Friday, January 13, 2012

A Bible To After Dinner Speaking At Conferences For The Total Noob

By Jacob Hunter Miranda


Many people do not know how to give a proper speech after dinner. An after dinner speaker has to consider a lot of things before he starts his/her speech. This is not similar to speaking at a social even organized by a family member. The main thing that an after dinner speaker has to consider the quality of the audience. Most events may have people who are much more informed and cultured than the speaker himself. so, evaluation of listener is a necessary step before the actual speech.The audience can be assessed easy by the way they are dressed, the event that they are attending, male to female ratio, age of audience and many more. Speaker must respect the country in which he/she is speaking, as not to offend them by saying something in the speech. A lot of research is necessary for an after dinner speaker before he actually delivers his/her speech.

Entertainment must be in the speech of after dinner speakers. Direct eye contact with an entertaining speech is a must for speakers.You must remember that you are not there to harass your audience. If you must engage them, do it in a playful way or with simple friendly gesture.

After dinner speaker must not be nervous when speaking. A nervous speaker can easily be spotted by the sound of his voice and listeners do not enjoy such speech. Speaker must be confident and poised before speaking. After you get in front of the audience clear you head, take a few moments and start speaking confidently. Starting off with a joke or for serious even starting off with a specific point in mind is always a good practice.

Reading off an bundle of text for the audience is not recommended for an after dinner speaker.Most of the time people do not like the speakers who get up in the podium with written text. A good choice is cue cards. When people hear speech they are not considering a book reading, a speaker must know that. Thus, after dinner speakers might make use of cue cards when needed. One must control their speech flow and confidence when speaking.

An after dinner speaker should never drink before a speech. Speaker must say sober when they speak.No one wants to hear a drunken man/woman's rant. Another golden rule for after dinner speakers is to keep the speech to a minimum length. Entertaining audience is fine but one should not take the speech to the point where audience become bore of him/her. A sly speaker knows when to take his leave and can predict when the audience would be beyond satisfaction from his/her speech. A proper after dinner speech should not be more than 20 minutes and maximum 30 minutes long.




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