Have you ever listened to a speaker who made you wonder how long ago he died and why we're not allowed to bury him yet? Or a speaker who elicited some concern about why he can't think of anything to say but why it's taking him so long to say it anyhow? Or a speaker who rendered you uncertain as to the fine distinction between a windbag and an airhead?

Picture this: Here you are in a stuffy old suit and tie, attending a conference session that is supposed to be two hours long, with six speakers scheduled for this session, and it's been an hour and a quarter and the first speaker is droning on and on and on ... and ... on ... and ... on ... and he hasn't said anything yet and you drank too much of that nice free coffee they served at the beginning of the session and you forgot to select a seat from which you could have unobtrusively slipped out for a restroom break. (groan)

What's even worse is a totally lifeless lecturer in a class you've signed up for and willingly put out some money. During my rocket science career I got a chance to take an industry short course on a certain technical topic, and the lead professor was the universally acknowledged top expert in the entire world in his field. "Oh Goodie!" we all thought as we eagerly awaited this wondrous opportunity to Sit at the Feet of the Master! Well, he turned out to be the dullest speaker anybody had ever heard. Total monotone. In fact, at one point during his lecture (he was sitting down, fortunately) his voice sorta trailed off and he sorta nodded over and began snoring. After a while we woke him back up and he resumed speaking, apparently unaware that he had dozed off.

Experts in public speaking often cite the "Hour a minute" rule, whereby you expect to spend at least an hour in preparation for every minute you are going to spend in front of your audience. This is especially true for government rocket scientists making a pitch for funding from their project sponsors. Let's say you've got this project that's gonna cost a couple billion dollars to launch a million bales of hay into orbit to feed the pink unicorns who are pushing the moon around in its orbit. The congressional committee in charge of the funding allocation has got maybe five or ten minutes to listen to your pitch. They've got so much taxpayer's money to waste that the couple billion bucks for your measly project is small potatoes to them. If you're gonna be able to get your point across you've gotta spend at least a whole day in advance, maybe even two days, to get your act together. And then you'd better make sure you're in peak form as you begin your presentation, otherwise they'll never fall for a nickel's worth of your harebrained scheme.

When I was in graduate school, the university had several soapbox oratory stands set up round and about the campus. Anybody could walk up to one of these soapboxes and start in on a speech about anything they wanted to. If you were a pretty good speaker and had a fun topic, people would listen. Maybe they would boo and hiss and throw outdated produce. If you were a crummy speaker everybody would ignore you. I think every community oughta have public soapboxes. Maybe more people would learn decent public speaking techniques.

And then there was this cool dude in town who had a dump truck merrily festooned with Bible verses done in reflective tape. His dump truck was outfitted with a huge umpteen megawatt sound system from which he preached holy-roller revival sermons as he went slowly touring round and about the streets of the city. Everybody ignored him, but he was too dumb to know the difference. I have no idea who was providing the money he was wasting on this wondrous evangelism.

Actually, I think it's sorta fun to take my turn doing the Bible reading in church. It's especially nice when the passage has got lots of those nice unpronounceable names in it, because then I can mispronounce them any way I jolly well please and nobody will ever know I'm screwing up. Nobody ever listens to that drivel anyway. They're just listening for me to get finished and say, "The Word of the Lord," so then they can respond, "Thanks Be to God," like nice little Christians so they can sleep through the rest of the service.

Some advice for public speaking
All Eyes On You - Public Speaking Tips
All Eyes On You - Delivering The Presentation