Everyone wants to be a Public Speaker. It’s immaterial whether we know anything about the subject; as long as we have an invitation from one of the ten thousand ’associations’ in the country, we will go. They’ll print our name on the brochure, often send us a pickup car, ask us to join for lunch, and perhaps give us a small gift (we Indians never forget to collect our memento or honorarium…or whatever). Later we’ll receive a couple of pictures of us at the podium. So, go ahead & accept them all. In fact, go one step further and even solicit invites. And they just go and say whatever you want to. In this free country you have a right to express your views - whether you impress them is a different matter. To help you on your way, here’s a short guide to becoming a star on the circuit.
Curriculum Vitae
This is a very crucial part of your make-up. It should run to at least 8 pages + annexures. It should list all your ‘publications’ (technical papers, articles, letters to the editor), the meetings & symposia that you have attended, your educational tours as a student, and your wide travels (visits to Disneyworld can be counted).
Dress Code
You have to be wearing something flashy. A bold Mickey-Mouse tie in red, with a yellow shirt & may be green trousers, will definitely attract the attention of even a geek. Or you could colour your hair a bright orange. And, of course, long hair and an unkempt beard always give you a scholarly look. The objective is to distract people from listening to you - they should just be looking at you.
Slotting your Talk
Try and ask for the last slot, as by then the audience is often in no mood to listen. You can rest assured that everyone before you will take more time than was allotted to them - we all love to hear our own voice. There is a danger here though. You may only get to speak for 5 minutes, and may then be tempted to use it as above…for content. To ensure that the audience does not see through you, volunteer to sum up the session by basically listing the speakers and their topics chronologically…and saying that while you generally agree with all that has been said, you have some valid objections. But that, some other time!
The Brass Tacks
For a 45-minute lecture, for the first 20 minutes ‘tell them what you are going to tell them’. Intersperse that with, ‘I’ll soon come to it’, ‘Shortly I’m going to talk about it’, ‘In a few minutes we will discuss this’. I’m sure you get the drift. Alternatively you can start with a story - never mind if the audience relates to it or not. And it does not need to have any connection with the topic. In the last 20 minutes ‘tell them what you’ve told them’ or even ‘what others have told them’ – like, ‘I agree with’, and ‘If I might add/supplement’, or ‘As I told you a little while ago’. In between, for 5 minutes you may have to actually tell them whatever you had come to talk about. Here, jargon always helps. If you can memorise a few ‘difficult to pronounce’ words, a couple of (Sanskrit) ‘shlokas’, or even a Chinese proverbs, you have the ingredients of a ‘winning’ talk. A short power point presentation is helpful, but if you can show them a few video clips, you wouldn’t even have to speak!
The Q & A Session
Ask whoever dares to ask a question to repeat it, along with his/her name and organisation. Begin your answer with, ‘Excellent question…I knew it was coming’. And then pose a counter question. Gotcha! You can also just acknowledge a question and then invite more questions, saying, ‘I would like to club all the questions before answering’. Hopefully someone will provide some answers before you have to…
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