How To Practice Your Speech

How To Practice Your Speech by Jay B

The following cheat sheet summarises the ideal steps to your speech practice session: 1. Use your speech outline when you practice. 2. Make changes to your speaking notes as you go if you don't like something in the content. 3. Concentrate on the ideas in the speech instead of on yourself. 4. Try to picture the setting in which you will be speaking as you practice and act as if you are there, speaking to different parts of the room or space so as to make contact with your audience. 5. Keep a digital recorder handy and record your practice. Listen to yourself and then do it again. Practice several times, recording every time and you will be surprised at the improvement in a short time. 6. Keep a time limit for the introduction, the body and the ending and stick to it, editing your notes as you go. 7. It is very helpful to record yourself on video as well. To save time, do it once after you have practiced several times and then a final time after you have made corrections and modifications and worked them into your speech. 8. Try to make the practice conditions as close to the conditions that are likely to be present during your speech. Be specially mindful of needing to be heard in all corners of a large hall for instance and projecting your voice. Also work out how you will use your notes discretely so you will know how to handle them when you are live. 9. Try to recruit a volunteer who will give you constructive feedback. Better if you have two or more. Your spouse or children are NOT a good choice most of the time so recruit them last if you have to. 10. Don't leave the practice session for just before the speech. That might end up confusing and flustering you if you need to make changes and don't have enough time. Start the practice well ahead and early in the process so you can work the changes into your speech naturally. 11. Rule of thumb is to practice your speech at least five times.

Presentation Tips - Capturing People's Attention in a Business Meeting

Presentation Tips - Capturing People's Attention in a Business Meeting by Stephen

It is important for people attending a meeting to have interest in what a presenter has to say and understand the information that is being relayed. This is where visual aids come in handy. Visual aids are illustrations which a presenter shows to his listeners while explaining his points. They include charts, slide shows and diagrams.

Visual aids are important to a presenter as they increase the retention of information by listeners. Most people remember things that they see with their eyes much more than the things they hear. Charts or diagrams used should be simple and straight to the point. Do not fix a billion and one words and pictures as these create a sense of confusion and may make the audience lose interest in the information.

It helps to research well and indicate the main points on your chart while explaining each in your own words. This will give you a chance to maintain eye contact with your listeners and hence draw their attention to what you are presenting. In addition, see if any of the people you are talking to you are keeping up with you and read their facial expressions.

Be brief and to the point. Not all people may have a long attention span. Keeping your explanations short will ensure people pay attention and also absorb the information that you are passing on to them.

Being relaxed and breaking the ice with a joke or two as you do your presentation will keep your listeners desiring to hear more from you regardless of how complicated your presentation may be.

PowerPoint Tip - Secrets for successfully narrating a presentation

PowerPoint Tip - Secrets for successfully narrating a presentation by Ellen Finkelstein

When you add narration to a presentation, especially with slide timings, you create a self-running presentation. It's almost a video-like effect. Such a presentation is great for sending to potential customers on a CD, posting on your website or a presentation-sharing site, or displaying at a trade show or in your company's lobby.

Usually, I prefer to record my voice using Audacity, a free sound recorder and editor. You can get it at http://audacity.sourceforge.net. If you download it, be sure to also read the instructions for, and download, the LAME MP3 encoder, which lets you save files in MP3 format. The advantage is that it's easier to edit the files, in case you tend to trip over your own tongue, as I do!

However, recently I wanted to post a presentation with narration at authorSTREAM.com. This slide sharing site has some nice benefits:

* You can upload presentations with embedded sound

* It plays many animations

* You can convert presentations of under 5 minutes to video for free, to post at video-sharing sites (like YouTube) or on your own site.

But the sound must be embedded, which means using the narration feature (or doing a trick with MP3's to make PowerPoint think they're WAV files-because PowerPoint can only embed WAV files).

** Get the best quality sound

So I tried the narration feature and discovered that the quality was awful! There was a huge amount of noise in the background. When I tried used the same equipment in Audacity, the sound was just fine. That's when I discovered the first secret: CD quality.

To start narration, you go to the Slide Show tab and click Record Narration (in 2002/2003 choose Slide Show> Record Narration). Click the Set Microphone Level button to set and test your audio setup.

Then be sure to click the Change Quality button! You need to do this every single time; you can't change the default. Change the quality when you narrate

Then, in the Sound Selection dialog box, choose CD Quality from the Name drop-down list, and click OK twice to start narrating. Use CD Quality for your narration

You then go into Slide Show view automatically. Narrate the presentation, clicking to move from slide to slide. At the end, you'll be asked if you want to save the slide timings. Do so to set the timings for each slide to match the narration.

** Edit narration successfully

If you make a mistake, you can re-narrate a slide. Go to the slide, re-open the Record Narration dialog box and start again. Record the narration for that slide and then press Esc. Be careful not to go to the next slide.

However, if your new narration is longer than the original, you may run into a recognized problem-truncated narrations! This can be very frustrating. It apparently happens because PowerPoint saves narratioan timings separatly from slide timings. Even if you increase the timing for the slide, PowerPoint will truncate the narration!

I'm going to tell you what Microsoft says to do and then tell you what worked for me.

Microsoft's instructions are:

1. Make sure that all animations are set to advance on mouse click and not automatically.

2. If the last item to be animated on the slide is a text frame of an AutoShape that contains text, create one new shape and place it outside of the slide's area. Set the shape's Custom Animation setting to Appear. Make sure that the shape is the last item to animate and that it is set to animated on a mouse click.

3. Make sure that any slide transitions are set to advance on a mouse click and not automatically.

4. Re-record the narration and click No when asked if youwant to save the slide timings.

5. Preview the presentation in Slide Show view manually and check the narrations.

6. Then add the automatic slide and animation timings.

No matter what I did, my new narration was cut off. I made it shorter than the original and still the same amount was cut off. Finally, I realized that that the problem wasn't the length. PowerPoint was cutting off a certain amount no matter what the length. So, I recorded a silent period at the end of a narration. Then, when PowerPoint cut it off, I was fine!

Helpful Tips on Writing an Effective Commercial Cleaning Business Plan

Helpful Tips on Writing an Effective Commercial Cleaning Business Plan by Jeremy Gray

The idea of starting your own cleaning business is very attractive as it will allow you to be in charge of your own finances and your own career - it can also be a very profitable undertaking.

But before you can fully 'dive' into your new business idea, you need to come up with a viable cleaning business plan.

A lucrative business idea does not automatically guarantee you 100% success. Before you jump in, you have to do your research first to avoid the risk of overestimating profits and underestimating your operating expenses.

What are the things you need to include in your cleaning business plan to help ensure success for your cleaning business?

Here are some helpful tips to guide you in creating an effective business plan:

Decide How to Position Your Service

This is very important. You may think that one cleaning service is much like another, but you must research your market and decide how you want people to perceive your service. Are you going to clean offices of blue chip companies? Or will you rather go for the small businesses in your area.

Carefully see what is already there and what's not - then see if there is a service you can provide that can make stand out from the competition...

How you decide to position yourself in your market place will dictate (or help you decide) pretty much everything from your marketing strategy, tactics, unique selling proposition, your pricing, the cleaning materials you use, your company stationery, and even the cleaning attire your team will have.

So don't take this step lightly - research, decide and put it in writing in your business plan...

Know Your Market - The Competition & The Current Status Quo

OK - so this point leads on from the previous one. In today's economic climate you HAVE to provide even more exceptional value to your clients to first get them on board, and then to get them to stay with you.

The only way to do this is to know what's already out there and to stay one step ahead always. You may think that a cleaning business doesn't need to 'move with the times', but you'd be totally wrong in thinking that you don't need to have a flexible back-bone.

Create a powerful USP and be prepared to think outside the box. Outline several ways of competing in your cleaning business plan.

Have a Viable Marketing Strategy

If you've done a thorough job on the first two points this should be pretty clear for you now. Remember that your marketing is your everything in a business. So make sure you think through and come up with the most appropriate and realistic way to market your services.

Don't be tempted to spread yourself too thin - choose one or two strategies and master them. Once you've got those under control, you can add another and another... If you start out with too many things, you're likely to fail at most of them...

Have Realistic Expectations - Write Your Cleaning Business Plan the SMART Way

Your new cleaning business will need work, consistency, determination, and a SMART business plan. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely.

And those are the 5 words you should keep in mind when you are writing your cleaning business plan. Then you guarantee yourself maximum success at least at first. Don't forget that once you've written your first plan you should review it regularly and should be ready to be flexible. Only flexible businesses can make sure they will survive in the current economic climate.

Finally, remember that it takes motivation, careful planning, SMART work and flexibility to enable your cleaning business to become a huge and lasting success.

After all, Rome wasn't built in one day... But if you have a great executable cleaning business plan, that's written the SMART way you will have a solid map to success.

Learn to Talk TO Your Audience -- Not AT Them!

Learn to Talk TO Your Audience -- Not AT Them! by Nancy Daniels

One of the most interesting aspects about presentation skills is that those who are really dynamic in their delivery are those who talk to their audience and not at them. What this means is that they treat their audience as if they were having a conversation in their living room. This is one of the best pieces of advice I give when I teach public speaking.

In a forum recently, I went toe-to-toe with another writer who was discussing the similarities between acting and public speaking, referring to them as brothers. Personally I see only 3 things which the two forms of delivery share. They both have an audience; both are possibly on a stage; and, they both require speaking. Aside from that, what the actor is doing is not what the public speaker should be doing. In that sense, I could see these two forms of delivery as a brother and a sister.

Our discussion between the 'similarities' came to a sudden halt when the other writer said that her students found it even more difficult to memorize their own material for a speech or presentation than to memorize someone else's words for the role they were playing. That was the final straw. I knew immediately that our repartee would be finished when I read her words.

I do not advocate memorizing a speech or presentation aside from your opening statement. [Public speaking is difficult enough; the ability to get through your opening without flaw, however, is a tremendous confidence builder and will make the rest of your delivery that much easier.] If you can address your audience just as if you were having a conversation in your living room, memorization cannot be part of that picture because the act of effective oral discourse involves communicating with your audience. Memorization does not allow for such communication.

If your delivery is memorized, you will be talking at your audience, spitting out words in a rote fashion just like those who call you at dinnertime to try to sell you something. The beauty of public speaking is that you are actually having a conversation with your audience. Their response to you could be smiling, applause, nodding in agreement, shaking their heads in opposition, or even voicing their displeasure. Whatever their reaction is to your words is the conversation. In that sense, a memorized script does not allow for 'room for change.'

If you are talking to your audience, on the other hand, you can actually change the direction in which you are speaking - you can add specific anecdotes on the spur of the moment or you can word your statements differently dependent on how you are being received by your audience. Good public speakers can 'change it up' so to speak because they are practiced, they know their material inside and out, and they value their audience's reaction to them.

Next time you give a presentation or a speech, talk to your audience and pay particular attention to their part of the conversation. That is dynamic public speaking!

Ajello Candle Company

Ajello Candle Company by kim valerio

The motto of the Ajello Candle Company is "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness". This candle making company has been in business since 1775. The business has been family owned for seven generations. The candles from Ajello's are well known for their beauty and quality. While they make more candles now than in 1775, their dedication to quality and to customers has never changed.

The Ajello Candle Company was founded by Rafael Ajello, an Italian painter. He was also a beekeeper, so he tried his hand at using bees wax to create candles. He worked hard to create a formula that worked well. The formula, combined with his outstanding artistic ability, lead to the birth of the Ajello Candle Company. In 1785, the company earned the honor of creating all the candles for the Vatican. He and his wife ran the business, keeping their children involved in the processes from an early age. As time went on, their children and grandchildren kept the business running as well as passed the family business on to their children.

By 1862, the company had established itself as a leader among the candle making industry. They had also added perfumes and many colors to their line of outstanding candles. The decided to extend the business to Manhattan, New York. In both places, the business prospered. Kings and aristocrats in Italy wanted the services of the Ajello Candle Company. They designed candles for weddings, funerals, and ceremonies. They made the candles for the inauguration of the King of Spain in 1876, Pope Pius IX in 1878, and Pope Leo in 1902. Hollywood stars and rich people in Beverly Hills California wanted the candles from the Ajello Candle Company as well. Candles were also ordered by President Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, and Rudolph Valentino.

In 1922, the Ajello Candle Company made a memorial candle for their deceased friend Enrico Caruso. This candle was 18 feet tall and weighed more than a ton. It is estimated this candle could burn 24 hours a day for 1,800 years before running out of wax. This enormous memorial candle remains the largest one ever made in the world. Each year it is lit twice to honor the day Enrico Caruso was born and the day he died.

The Ajello Candle Company continued to grow and sells were well beyond anticipated both in Italy and the United States. In 1953 the company was asked to create 2,200 candles for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The company was honored to meet the request, and had all the candles ready in six months. The Ajello Candle Company was approached to be bought out, but refused. The family wanted their candle business to remain just that, not a major corporation.

Despite the creative efforts of the Ajello Candle Company, they were not able to meet the demand for their candles in 1965 during the blackout in New York City. The age of computers has found the Ajello Candle Company offering candles via the internet. Ironically, as Rafael Ajello worked around the clock to make candles for this need, his wife was giving birth to their child at a hospital scrambling to find candles for her room.

The Ajello Candle Company is still going strong today, offering quality candles that are beautiful as well as made of the best quality products. These candles can be purchased in many specialty stores throughout the world as well as on the internet in the comfort of our homes. This candle making business has spanned many generations, yet continues to hold the traditions and values of Rafael Ajello who started this business more than two centuries ago.

Anyone who has access to the internet should take a look at www.ajellocandles.com. Your breath will be taken away at the gorgeous candles there. I have never seen such beautiful wedding candles or unique decorating candles. I have seen a lot of candles, and I was very impressed. While Ajello Candle Company has made many custom candles for celebrities and royalty, they are very willing to do it for you as well. Simply select what you want and they will provide you with the best quality candles ever made.

Birmingham Conference Venues Make Conferences a Grand Success

Birmingham Conference Venues Make Conferences a Grand Success by Article Manager

There are several reasons that lead the people to search for the conference venues in the UK. The people, who are running companies and organizations, are now exploring the possible type of venues in the UK at present. Birmingham is now offering the Birmingham Conference venues. These conference venues range from farm houses to 5 star hotels, from rugby grounds to golf courses. Some Birmingham conference rooms also offer IT capabilities in their conference venues. Many of the new establishments for conferences are fully furnished with an in-house IT and audio-visual facility with managers to facilitate the system.

One of the most important aspects of hiring a conference venue is the budget you have allocated for the venue. This budget should support the quality and affordability of the services. You may have a lot of ways to scrutinize and evaluate the services of the service providers who are delivering the Birmingham conference rooms.

As an individual you need to inspect the site of the conference venue to get a better and foremost feel of the venue. Before hiring a conference venue, you need to go through a Conference planning that involves the cost estimation of the total capacity of the sitting arrangement required for the attendees and other guests. In addition, the number of rooms available also should be considered in a very proactive manner. When the budget is a constraint, it may happen that the provider of the Birmingham Conference room may overlook the arrangements of the vital utilities therefore they may able to escape some of the facilities that are very mandatory in the nature.

You must notice that the number of seats offered in the Birmingham Conference rooms should be adequate for all the attendees and the organization that is going to manage the venue should discuss all the details with a clear mention of the number of rooms and all the seats required. The time duration of the conference and the food arrangements should also be discussed in very great detail. Birmingham conference venues do a lot to all the business houses that are going to organize important business meets and conferences.