Speakers Speak LIVE is a New Presentation Practice Group for Professional Speakers
Speakers Speak LIVE is a one-hour session every Wednesday where new and emerging professional speakers get together to practice their presentation and speaking skills and critique each other for improvement. You are welcome to sit-in and see how it all works.
This is not a Toastmasters club or an NSA meeting. Speakers Speak LIVE should not be considered a replacement for either. But, there are definitely benefits for established and new professional speakers alike to participate frequently in these meetings, including:
- Practice Showcasing Your Business and Expertise in a Safe and Private Virtual Small Group Setting.
- Test New Material and Get Immediate Feedback for Improvement.
- Challenge Yourself to Improve Using Best Practices.
- Receive Honest Feedback for Your Appearance, Sound and Background on Camera.
- Discover and Try New Audience Engagement Techniques.
- Join a Growing Community of Like-Minded Professional Speakers Who Want to Support Each Other.
With live in-person events re-opening post-Covid, and speakers getting booked for in-person events again, speakers need to be at their best!
There will be a lot of competition for speaking spots as event planners everywhere are anxious to get their venues full of audience members again.
Get Speaking Practice! Register to Attend…It’s FREE!
The best way to see what Speakers Speak LIVE is all about is to sign-up and attend. Pick a Wednesday that’s good for you or register for every week! Consider Speakers Speak LIVE to be the only place you’ll need to practice your professional speaking skills each week.
Register here: SpeakersSpeakLIVE Event Page
Our Featured Speaker Speaks!
Wonderful job by Dana Morgan-Barnes as she presented 10 minutes of her 45-minute keynote on Wednesday June 2, 2021, our first Speakers Speak LIVE event.
The feedback she received from the audience was top quality, since all attendees were either professional speakers, just getting started as speakers or with enough speaking experience that they knew what to look for in a presentation.
After Dana gave her 10 minutes, we asked each person in the room to give 30 seconds to 1 minute to critique the content and delivery of the partial speech they just heard.
Dana was feverishly writing notes!!
The rule was “no repetition.” If someone made a specific comment, such as, “watch the camera more,” then no one else should mention that suggestion. It’s already been covered.
As you might expect, with professional speakers in the room, the comments were not limited to basic delivery like you would hear in a typical Toastmasters club.
There were several awesome suggestions for how Dana might improve the construction of her content.
The Showcase Speaker will be a different speaker each week. As our audiences increase, we will move to breakout rooms so that multiple Showcase Speakers can be featured in each meeting.
2-Minute Introductions
The next part of the meeting was giving all audience members the opportunity to introduce themselves, their speaking topic and one example of how a client benefitted from their services.
Improvements Coming for Future Speaking Practice Meetings
As smoothly as the meeting ran, considering it was the first of its kind, we will be tweaking as the weeks go by. Here’s a starting list.
- Order – Next week we’ll try having each participant in the room introduce herself/himself during the first section of the meeting. The evaluation section will be even more exciting for the speaker if the evaluators introduce themselves first to establish credibility. Then, we’ll have the showcase speaker speak and evaluations will follow.
- Showcase Speaker View – The suggestion was made that we pre-set the screen so that the speaker is the only one on the screen during the speech section. I think showing the audience reaction is important, so we’ll try some of the view at full size and some with the audience watching to catch both opportunities.
- Planning for Growth…Fast – We are already seeing how Speakers Speak LIVE could quickly grow to the point where we will need to shift to breakout rooms. That way, we could allow more speakers to practice their 10 minutes worth of material…and they could be speaking at the same time.
How to Become a Showcase Speaker
The only prerequisite we have for being a showcase speaker is to attend one session as an audience member. See how it works and, once you’re comfortable with the format, just let us know. We will schedule you for a Wednesday that works with your day and week.
Will We See You Next Wednesday?
Go ahead and sign-up to attend. It’s free, safe and private.
We do record the sessions but not for public distribution; only for the featured speaker to watch their speech and the critiques later.
Come be our guest. You are welcome!
