Comments on: NPR’s “On Point”

By: christina

christina — Tue, 09 May 2006 01:19:47 +0000

Informed opinions and a dash of passion wins always

By: marcela

marcela — Thu, 04 May 2006 08:04:02 +0000

I was once referred to Toastmasters as a way to improve my public speaking skills. The few times I’ve heard you, I thought you did very well though…

By: zvi

zvi — Wed, 03 May 2006 11:10:51 +0000

Suzette Elgin’s the Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-defense has a number of cheap suggestions which largely boil down to: find someone (of similar age/gender) whose public persona is one you want to emulate. Tape a few hours of them. Watch a small bit of their presentation, then re-watch while emulating them. It is important to do the mimicry simultaneously with the action.

Make sure to monitor your own public persona, so you can stop before you become an imitation of your model.

By: suz

suz — Wed, 03 May 2006 07:58:41 +0000

Listened to you on NPR. No criticisms whatsoever with your speaking style – in fact as i listened, I thought: “this person talking has done a LOT of work in the field and it’s really exciting” and “she sounds like she could walk in the myspace world as well as the groves of academe … which totally works.” More power to you.

By: Michael Camilleri

Michael Camilleri — Wed, 03 May 2006 04:38:13 +0000

I’ve been doing public speaking and debating since my first year of high school and although I (still) hate listening to myself it really is the best way to improve. I really like what Cliff suggested in the comment above about working on one thing at a time (like tone, pacing, emphasis, etc) rather than trying to fix it all straight away. With the number of media interviews you do I expect you to be perfect in no time

By: Jackie Danicki

Jackie Danicki — Wed, 03 May 2006 04:16:12 +0000

Danah, I just watched the Bill O’Reilly clip, and the only thing that struck me is what a blowhard HE is. You sounded absolutely fine, and were a lot calmer than I would have been in the face of such ignorance!

By: farlane

farlane — Wed, 03 May 2006 03:50:51 +0000

Ethan’s suggestion of honing the key ideas is great. If the foundation is solid, folks will forgive imperfections in other areas.

That said, I thought you presented yourself very well. I thought your identification of “MySpace as performance” was excellent.

I’d hadn’t seen that O’Reilly interview (since I never watch TV). “So this has become the new town square, this MyPage business”
O’Reilly, almost totally clueless, actually made a solid observation.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:58:33 +0000

I heard the show and you sounded fine. Don’t give such critics any energy.

By: Lawrence Krubner

Lawrence Krubner — Tue, 02 May 2006 18:31:30 +0000

Regarding the moral panic over MySpace, on the bright side, it is pleasant to think that the moral panic over rock’n'roll (and the race mixing it tended to facillitate) was even more intense, yet the older generation was not able to stop rock’n'roll.

By: Lawrence Krubner

Lawrence Krubner — Tue, 02 May 2006 18:29:44 +0000

I guess perhaps it just depends on what kind of public persona you’re going for. I’ve friends who do presentations professionally and they insist that to do it well you have to rehearse constantly, either in front of a mirror or, preferably, in front of a video camera so you can replay the tape and study your mistakes. And they end up giving crisp, professional presentations, with some slick anecodotes thrown in as asides and some well rehearsed jokes that are 100% likely to get a laugh. But that is a particular kind of public speaker, it’s a specific style. If you like that style and you want your future presentations to look and feel like that, then, yes, you should rehearse constantly in front of a mirror or video camera. But do you really want that? Is that who you really are?