FRANCISCO SARAIVA

Another fellow Toastmaster with a very informative public speaking blog is Andrew Dlugan. Aside from his various fields of interest, Andrew is an award winning speaker and Toastmaster officer based in Canada. He has an interesting blog entitled Six Minutes where he features different speeches, presentation skills, book reviews and helpful tips on public speaking. I had the chance to ask Andrew a few questions regarding himself as a public speaker and about his blog.

The Weekly Review of the Public Speaking Blogosphere is my favorite part of Andrew’s blog. One of my main challenges is dealing with the tremendous amount of information on public speaking that arrives from everywhere in a time efficient manner. Besides visiting Andrew’s excellent blog, I asked him if he has any more tips for people wanting to gain more knowledge but having difficulty selecting their sources.

Andrew said, ”Selecting the best sources is certainly a challenge, a challenge which gave rise to the public speaking weekly reviews. While I encourage everyone to regularly read as many public speaking blogs as they can, I understand that not everyone will do so. By filtering down weekly advice from 100+ blogs to a short list of the most thought-provoking and original articles, I hope to help readers find the best sources. So, my first piece of advice is to make the weekly review a “must read” each week. The variety of topics covered is a great starting point for public speaking students.

My second piece of advice is to sample from a breadth of topics rather than just one or two. For example, consider these two options: A) Subscribe to five blogs, all of which concentrate on slide ware B) Subscribe to five blogs, where each specializes in a different topic: slide ware, speechwriting, professional speaking, speech analysis, and delivery techniques. I believe that option B will provide you with the greatest growth over time.

Third, remember that some of the best information sources are not blogs. For example, there are a number of excellent public speaking books available. Again, I recommend seeking out the best books covering a breadth of topics, particularly those where you feel that you have the most room for improvement.”

Then, I asked Andrew about the challenges that he has to face as a speaker and what areas need to be improved. “I completely agree.” He said. “Every speaker can improve, and I am no exception. One of my main challenges right now is incorporating humor with more impact into my speeches. I am studying humor writing techniques as well as techniques such as pausing and vocal variety as they relate to delivering humor.”

I followed it up with the next question, “If you could choose anyone in the world to be your mentor and to help you in taking your public speaking skills to the next level, who would that be?”

“That’s a difficult question for a couple reasons. First, I’ve always tended to be more of an independent learner rather than having a single dedicated mentor. Second, there are so many excellent speakers whose speaking skills I admire, and who I have learned from. I have done speech critiques of several of them on my blog.”

Though Andrew has difficulty picking just one person, he said, the quality he seeks most to emulate and to take his skills to the next level is the unquestionable passion exhibited by nearly every TED speaker that he has viewed. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. This is a global community whose speeches aim to spread creative ideas and inspire others to move and do something for the world.

Andrew said he advises speakers to choose topics by asking three questions:

(1) Do you have expert knowledge to share?
(2) Does the audience care about it?
(3) Are you passionate about it?

“TED presentations have all three qualities, but it is the third –passion — which transforms speech into an experience. Any mentor who can show me how to bring that level of passion to the stage every time I speak is the mentor I would choose,” said Andrew.

Every visit to Andrew’s blog is a new way of learning and gaining knowledge not just about public speaking but the world as well. Click your browser to sixminutes.dlugan.com