 Happy fall, y'all. Welcome to our webinar, Public Speaking Hacks for Research Presentations with Ms. Angie Alley. We are putting on this webinar in support of the New Mexico Research Symposium. There we go. On November 4th in Albuquerque at UNM at the Student Union Building. This symposium will include the Rio Grande Research Slam Competition, which will be MC'd by K-O-A-T's Byron Morton. And a keynote talk by Dimitri Mestas entitled, Artificial Intelligence for Everyone. Students, researchers, and all humans alike. Next Monday is the last day to register. So we are shutting it down at 5 p.m. So you gotta make sure to register before 5 p.m. next Monday, right? And you can do that by heading over to our website. So now that that's out of the way, my name is Brittany Van der Werf. I am the Communication and Outreach Coordinator or Specialist for New Mexico EPSCORE, which means the Establish Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. All you need to know is that's a nationwide program funded by the National Science Foundation to support research. I'll be your host for today's webinar along with my partner in webinar hosting crime, Ms. Isiscerna, who will be working behind the scenes to make it all run smoothly. A few, there we go. A few housekeeping things before we begin. If you have questions at any point, please type them into the Q&A box and Ms. Isis will interrupt Angie and ask on your behalf, just in case Angie doesn't see them, but Isis will ask on your behalf. So that's how we're gonna handle questions. With that, I would like to introduce our presenter for today, Ms. Angie Alley. Angie completed her master's in speech communication from Colorado State University where she started teaching communication, where she then started teaching communication. In 2012, Angie joined the CNM family as a full-time communication instructor. And since 2021, she's been serving as an interim associate dean in the School of Liberal Arts. Outside the classroom, Angie can be found on stage. She performs musicals and is a speaker coach for TEDxABQ. She also has an outstanding poodle named Archie who has been known to help people who have issues with public speaking as well. So thank you so much, Angie, for being here. And with that, please begin whenever you're ready. Oh, thank you, Brittany, I appreciate it. I am absolutely delighted that you are here because I feel that public speaking is so important. I get out of bed every morning to public speak because the joy and the importance of public speaking needs to be put out there. So I know public speaking can be very intimidating, very nerve-wracking, but I wanna be here to give you some hacks so that you too can public speak because unless you work in a lighthouse, you're gonna have to public speak. So I wanna give you all the tools necessary in order for you to be a very successful public speaker. All right, I do have, excuse me, let me pull up my PowerPoint here. Okay. I really wanna focus on giving you the tools that you need in order to be successful in public speaking. And that is knowing your audience because public speaking is not done alone. It involves the speaker and it always involves the audience. So a couple of things. We think, oh, we are not authentic. We should never be vulnerable. We should always use big words. All of that is absolutely not true. You are authentic. What you have to say is so important. We want to hear what you have to say. And being vulnerable is a key to being a successful public speaker. When I coach Ted, I always tell the speakers, the best speeches are the ones where you are authentic and vulnerable. Now that doesn't mean you're gonna be standing up in front of everybody and you're crying and you're giving all of your deepest darkest secrets. That's not it. You show who you are. And again, I'm gonna give you some examples of what it means to be vulnerable. Now, we love to use big words. We really do, but it's not everything. It's not something that everybody can relate to. You need to make sure that everything you are saying is relatable, is accessible, and we'll talk about that. And we really should never talk about concepts that our audiences don't understand because they don't care. They do. We humans, we are curious beings and we want to learn. I want to learn from all of you because you have something to teach me. Now, some of the correct ways to think about public speaking, and I did get this from Ted, is the ABCs, audience before content. What does that mean? You always wanna make sure that your audience knows that they are appreciated and that you value that they are there. And we're gonna talk about ways to do that because an audience can consist of one to two people up to hundreds. So how do you make each audience member feel welcomed? We'll talk about that. It is not about you. It is always about the audience. We as speakers, we need to put our egos aside. People come to hear us speak because they know we have something to say. So we don't need to put on an act that we do, but we need to put our ego aside so that the audience knows they're important. And then making the talk relatable, engageable, engaging, and memorable. So let's dive into some of those. It is a gift. When you speak, it truly is a gift. I've been teaching in almost 20 years and I've been teaching public speaking and interpersonal communication and all various other communication classes. Every time I step into the classroom, the students always teach me something and I tell them what you have to tell me is a gift. And what you have to say is I'm courteous because we wanna hear you. We put the people first. So why are people asking me to speak? What are they gonna get from my presentation and what are their expectations? These are all important questions. People are asking you to speak because you have something to say. You are doing important research. You are gonna share with us some things that we don't know. That's why they are asking you to speak. And you always need to ask yourself, what do I want them to know? The takeaway. In TED, we call it the call to action. What is the call to action or the hope that they gain from my talk? Well, you're here with this webinar so it is my sincere hope that you can walk away with a couple of tools that you never maybe used in public speaking or you never thought of or you think, you know, I do that but I could do a little bit more. So in order for you to understand the purpose, the so what of your speech, always ask yourself, what do I hope that they gain from it? And what are their expectations? Well, when I give a speech, what are their expectations? I sincerely hope that they expect to be entertained, to learn something, to feel valuable or to feel valid, excuse me. So think about those questions. Some of our things to keep in mind. Okay, we need to ask questions. Asking questions is so important. That's what engages people. You say, does this make sense? Is what I'm saying, do you understand that? Can I explain it a different way? Do you have any questions? Okay, that's fine. All those things are fine but let's get some basics of what really drives a question. And that is all about the golden improv rule. I love the golden improv rule. I use it all the time in everyday situations. It's the yes and or no but. So let's say you have to give a poster presentation and your audience is just a few people in front of you. Well, in order to make the curiosity flow, you have to answer the questions appropriately with the yes and and the no but because you don't wanna be a conversation killer. If the conversation is dead, then curiosity doesn't fuel communication and it doesn't fuel connection. We've gotta have those. So what is it to be a conversation killer? Well, if you say, it's hot outside and you say, yep, conversation has nowhere to go. There's no curiosity, there's no communication, there's no connection. So you can say yes, I mean, it's hot outside. Yes, and it's mid October. I can't believe it's this warm. Yes, and then off the conversation goes because you've given fuel to the conversation that fuels the curiosity, fuels the connection. Now, let's put a pin in that. I am gonna address the no but I wanna address the next bullet point which is listen for free information. This is huge. If you don't remember anything in this speech, remember this, everybody gives free information. As long as you don't just say yes or no and you tag on information, you are giving something for the other person to hear and they wanna follow, they should follow up with questions. So let's go back to the golden improv rule. Meh, oh, it is cold outside. Nope, I'll do that. Oh, it's cold outside. No, but I'm from Alaska. Well, what's the free information? Alaska, so the person who is listening should go, huh, where in Alaska did you move from? How do you like the desert? Why did you come to Albuquerque? You miss Alaska, all those things and then there you go, there's the conversation. So going back to when you give a speech, let's say for example, that poster, presented at a poster session. If you hear the audience, any member give any sort of free information, you follow up with questions and hopefully they do that for you. So I love the golden improv rule of yes and no but because it always fuels curiosity, which fuels communication, which fuels connection. All right, I said if you could remember one thing to remember that free information, let me remember these other things too. Couple snappy tips. Facts tell, but stories sell. We humans, we are storied people. That's how we learn from one another. That's how we pass information onto one another as we share stories. Stories is how we can relate to what it is that's being talked about. Now, facts are important. I'm not saying they aren't, but we need to weave them in to storytelling. One example that I have is I had the immense pleasure of working with a man who was given a TED talk and he worked at NASA. And oh, I love NASA, I love space. I think all of it is fascinating. And he was working on this unbelievably interesting project of building robots and sending them to Mars. And he gave this great speech full of all of this data and statistics and telling me stuff and oh, it was awesome. But when he was done, I respectfully said, that was boring. And I didn't mean it as an insulting way, but I said, what an amazing opportunity you have to absolutely captivate us. What we are doing is we are sending things off to Mars. How cool. How could we weave a story into this? So he was working on a robot and I said, well, let's give the robot a name. And so we ended up naming the robot Suki. And all of a sudden, Suki came to life. And I said, can you bring Suki onto the stage when you give your talk? And he said, sure. So when he started talking, Suki rolled onto the stage and all of a sudden, now I had something to put my attention to and I go, that's cool. So we rearranged his speech so that we talked about what did Suki do to prepare to go to Mars? What did Suki do on the nine months that she was traveling to Mars? And what did she do when she got to Mars? Now all of a sudden that's a speech I could get on board with because most people travel. And most of you have the experience of getting ready for a trip, the actual trip itself traveling and then what you do when you get there, it's relatable. Now, did he still have all his facts and statistics? Absolutely, because that's important and that is honoring his research. But he wove it into a story that all of a sudden was something that was super fascinating. So think about that. How can you weave a story in? And it doesn't need to be long. It doesn't even need to be a personal story. It could just be a story. That's how we learn from one another. The next one is the curse of knowledge. Each and every one of you is so intelligent. You come to the table with a vast amount of knowledge and I wanna learn from you. But the best way that we can spread information that we can be great educators is we do not fire hose people. You know this information, I don't. And so therefore if you just start telling me everything and you give me all the information and all the kinship sink and everything, I'm going to feel overwhelmed and I'm gonna wanna stop listening. It's best if you, and we're gonna talk about this later but present everything with three main points. What are three things that I can share with you? Because we humans, we can remember three things. I got that. A lot of speeches, it's best if you never go more than 18 minutes because after 18 minutes, the studies show that we as humans, we just stop, I just can't absorb all that information. So three main points and less than 18 minutes, you got yourself a winning combination. When I teach on the first day of class, I don't give them all the information. I don't say, here's everything you need to know about public speaking or here are all the interpersonal skills you need to know. And I only have an hour and 15 minutes to tell you. That's not gonna work. So you gotta give it in little chunks. And therefore I need to be responsible to go to you and ask questions and say, okay, help me understand this a little bit more, help me understand this. The curse of knowledge is making everything relatable. My favorite astrophysicist in the whole wide world is Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think he is an exceptional educator and I go to him to learn as much as I can about space and everything space related. And his podcast is so fascinating to me because he takes these incredibly complex issues and concepts and makes it so that I can understand it. And I love that. So I always try to think, how can I make this relatable? I have been honored to be able to run workshops over at Sandia and I have asked people, can you tell me what you do in five words? Some of them, that upsets some people. They say, well, I've been working on this 20 years. I go, I know, tell me what you do in five words, words that I can understand. And I'm not saying that I'm not intelligent, I am, but I need to be able to digest the information. For example, my husband has his PhD in inorganic chemistry. And so he will say, people will ask him what he does and what he used to do. He does something different now, but he would say, I study why plastics don't melt. That's more than five words, but you know, why plastics don't melt. Think about it. When you are in the kitchen and you have your little spatula and you're putting it in a hot pan, why doesn't it melt all the way? He studies that. Great. Now I can follow up with questions. Facts tell, stories sell, and the curse of knowledge. I'm gonna get just a drink of water here real quick. All right. Let's just address the elephant in the room. There's anxiety. You may have just a little bit of anxiety or a whole room full of anxiety. Either way, it is perfectly okay. Anxiety is okay. Brittany told you that I do musical theater. I love doing musical theater. I've been in about 43 musicals. And if I don't have just a little bit of anxiety on opening night, something's wrong. Anxiety fuels us. And it's real. So what is it? If we think about why do you have anxiety around public speaking, the most common ones are the fear of rejection. No one's gonna wanna hear what I have to say. What if I look silly? It's okay. There's no rejection. We come to you because we wanna hear what you have to say. Fear of failure. There's no failure in public speaking. Absolutely not. You have to actively, actively not come to my class in order to fail public speaking. But if you come and you at least get up in front of the class, you've succeeded. I wanna honor where everybody is on their journey of public speaking. So there is absolutely no failure when it comes to public speaking. Be in the center of attention. Well, sure, I can understand that. People don't like that. That's why visual aids are the best. Because we can have people look at the visual aid and it takes the pressure off of us. That's awesome. Physical reactions. There is nothing you can do about the physiological responses in your body. How many of you, when you public speak, you feel your cheeks get red? And oh, no. Oh, I know they're red. So they're only getting redder and oh my goodness. Nobody in the audience is going, hmm, look at those red cheeks. Okay, I'm not gonna take what they say seriously. No, it's only gonna be that with compassion and empathy and people will go, oh, I bet they're nervous. I hope they're okay. What if you say, well, I sweat a lot. Well, you know what? Unless you put your sweaty palm against their hand, they're not gonna know you're sweating. It's okay to dab away at your forehead. There is nothing you can do about the physiological reactions of your face turning red, your eyes dilating, your sweating, your heart rate. All of it is okay. So I feel that instead of being nervous about our physiological responses, just lean into it. You can even comment, ooh, oh, it's warm. You know, oh, my cheeks are red. Oh, ooh, sweaty a little bit. It's okay. If you acknowledge it, it's okay. Forget what you talk about. Well, maybe, but most of the time you have your notes in front of you. Rarely do you have to do something fully memorized. And I always tell people, memorizing is the wrong word. You don't wanna memorize something. You want to internalize something. Remember, this is all your information. This is your research. You know this. If I took away your cards, you would know exactly what to say. It wouldn't be the same exact speech, but it would be the same. Remember, I do musicals. I can't tell you how many times I have gotten on stage and I forget my words. I forget my lines. Even when I'm singing, I have forgotten before. You know what? The sun rose the next day. I figured it out. I may have, I may went rogue and I just started saying some things until I remembered where I was. So it's okay if you forget what you're talking about. And then there's just the catastrophic thinking everything's all gonna be terrible. Well, you know, it's not. Because let's say if you played sports, you didn't lie in bed on the day of a game going, I'm gonna trip, I'm gonna fall, I'm gonna break my leg. We're gonna lose terribly. Everything is gonna be terrible. No, it was sports. You like psych yourself up. This is great. I'm gonna win. We gotta think about it that way with public speaking. You know, I'm gonna do a good job today. I mean, you gotta pump yourself up. Ultimately, you never look as nervous as you feel. It's like a duck. On the top of the water, the duck is calm and cool, but underneath their little feet, they're paddling like heck. So you can think of it that way. You're calm and cool on the top, but underneath you're very nervous and that's okay. Again, as I had mentioned, there is a mental preparation. You gotta focus on the message rather than yourself or keep it on the audience. Remember, it's not about you. And be realistic about the experience that's at stake. I mean, you gotta think about is, am I giving a speech in front of thousands of people? Hmm, maybe that's really cool. I would do that. Or is this just gonna be in front of a couple of people? That's fine too. Now, some people would rather do a speech in front of people they know versus strangers or vice versa. I don't care. People are people and we all wanna hear what you have to say. So it doesn't matter. That's how I think. Physical preparation, just eat some protein. That's always, it lowers the blood or it helps regulate the blood pressure or the blood sugar, excuse me. That's important. What you eat is important. Sleeping well the night before. Wearing comfortable clothes. Oh, that's so important. Do not try to break in new shoes on a day you have to give a speech. Always be comfortable. And I just like to stretch. I always, before I go on stage or give a big speech, I just walk around. I do the shoulder thing. I raise my arms. I just move. Moving always helps. Now, if you can, when you give speeches, try to know the venue. If you know it, great. If you don't get there early, understand where to park. Understand what the physical context is around you. Parking is always important to me. If I have to give a speech at a place I've never been before, I always go the day before or whatever to know where it is that I'm going. Because I don't need that extra anxiety. I wanna know. And I always arrive early because you never know what's gonna be on the way there. And when it comes to preparing your speech, we're gonna talk about the structure of the speech here in a few minutes. Don't procrastinate. Don't say, I got it in my head. I know what it is I'm gonna say. No, because once you start to sit down and actually work on it, then you think, oh no. This isn't exactly what I was thinking. This is going differently. And you have to practice. Do as many practices as you can. Do it in front of your friends, in front of your family, in front of your coworkers. Record yourself. Do it in front of the mirror. You have to practice. Again, you can't say, I got it. It's in my head. I can't, again, I've done music all my whole life. We practice for eight, nine weeks before we put on a show. I can't say, nah, I know this music, I'm fine. No, I gotta go to rehearsals. I gotta learn my lines, my music, my blocking. All of that, it is no different than a speech. Amy Cuddy is someone who's done a public speaking, excuse me, has done a TED talk before and it's a fake it until you become it. She talks all about the nonverbal cues that we give while public speaking. That was just a shout out to a cool TED video if you wanted to watch it. Tiny, oh my goodness, please follow Tiny. If you have been given an X amount of minutes to do your speech, you do your speech in an X amount of minutes. If nothing is more frustrating than a speech that just goes on and there's no end in sight. Time limits are important. As an example, why this is important. I told you, or Brittany said that I was an associate dean at CNM, part of my job is I hire, I hire new faculty and they have to give a teaching demo and they get 10 minutes. It doesn't look good if they go way over their 10 minutes. Why? Because it shows that they didn't prepare, they didn't practice and they don't have a sense of time management. Well, isn't that teaching? You have to have a sense of time limits. And there was one person I was interviewing and I said, well, thank you, your time is up. And they said, I'm not done yet. And I said, yeah, you are. So you got to honor the time limit. And public speaking requires muscle memory, 100%. That's why we want you to practice. Oh, okay, okay, I got to time it. Okay, I have five minutes. Okay, at two minutes, I should be here. At three minutes, I should be here. And if you keep practicing it that way, again, you're not memorizing it, you're internalizing it. And there you go. Now all of a sudden you have your speech and you don't need your notes. Because you know at this time, I should be getting to about here. In all speeches, there should always be that content and relation. Again, we're gonna continue talking about that. You need to give your information, but you always need to make sure that the audience feels engaged and that they feel welcome to be there. Build on your strengths and to put address your weaknesses. You say, you know, I got this information. I know my material forwards and backwards, but I'm kind of monotone. I don't do a lot with my face. Great, then let's address that. Let's work on that. And I don't even like the word weakness. I call it in my classrooms, glows and grows. Let's highlight your glows, but let's honor your grows. And again, remember the power of your story. Excuse me one second. Let's talk about how to write a great speech. Because there are some important elements to both your introduction and your conclusion. You need to have a strong introduction. That's not mind blowing. That should make perfect sense. But there should be about five elements to your introduction. The first is you need to grab the audience's attention. Awesome, how do you do that? You ask questions. You can ask a question that they need to answer or a rhetorical question, either way, it's just fine. You can throw out a really fantastic startling fact or statistic, that'll grab them. A story, I'm all about stories. You start with a story, a very short one, but a story. You have a quote. Maybe you show a video. Maybe you use some humor. Either way, you have to grab our attention. Now you need to establish your credibility. Who are you? What's your ethos? Why are you talking about this? Brittany did a nice job introducing me and that hopefully was enough of an ethos or credibility for you to go, oh, okay, sure. I guess she knows what she's talking about. 20 years of teaching public speaking, Ted, musical theater, yeah, she probably knows. If I'm gonna give a talk about playing a tuba and I've never played a tuba before, my ethos is kind of shot. Now you don't need to go on and on with your resume, but you can just briefly say, this is why I'm talking about this because I've been studying this for X amount of years. Establish rapport. Let them know you are thankful that they are here. When I started this speech, I said, I am so delighted that you are here because I mean that. I believe in the power of public speaking and so I am happy you are here. You need to preview your topic. Hey, you know, we're talking about public speaking today and today I want you to understand and then lay out three main points. How to honor or how to acknowledge public speaking anxiety, how to organize a speech and how we can have good delivery skills. Well, there you go, one, two, three. Those are the three main points. Always lay out the roadmap for your audience. If you have a roadmap, they are more likely to follow you and take that journey with you. I can tell you, if I hear someone starting a speech and I don't know where this is going, I have a little apprehension on whether I'm gonna listen to them or not because I need to make sure that this is organized. Anecdotes, narratives, I mean, my goodness, I'm a broken record, always share those stories. They should be short and they can be truthful. I mean, well, they should be truthful, but personal, historical, current or some sort of something you found in your studies. But stories are so important and they're relevant. The relevancy is very important. And now I say be sure to be in control of your emotion. Meaning you don't, I think showing emotion is rather important, showing excitement, showing enthusiasm. If you wanna reign it in, you don't wanna be just outrageous, but if you talk about paint drying and you clearly have a passion for paint drying, people are gonna love that. They're gonna say, oh, I didn't know paint drying was so interesting, that's great. So I mentioned how to grab people's attention. And we talked about the rhetorical question, facts, appealing to the audience, appealing to yourself, humor, referencing some sort of current events, quotations. This was just a repeat of what it is that I was saying to grab the audience's attention. Now, after the introduction, you obviously have the body of your speech. Now, if you lay out your roadmap, which is your three main points, the body of your speech is gonna support those three main points. And you wanna keep on that, on those three main points. You do not wanna deviate too much from it. I just saw... Ellie, we have questions. Yeah, I actually just saw that question. Yes, it's to the rule of three. You should always have three things that you wanna say, because again, the audience is gonna remember those three main points. So that's excellent, and I'm glad that you brought that up. Thank you. When it comes to the, again, to the body of your speech should be supporting those three main points. The conclusion should be pretty short. You wanna signal the end. Well, in conclusion, I had to wrap it up. You wanna let the audience know, hey, we're coming to a close. But then don't tease them and go down another rabbit hole. If you're gonna end your speech, you need to end it. Now, you should restate your three main points. When it comes to public speaking, you should always tell us what you're gonna tell us. Tell us? Tell us what you told us. It's kind of the formula of public speaking. So restate your three main points and then provide that clincher, something that we can walk away with. Again, Ted calls it that they call the action. But what is it that you want us to walk away and remember? Uh-oh, there we go. When it comes, here's a couple important don'ts. When it comes to your introduction, please don't ramble, just get in it. Just tell us what it is and we're gonna start doing it. You can't, you know, when you do public speaking, you can't say, oh, hey, everybody, I'm so glad that you're here and start your speech as you're walking up. You wanna walk up to your lectern or your platform. You wanna stand still and then you start talking. And you really wanna, you know, think about how quickly am I talking? Well, why do we talk fast? Those are nervous. The faster I talk, the faster I can sit down. But the problem is you have robbed us of your message. Don't talk too fast. I want to hear what you have to say. Give me the gift of your message. Reading your audience or, excuse me, reading your introduction. Do not stand there and just read your introduction. You know who you are. You want it, that's the most important time to make eye contact and try not to be too luxury. People try to just be relatable. That's the most important thing. And with conclusions, it's kind of the same as introductions. Once you signal the end, make sure it's the end. Don't bring up new material and don't ramble. It's interesting when you watch people do public speaking, the most rambling happens at the end because they don't know how to tie it up. Well, I mean, there is that. And as I said before, that's it. All you need to do is say three main points again, give us some sort of clincher and then leave. And same as the introduction, you don't start your speech as you're walking off. You don't end your speech. Hey, it was so great seeing all, thanks so much. Then you do that. No, you gotta end your speech and then you can leave. So how do you practice? Because you gotta practice. Practice makes permanent, not perfect. I never want anybody to think it's perfect. I mean, it says practice only makes perfect if you practice perfectly. That's fine, but what is perfect? I is okay if mess ups happen. It's fine. You should always practice beforehand and practice in front of people. Always, always, always. You need to practice out loud. You need to do it full volume. You can't sit there and whisper with your no cards and you just sort of whisper. That's not good. You're not whispering when you're doing your real speech. Stand up. I always public speak standing up, even on Zoom. You can, we can be sitting, but I don't wanna sit because I don't sit when I public speak. So even when I public speak on Zoom, I'm walking around. Now, I do, I know it says practice with a lectern, but to be honest, my friends, I don't like lecterns. I don't like podiums because there's a physical barrier between me and the audience. So if I'm public speaking, if I'm doing a professional gig and I see a lectern, I actually just step to the side of it. I don't want anything to do with it. I want the audience to see me. Now, some people say, well, that's vulnerable. I want to be behind the lectern. That's up to you. I don't want you to not feel comfortable. Yes, lecterns are huge clutches. People like to like hold onto them for dear life. Don't do that. And practice your speech for time, always, always, always time and record yourself, please. So let's talk, we're on the final couple slides of this presentation. The final thing is the delivery. Delivery is really key. And I wanna go through these. How to be excited, your facial expressions, vulgarity, gestures, all of that. You have to have enthusiasm. That is key. I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, if you talk about paint drying and you have enthusiasm, people are gonna go, oh, that's kinda neat. Again, I don't think it's any surprise that I love public speaking. This, what you are seeing right now is genuine because I love it. And students will tell me, I took your class, I still don't like public speaking but I loved the enthusiasm you had because it helped me be enthusiastic about public speaking. You are in your field for a reason. You are studying what you are studying for a reason. So help me get excited about what it is that you are doing. Facial expressions, your face has to match what you're saying. If you are excited about something smile, you can't say. This research really has changed my life and I'm really thankful for it and I'll never forget the joy that doing this research has brought me because I'm gonna say, did it, did it. You need to make sure that your face is showing the excitement that you are having. Same with your vocal variety. You have the immense ability to let your voice go up, let it go down, go fast, go slow. Vocal variety is emphasizing certain words. It's bringing it to life. Something that I do both at TED and when I did workshops at Sandia is I had people read children's books and oftentimes they go, why am I doing this? Because you cannot read a children's book to a child monotone. They'll call you out on it. So you've got to have voices for the characters. You've got to show enthusiasm when something exciting is happening or have a little nervousness in your voice when something scary has happened or whatever within a children's book. You've got to have that vocal variety because being monotone, oof, that'll kill anything within a speech. Think about a instructor you've had. They were really monotone. Were you excited about the material? Probably not. Gestures is a big thing with their hands. Gestures is very natural. Now you don't need to write into your speech, do a gesture here, just if you feel like doing it, doing it. It doesn't need to be out of control. And if it is, people will tell you, but just think about what can you do with your hands? What can you do with your body? But be mindful of the excessive energy because it comes out in different ways, which we're going to talk about. Your feet and posture, or you should have your, I'm looking down at my feet as though you can see them, but you should be about shoulder width apart, obviously. Bend your knees, do not. Don't lock your knees. A lot of people, again, I wish you could see me, but I can't back up far enough, I'll disappear. But a lot of people will stand with their feet crossed, or their legs crossed. Don't do that. Because it's only gonna throw off your balance. It's gonna throw off your breathing. Just keep your, just keep your feet at a natural stance. Roll your shoulders back. An electron is not a part of your skeletal system. Remember, you don't wanna be gripping it for dear life. Whilst when it comes to gestures, you've gotta be careful. You may do gestures, but they may not be the right gestures because oftentimes we will play with things. So do not bring anything to your speech that you will play with, like a clicky pin. People will just click that thing. Mm-mm. Now, we all have ticks. It's natural. I tend to play with my ring, or I'm not wearing my necklace right now, but I'll wear a necklace. So if I'm doing a professional public speaking gig, I do not wear my ring. I don't play with my wedding ring, but I'll play with this ring. So I remove my ring and I remove my necklace. Because it's a tick, not cause I'm nervous. It's just a tick. But a lot of people will play with their hair. They'll flip their hair. I'll put it up. If you'll put keys or anything in your pockets, you're gonna wanna put your hands in your pockets and play with those. A, don't put your hands in your pockets. And B, don't put anything in there that is gonna make you want to play with it, like your keys or coins or something. Oftentimes people will also play with their clothes. You know what? They're not going anywhere. They're not spontaneously gonna fall off you. So you can leave your clothes alone. And also make sure you wear those comfortable shoes. I know this is the second time I've said that, but that's very important. If your feet are hurting, you're gonna be distracted. So just think about objects. Just don't bring anything up or do anything that will cause you to wanna play with it. Man, I've talked about an electron before. I don't like it. Sometimes you use it, but it's not for leaning. It's not for tipping. It's not for hugging it. It's not ripping it for the emotional support. Again, I don't like them. I just wanna be done with them. The greatest thing for an electron is to hold my water, which by the way is very important. Bring water where you are with public speaking. I've taken two drinks of mine and nobody, hopefully none of you have gone, she's having some water. That's unacceptable. No, water is a great way to help you slow down, help you gather your thoughts and stay hydrated, obviously. So don't be scared of the water as well. So eye contact is important. Now eye contact can mean different things to different people and I'm aware and wanna honor the cultural meanings and when it comes to eye contact. But when you are giving speeches, you want to look at your audience. Now maybe you don't wanna look at people right in the eye. I do, I love it when I'm public speaking, but when I do a musical, I do not wanna look at, I tell friends and family, don't sit anywhere near the stage. I don't wanna see you. Cause I feel like it'll break and I'll break. Not that I'm gonna stop and go, hey, but I don't like it. So when I do musicals, I will sing to the exit signs because they're not going anywhere. But with a public speech, I love looking at the audience cause I can smile, I can engage, I can bring them in. Now if that's uncomfortable for you, look over their heads or don't even look at them. Give yourself three sections of the room. I'm gonna look over here, here and here. And you don't even have to look at people, but at least you're up and you're not looking at your notes. So think about that when it comes to the eye contact. Now obviously don't stare down one person. That's gonna make them highly uncomfortable. But think about the eye contact. Vocal variety, vocal variety is so important. Your volume is important. Now it depends on whether you're gonna use a mic or not because when people use mics, they think they're gonna do all the work. No, the mic is just there to aid you. Now you don't wanna like speak into the clown's mouth or you speak all this and it's all nah. And you don't want it too far down. Some people just hold it down here. Just hold it nice. And the person who's running the mic can adjust the volume, but it's there to help you. So when I teach public speaking, I always take them into a large auditorium and I have them practice with mics because it is important. So it depends on whether you're holding a mic or you have what we call the Madonna mic. If you have the Madonna mic, that's a lot easier because a person can control the volume. Your pitch, that's the up and down, your rate is how fast and how slow you go and pauses are important. We need the audience to absorb what it is you're saying. So don't be scared of the pauses. If you pause for two or three seconds, no one in the audience is gonna go, oh, oh, good, they're talking, oh, they paused. Okay, they're talking, no, pausing is good. And I really wanna talk about the vocal fillers like you know, those drive me crazy, especially you know. So you know, I got up this morning and you know, I had some breakfast and well, I worked out and you know, it's really important to work out before you go to work because then you feel energized and you know, and that's no, I don't know because I wasn't there. I don't understand why people feel the need to have ums. You are intelligent, you know this information, you do not need ums. Um is just a crutch word. And maybe you're nervous because you have to talk, you're the center of attention, okay, all that's fine but you still don't need ums. I would say in this whole speech, I've said um maybe once or twice because I, oh um, yeah, I forgot what I was gonna say. So I do it too, it is a natural thing, it's okay to do it once or twice. But if you feel that you're gonna fall into the pool of ums and you just can't stop yourself, pull out your water. Okay, you had the opportunity to refocus and hopefully that'll slow down the ums. Listen to any speech, go on to YouTube and just listen to people giving interviews or just listen to impromptu interviews or speeches they have to do. People will say um so much. I love podcasts, they're fantastic. And I have my whole library of them but if I wanna go out and find a new podcast and I turn it on and all I hear is every other word is um, I don't listen. And I'm disappointed because some of them I go, oh that's too bad, that would have been a cool podcast. I can't handle the ums. So just think about that. And finally, just to wrap it up, just remember, practice is important, your energy is important, your vocal variety, your physical presence and your passion. Those are important because ultimately I just want you to go forth and be fabulous because you are fabulous. Public speaking is challenging and it takes practice but it will open doors for you. And in your job, you're going to have to public speak whether it's in front of a small or a large group in front of your peers or people you don't know. And remember, oftentimes in work we have to do grant writing, we have to ask for money. So we need to, and we have to present on it. So if you can be relatable, make your information relatable, make people like you, that's important. So I'm very thankful that you were curious enough to come today to learn a little bit about public speaking. And I hope you walk away with some important information. So thank you so much for inviting me. I enjoyed our time together and go forth and be fabulous, my friends. Yay, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I know, right? Now that you know. Pretty amazing. Okay, Paolo has a question. Paolo is the director of a New Mexico space grant and he has a theater background. My goodness, I've had many favorite roles. I would say some of my top three favorites was I was the princess and once upon a mattress, the princess and the pea. That was great. I was Sarah and guys and dolls. I really enjoyed that. And oh, there's too many. I was wondering if he would answer, he would ask that question. Thank you so much, everybody for being here, but it's fun to see your name, Paolo. Does anyone, does anyone else have questions? Because we have the time, we have about nine minutes for any of our questions. If you've had something that you were thinking you would like to know before you give your oral presentation at NMRS or just in general about public speaking, Angie's a great resource. So I'm gonna stop talking for a little bit and let you type your questions into the chat and we'll just go from there. And if you don't have any, then we'll just end early. I purposefully ended. I only did this for 50 minutes in case you had questions. So that was on purpose. Yeah, it was on purpose. We arranged for her to have a Q and A session or at least time for Q and A. If you could actually, I'm gonna ask a question. We're waiting. If you could give one piece of advice, just one for all public speaking, what would it be? Have enthusiasm. That's it to me because enthusiasm drives everything. And if you don't have enthusiasm, then we're not teaching people things. So yeah, to me it's, I mean, I'm gonna get off and I'm gonna go, there was five other ways I could answer that, but just my gut instinct, just have passion, build the relationships. Yeah. I agree with that completely as a science communicator. Yeah. Okay, y'all, I might end this early if no one has questions. And I'll give you back. No, it doesn't, everybody's just saying thank you, which is also very true. And I would like to echo that. I'm stopping your presentation. So I can do this, echo that sentiment. Well, thank you, everybody. That's very kind that you came. Thank you for spending your lunch hour here. I appreciate it. Yeah, and with that, we'll just close it out. Thanks, everybody, once again for coming. And we are gonna share, that's a great question. We are gonna share the recording. It will be posted on our YouTube channel, New Mexico EPSCORE, that's what you search to find it, New Mexico EPSCORE. Go to our website if you're having trouble finding it, but it will be there probably by Friday, hopefully at the very latest. And yeah, we, oh, I thought we had another question. We're gonna end it there. Thanks everybody for coming. I wanna especially thank my partner in webinar hosting crime, Ms. Isiscerna. And once again, Angie and everybody have a wonderful rest of your fall day. Thank you.