Cleared my Level 4 Speech

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Yesterday, I gave my level 4 speech in Toastmasters. The objective of this level was "How to Say".This speech had a great improvement in terms of my presentation. First and foremost I spoke to the time given. I spoke for 7 minutes and 28 seconds. As usual, my content was less so that I stick to the timing.The topic which I delivered was "Characters in Life". I must really thank Pon.Rathnavel or in cyberspace called as Reaven. I took the liberty in using his name in my speech without his permission, because he is also one of the person I have met who is really a character. This speech is very different from previous speeches. This was a Humorous speech.

Evaluations of the speech - Positives:Body Language which added to the humour, Effective utilisation of Stage, Voice Modulation. Negatives: Clasped hands some times, Short conclusion.

To see the draft of my speech refer here. As usual my presentation was different when compared to the draft. This may be helpful if you want an overview on this speech. It really took a considerable time to frame the speech humorously and some effort on the delivery of the humour part. Overall there was a good response for the drama I did which created the humour and this will be a great learning for a better humourous speeches in future. This is my personal Goal sheet too.

A Mark to Identify IT Peers

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Douglas Engelbart never would have though that he would imprint a mark in every computer geek. Last week I noticed a mark in my right wrist which was not present in my left wrist. This mark was so prominent that it would have occurred due to over stress in that particular area which you can find in the picture below.
For Left handed people who will be using their computer mouse often can find the similar mark in their left wrist. After identifying this I started to observe the same in all the people who I interact. Two days before I had a group discussion where I had to meet a group of 12 people who work in different companies. In that lot after the group discussion was completed, though we did not have an introduction with each other I made a probably a good guess on who were from IT field and who probably are not from IT. I identified this, just from the mark they have in the right wrist. After reading this you may also start observing this mark in every one’s wrist. The horizontal mouse which is widely used creates a stress in our wrist, and also creates a forearm twisting. Evoluent has come up with a new vertical mouse which will eliminate these problems. Even Steven Feuristein once made a remark on this mouse long time back.
Probably I need to shift to vertical mouse and an ergonomical keyboard to avoid any personal mark. Of course its up-to individuals to decide on what they want :)

The Place where our Communication Stops

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"The moment a baby is born it cries, it could be because of three reasons. One , because of the pain which it suffered during the process of birth. The second reason could be because of hunger and third possible reason could be because of the change in surroundings from the mother's womb to this external world. An obstetrician understands which could be the reason for any child she helps in getting to this world. This instance signifies that We start Communicating the moment we are born. The same communication stops the moment we stand in front of a podium to address a gathering. That will be the pain of public speaking for beginners."
These were the opening lines made in our Officers Training Program at Mumbai Toastmasters by Mr.Deepak Justin. This training also had a session on Humour in speech. This day was a big day for leanrning. All I had to learn from this training was, The best public speech delivered ever in the history was after a diligent preparation. The speaker would have swallowed, chewed and digested the speech to beautifuly vomit in front of the audience. This process may look easy when I explain in this fashion but this is really an intimidating process which can decieve many people by imparting a phobia in them on public speaking.
The next important thing which I wanted to share was on humour. To add humour to our speech, it does not come that easily by reading the joke books and tieing in our speech.For humour we need to practice timing jokes which sticks exactly on the context which we speak and also directed towards the self which hurts none.
Overall this training gave me a deep insight on the organisation called Toastmasters International. Also It provided me an oppurtunity to attend the District Conference of India and Srilanka "Ovation 2008" at Banaglore in May 16,17,18 2008. Will post you the experience of Ovation once soon :)