“it takes giving a speech at least twenty times to get decent at it. You can give it nineteen times to your dog if you like, but it takes practice and repetition.”

- Guy Kawasaki
(from his post “How to Get a Standing Ovation” Jan. 18, 2006 on his How to Change the World blog)

If you’re ever stuck thinking of ways to communicate information visually, then bookmark the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. All you do is mouse-over one of the squares on the table and you’re presented with a visual sample of how you can organize materials.

And because the table is from the Visual Literacy group, it’s well laid out visually. Colour coding quickly tells you if an element is useful for visually communicating a metaphor or displaying data or laying out a strategy, while symbols indicate how much and what kind of detail is offered in the examples. Brilliant!

I was at a presentation recently where the amount of material on the slides and the paucity of information in the presentation itself were such that the person was nothing more than a narrator for the slide show.

Slides and multimedia are there to enhance your information. If everything you have to say is up there on the screen, then you might as well email everyone the presentation as a file or send them a PDF of the slides.

The other danger in becoming a mere narrator is that, unless you’re a very powerful and persuasive reader, you’re bound to be less lively and less passionate because you’re focused on reading the words and not on communicating and connecting with the audience.

The praise for Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s delivery of her speech has been nothing short of amazing - even MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann admitted that Palin “clearly gives a great speech.” Even the content drew praise from Democrats to the extent that they saw how it galvanized the GOP audience in St. Paul. The praise is due in part to the fact that Palin had no experience speaking on the national scene and to such a large audience, so people were caught off guard.

Still, looking at it objectively, there’s no doubt that Palin’s delivery was almost equal to that of Barack Obama, who has long been recognized for his oratorical skills when delivering prepared speeches.

The Delivery

Palin was poised, confident, had a good clear voice, made pretty effective use of her body language, and she connected very well with the audience. That’s why I’ve given her an A- on her overall delivery in my report card.

Her only real difficulty with delivery was that she was far too measured - in her pitch, her pacing, and her emphasis. Now the pitch range problem is due partly to the venue - people tend to forget to let the microphone do the work for them in a large (in this case very large) room. And there’s also the nature of the occasion - when you’re trying to rally people, it seems like every word has to be dramatic and powerful.

Problem is, you lose all contrast - everything gets spoken in the same way: loud and in a relatively high monotone. If Palin (and virtually all other politicians) can let herself relax, and go soft and low at the appropriate places, then the dramatic, powerful moments will feel that much more dramatic and powerful.

Pacing is another side of the same coin. Palin was far too measured in her pacing and the big danger there is that the meaning of passages is not as clear. Here’s an example:

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.

And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things.

All of these lines were delivered at exactly the same pace. But changes in pace help us to see differences, and that’s what you want to do in this contrast between two idealisms. So, you move faster through “in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things” and then you draw out the phrase “who actually do great things.” The difference in pace helps draw attention to what you think is important.

Staying with this example and continuing the problem of delivery being too measured, there was also no emphasis from Palin; each word received the same force. Yet, what we need here is punctuating of words like “and THEN there is the idealism” and “who actually DO great things.” It’s not that we the audience won’t get the contrast, it’s that you want to be certain we get it, that we know you the speaker gets it, and changes in emphasis makes the getting of it more interesting and keeps our attention.

The Writing

Let me emphasize that these report cards are never about the content of the presentation; they’re about the technical aspects of delivery and writing. So whatever you thought of Palin’s content - accuracy of facts, choice of approach, etc. - that’s not my concern here.

I want to ask whether the writing made points clearly, efficiently, and elegantly. My overall answer to that would be no. Where I do think the writing was quite good was at the level of clear and efficient wording. It got to the point quickly and in plain language, while still coming up with some memorable, elegant lines, like:

In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.

And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

BTW, I think part of the reason this line didn’t get more coverage was because of the weak delivery I spoke of earlier regarding pacing and emphasis.

Where I think the writing fell short was in its overall structure - a confusion about the structure which made clear statements come across in an unclear way. Put another way, the language itself was quite clear, but the order in which things got presented diminished that clarity. Here are just a couple of examples (the items in square brackets are what was actually said compared to the prepared text):

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message [for you]: For years, you[‘ve] sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.

or this:

We need American [sources of resources. We need American energy] energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I’ve noticed a pattern with our opponent.

Maybe you have, too.

Notice how those two highlighted sentences are completely separate thoughts - in fact, they’re the introductory thoughts to the next section of the speech and yet they come at the end of a paragraph. Some might say this is just a matter of how the text was laid out on the page (BTW, I checked my copy against four other postings of her speech and they all had the same lay out), and how it appeared on the teleprompter may have been different.

While that may be true, Palin delivered her speech in a way that matched this layout - she ran two separate ideas together and didn’t give them the kind of verbal separation needed. This has serious consequences both for the flow of the speech and for the clarity of meaning.

Great speechwriting anticipates places for audience reaction (clapping and so forth), and these should be at the end of sections/major points. If you’re running two ideas together, as these examples do, then you end up with a strange cadence to your speech and people aren’t sure about when to applaud. We saw this a number of times in Palin’s speech, as in this example:

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. [Big clap] [Well,] I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment.

That highlighted line - which begins a new point - got trampled in the applause which you had to know would follow the end of the last thought “John McCain is the same man.” The rhythm got broken because the ideas in the speech were not clearly broken up (either on paper or in Palin’s mind).

One of the most talked about lines in her speech was the off-the-cuff joke she made about hockey moms and the only difference between them and pitbulls being - lipstick. From a delivery standpoint, by the way, it was interesting to see her slip into personal mode from speech mode to deliver the joke; if speakers can keep the personal mode for the entire speech…

Anyway, my hat goes off to her for making the joke when she realized how potent her line about being a hockey mom was; she had started into her next line when she noticed the audience reacting to the line, so she stopped and made use of it.

My only comment would be: she and the speechwriters should have known at the last moment that there would be a reaction to that line (the posters in the crowd were plain enough) and there should have been a planned pause there. On the other hand, pulling off a planned joke or comment as if extemporaneous is not easy.

Conclusion

Let me re-emphasize that I was extremely impressed with Sarah Palin’s delivery, particularly in light of her relative inexperience. The things I talk about in these report cards are about details, about the high polish, which I hope are helpful to others in developing their own delivery and writing styles.

Dear Screaming Crowds:

You were at it again last night. When your speaker says “Thank you” a few times, that’s a clue they’re ready to begin; when they say it 14 times, that means “Shut up.”

Sincerely,

Your Speaker

Perhaps in an effort to try and best the Democratic crowd at the opening of Obama’s acceptance speech, Republicans at last night’s speech by VP nominee Sarah Palin had their own clapfest.

Now I get that you want to clap long and hard for someone you’re enthusiastic about, but enough’s enough. Sarah Palin waited 50 seconds before she said her first “thank you,” plenty of time for adoration to be poured out, but the crowd continued for another two minutes, amid a total of 14 “thank yous” from Palin.

In case you’re keeping track, Obama’s cheering section only lasted for 1:59 total, but Obama wins on the thank yous, with a total of 32.

Michael Long over at Ragan.com has a nice piece on the technical aspects of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He hits the nail on the head when he says:

the language and content overall were remarkably unsophisticated for such an auspicious evening. This was of a piece with a serious language problem.

And he had an example that I’m sad to say I missed in my Report Card on the speech:

For instance, the misuse of the word “more,” appearing for the first time during a long list of incomplete comparisons, including “more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less.” More than what? More than when? This is a kind of base-stealing in political speeches, and assumes the audience shares the speaker’s viewpoint (safe among fellow Democrats at Invesco Field, but not for the millions watching on TV).

And I think Long was also right to praise Obama’s ability to deliver a message:

Obama is a passionate, confident speaker. He has a resonant voice, free of any distracting accent. He dwells on key words and pauses to underline important points. He avoids extemporizing—a wise move on his part, since he is significantly smoother reading than off-the-cuff.

Did you see Obama on Anderson Cooper explaining why he didn’t go to New Orleans during the height of Gustav? It was a simple message, but he had a great deal of trouble being “off the cuff”.

Six Minutes has a great summary of the Democratic Convention speeches - videos of the main players and quotes from various critics were looking at the technical aspects of the speeches rather than the politics.

There’s been a lot of praise for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention, with commentators like Andrew Sullivan calling it “a deeply substantive speech,” and celebrities like Oprah describing the night as “something that was transcendent.”

UPDATE: Gallup Poll of Aug. 30: “Fifty-eight percent of Americans give Barack Obama’s speech a positive review, including 35% who describe it as ‘excellent.’ Both marks surpass those given to the 2000 and 2004 presidential candidates, with the excellent ratings for Obama’s speech 10 percentage points higher than any other recent candidate has received”.

My concern here is not with the content of the speech or its political impact, but with the technical aspects of the writing and the delivery.

As you can see from the report card, I think Obama is an excellent speaker. He connects well with the audience, he has a good speaking voice, makes judicious use of his hand movements, and he has a fairly good tonal range.

From a delivery standpoint, the area I would work on the most is an aspect of his pacing: he could speed up more in the details of a phrase so we get to the punchline faster. But, in some cases, I think it’s the writing that could have been tighter, making for much shorter phrases that wouldn’t require the same breaking up through pacing.

In terms of the writing, let me start with a couple of clarity issues. The first concerns the focus on the “promise of America.” Now this may be more of an actual content issue - an uncertainty about the message itself - but it’s not clear to me what the promise of America was meant to be. Not that there has to be a single element to that promise, Read more »

Want a visual way of analyzing word usage in your presentations? Then you’ll love Wordle.net. It creates a word cloud of your most commonly-used words, and gives you a lot of control over what it looks like.

I entered the text of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last night, and you’ll see how the word PROMISE jumps out. Handy way of checking to make sure you’re emphasizing the words you want to emphasize.

Dear Screaming Crowds:

Please let your speaker get on with their speech.

Sincerely,

Your Speaker

Last night, it took 1:59 for the crowds at the Democratic Convention to let Barack Obama begin his speech. For those who were counting, he did 32 “thank yous” in an attempt to get them to stop. Adulation is one thing, but this is just time-wasting. Bill Clinton had a similar problem the night before - at one point pleading with the crowd to let him get on with the speech.

It reminds of people who don’t pick up on cues to end conversations - cues like “well, it’s been interesting chatting…” or “glad we had a chance to talk…” When a speaker has said “thank you” at least twice, and you’re still not letting them get on with it, that’s just rude.

The Associated Press kindly posted the whole clapfest for Obama on YouTube: