1. Your speech has more than one overall point (Saving the environment AND supporting the health care program - both points could be used as supporting points in a speech about political philosophy, but then the one overall point is about the political philosophy).

2. You are presenting points as soundbytes instead of stories. When you tell me what you want without showing me why you want it, you are wasting your breath and my time.

3. You are presenting more than one point every 4-6 minutes. In a 60 minute speech, have ONE overall point (saving the environment) and no more than one supporting point for every 10 minute period. Your audience can only take in so much information at one time.

4. If you aren't allowing your audience to Go Ahead and Laugh at least every 2-3 minutes, you need to find the humor in your speech before your listeners transform into uninterested watchers, cartoon scribblers, or Blackberry escapees. When you add to, you'll always need to edit out.

5. You find yourself running out of time before you reach your conclusion - preferably in your practice sessions as opposed to live, paying audiences.

From Rich Hopkins, advice on recognizing that your speech is too long. Whole post contains the tips for what you can do about it.

Here are some questions for you:

• What does it mean for presentation training , NOW?
• What are the skills we need to develop to be ready?
• How to protect professional data?
• How to deal with challenging  time zones? (you're in US, east coast , your team is spread between San Francisco, India and Europe )
• Will pandemic diseases reduce dramatically the corporate travels?
• How will the companies be able to pay the ecological and financial costs for travel expenses?
• When will face to face meetings and presentations will really be essential?
• Will physical PRESENCE become the ultimate luxury?

In a thought-provoking post Marion Chapsal suggests that we be thinking about what presentations need to become to reach the Milennial generation. Her quote from MilennialGeneration.org is that the approach for audiences of the future will be "optimistic, proactive, innovative, and it utilizes social media" I wish there were more speakers in Toastmasters thinking ahead like this.

The Presentation Planning Pyramid (or Pyramid of Apprehension) is a tool for planning presentations that don’t suck. A presentation that doesn’t suck is simple to describe and hard to pull off.

The main aim of a presentation is to help others talk to their friends and colleagues.

The pyramid works a bit like a game.
The object of the game is for your ideas to climb the pyramid. You can play it on your own but it works best when played with a team.

Clear and convincing post arguing for top-down planning of presentations, Shared on Twitter by @OliviaMitchell.

Fellow speakers,

To make sure you end strongly and don't lose your audience at the end of your speech, memorize your closing lines for your speech.  Then, when the end of the speech comes, give those closing lines powerfully and excitingly to your audience.

At the end,

Tim

A valuable resource: a blog made up of short speaking tips. Seems like a good way to focus on speaking skills between engagements. Discovered via the list of public speaking blogs at Six Minutes.

Do you find yourself running into the same speaking problems again and again? Do you try quick fixes or on-the-fly solutions, without success? Then it's time to take the fix-3 approach to rehashing and improving your speaking.

In her valuable post Denise Graveline suggests that "most speakers don't take the time for this type of self-analysis," and from experience I can say a big amen to that. Here's a valuable way to add your own analysis to the advice you get from evaluators.