have time and the facilities for it, run through your speech with an audience before you do it for real. Even speaking to a relatively small group of people you know and trust, and who are therefore non-threatening, helps get you ready for the stress of speaking to a large audience. Like the others said, preparation is the key. If you’re prepared, you’re more confident and more secure.
The earlier people gave good advice, so the only things I have to add are some neuro-physical feedback tricks. Strive to make your posture and expression calm and confident. Many people unconsciously adopt a submissive posture when they’re nervous and that can actually make you feel more nervous. Same thing with your expression. If you look upset, that reinforces your feelings of being upset. Since you can’t directly control your feelings, concentrating on the external aspects of them — which you can control — not only occupies part of your mind, deflecting it from useless churning about how nervous you are, but also produces a feedback effect to your limbic system, in effect reducing your level of anxiety.
Mine is probably in the number of hundreds, but I couldn’t say how many, or which one was largest. My first communion was probably one of the larger ones–all the kids who could read well enough had bits to read, while the rest were given other duties. I still feel a little embarrassed that I was the only one of the former group speaking in English though :smack: (It was a bi-lingual mass, and my French was non-existent at that point) I basically just stared at the cards I was supposed to read off of. Nowadays I’m confident enough to actually look at people, but hey, I was 8.
My largest audience was probably 500ish at my high school graduation. I was a bundle of nerves until go time. When I began to walk to the podium, the nervousness just drained from me and I was fine. I still can’t explain it.
