A good friend is leaving the House of Commons for a run at the B.C. legislature. Here’s her farewell speech from April 2; in it, you’ll find a lot of what made her such a great MP:

Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, this might be my last opportunity to stand and speak as a member of Parliament since the House will adjourn tomorrow. I… Read more...

At the very end of a post about professional public speaking (more about Tod’s public-speaking series of posts soon – they’re fantastic, and this one is actually hilarious), Tod Maffin offers a piece of advice that just about every Mac user should take to heart:
Mac machines by default make a chirping sound each time you hit a volume key. You can turn that off by going to System… Read more...

Jokes are supposed to be a public speaker’s best friend. They break the ice, put the audience at their ease, and make you look a little more warm and human.

And so they do – when they work.

When they don’t… well, look at Sen. John McCain in last night’s presidential debate.

Discussing health insurance, McCain joked about gold-plated plans that cover hair transplants, suggesting he… Read more...

Cliff Atkinson is one of the few reasons that I haven’t unleashed a presentation-software-deletion virus on the world (the fact that I lack the programming chops to pull it off is another one) (this free e-book is a third) (the lovely Keynote is a fourth). His book and companion web site are two must-reads for anyone hoping to break free of delivering boring, godawful slide shows… Read more...

I’m going to save the screen capture I took of the Democratic Party’s home page a few minutes ago.

And the next time I read some columnist pontificating about how the outcome of an election is a foregone… Read more...

Back in the 1993 federal election, then-Prime Minister Kim Campbell was quoted as saying that elections are no time to discuss serious issues. (If memory serves, her comment was actually much more nuanced, but was dumbed down to that pithy, sensational and damaging phrase – which kinda proved her point.)

Last week, Barack Obama challenged that idea – with a scope and, yes, audacity that was nothing short of… Read more...

Hey, y’all: my speechwriting page on Squidoo has just been named Lens of the Day!

Drop by and have a gander – I’ve added a bunch of tips there, including tip#7, “Talk about the squirrel”:
I used to work as a tour guide in Ottawa. Busloads of seniors would come in from south of the border, and I’d show them the sights… including Rideau Hall, the… Read more...

In the midst of this great GuideStar piece on writing fundraising letters comes a sentence that galvanized me:

• Beginning sentences with “and”- one of my favorite connectors that encourages readers to keep reading (actually “listening” because that’s the way we talk with friends).

Listening. That’s why conversational writing, be it in blog posts, speeches or direct mail, has such power. It’s the way you offer to… Read more...