An important speech can be a worry. The keys for success are good preparation and confident delivery. If you have prepared your talk well and memorised the key points then you are ready to give a great performance. And it is a performance. Giving a talk should be much more than simply conveying…

You probably shy away from some people on social occasions. Their conversations are tedious. You groan inwardly when they approach for you know that they are unremittingly dull company. Equally you may be fortunate enough to know some brilliant conversationalists who can enliven any discussion and who are excellent company whatever the circumstances. In what…

A while back, I recommended that students get to know their professors. I realize, though, that many students are intimidated or put off by their professors. This is especially so when students need something — a favor, special help with an assignment, a second chance on a test. It doesn’t need…

…or girl. Scott Ginsberg’s story is that one day after an event at college, he decided to keep his name tag on. What he noticed was he was instantly more approachable the rest of the day. Since then Scott has kept the name tag on [for an odd 2400 days], writing a few books on meeting people…

Most of the time, small-talk conversation is required for networking in the corporate world. It requires a lot of practice, but having couple of tips to get started will speed you up with the progress. Ben Stein at Yahoo! Finance did a nice piece on how to have a business conversation: Begin by knowing that the…

Preparation and delivering the talk are both important, but how to do it properly? Jonathan Shewchuk has a good piece of tutorial on how to give a technical talk. He mentions couple of good points – including minmize your text in your slides, what font face should you be using, how you should organise the…

Tim Warner has another useful piece on eliminate ‘um’ and ‘ah’ from the speech. These placeholder nosies are annoying and my distract your listener’s attention. He suggests to stop them, record yourself in your presentation and study your speech afterward. I must admit sometimes I still cannot lose them as well, so this post…

Don’t go to a conference or party and just standing alone and sipping drink. By doing small talk or making some interesting conversation, you will not be bored and alone and be able to network with people. Noah Kagan suggests some preparations and tips to make some interesting conversations. Some of them do pretty common…

This is an interesting piece – definitely avoid to use them but use it as a reference to identify if someone use it against you. Dean and Marshall VanDruff talks about cheat conversation techniques. Some of them are really bad ways on introducing a conversational fight, such as: QUESTION THE QUESTION / COMMENT: A great lead-in for…