Motivation on the Run

My Toastmaster speaking assignment this week is to present a “Keynote Address” for a mythical conference, with the speech of about twenty minutes in length. In working on this assignment, I have decided the conference will center around motivation, and, as such, it will make a good podcast.

My goal is to record the speech “live” and upload it tomorrow evening, which is twelve hours later than normal. I record on Tuesday evening and upload the podcast and set it to post at 7 AM CST, so it will be about 7 PM this week.

I will be interested in how the speech sounds from recording it in front of a group, rather than staring at a wall. Also, I would appreciate any comments you have once you get the chance to listen, and I would expect you to be nice, but truthful.

Working on this has been the hardest speech, so far, because of the length. The normal Toastmaster speech is five to seven minutes, which qualifies at 4-1/2 and disqualifies at 7-1/2. This assignment from “The Professional Speaker” is to be 15 to 20 minutes, unless the club has more time.

You want to know the hardest part? Writing that much to say. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and when I did a run through, it was eleven minutes, seven to nine short. So I wrote some more, and more, and more, and it was sixteen minutes. At that point, I knew I could fill in details and make it work, but twenty minutes is a lot harder than I thought. This makes me much more appreciative of the guys that do this regularly, although like everything, it gets easier with practice.