http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

(Maahi Chowdhury)

        The video above, is Dr. Randy Pausch’s inspirational one hour and sixteen minute speech about achieving your childhood dreams. Pausch, diagnosed with advanced stages of pancreatic cancer delivers, a buoyant however profound message. Personally, after watching the video, it was hard to choose another speech, his speech was simply the most effective and resounding. The video, demonstrates the audience’s pleasure toward Pausch, with constant applause and laughter, the audience was ecstatic. For viewers like me, who watched it six years later, the video itself received 16 million views, with a 97% approval rating. Pausch, demonstrates through his life how to overcome obstacles, build successes, fulfill childhood dreams, but most of all lead your life.

        In his speech, Pausch aims to do two things inform and inspire. Pausch, a Professor at Carnegie Mellon, informs those in attendance the importance of head fakes (meta-lessons learned through different objectives/mediums). Head fakes become a central part of the message and the speech is revealed as a head fake itself. The Speech initially taught the audience how to achieve their childhood dreams through anecdotes, maxims, and lessons he learned. However, as Pausch spoils at the end, the speech’s true intent was to inspire you to live a meaningful and successful life. Pausch effectively, achieves his message by inspiring his audience. He paints vivid situations in his life, and demonstrates to us how he managed to overcome various obstacles. He shows us the importance of brick walls in our life, and they are only tests to find the most ambitious people. He sets such simple goals, that anyone could have had, and builds upon them to bigger better accomplishments. For example, his desire to become a Imagineer at Disney prompts him to make the right connections, and take a six month sabbatical at Disney World. He later is offered a full time job at Disney but refuses.  Pausch is also very charismatic, humble, and humorous through the entire speech. He is seen making comments to his peers; talking right to them as he regales his story, and even has the entire audience sing Happy Birthday to his wife. The speech made me self reflect, which in essence are the objectives of communication, a job well done Dr. Pausch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni0YLzQqHPc

As you may know, the news was recently consumed with the shocking release video on the confession of Matthew Cordle, a 22 year old man, who struck and killed Vincent Canzani while drunk driving on June 22nd 2013. During his 3 ½ minute long confession video, Matthew conveyed a powerful and influential message on accepting consequences based upon your actions. Within his video, Matthew did the unexpected. He directly confessed to killing a 61 year old man while being under the heavy influence of alcohol. He did not attempt to bring up excuses for his deadly actions on that tragic night; he simply openly stated that he is guilty and that he will take full responsibility for what he had done and the justice that will come. Initially, Matthew starts the video with his face blurred and his voice disguised. His intention was to show to the public that he had the opportunity to do the cowardly thing; simply lie and avoid any responsibility for the death of Vincent Canzani. However, he did not choice this path. Instead, roughly half way through the video, Matthew’s face finally becomes un-blurred, revealing the true person that was accountable for the fatal accident. With the conclusion of the video, Matthew begged whomever that is watching the video to not make the same mistakes that he made. Even though it was too late to take back his careless actions, it is not too late for another individual to evade a tragic incident that can be easily avoided.

-Maurice Studer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRiHSaIQ8oQ

SHAMRIN HASAN.

Everyone who knows me, or at least knows of me, knows one thing: I am a social butterfly. I can go up to anyone and spark a full blown conversation. I don’t hesitate to speak to people I don’t know. I love meeting people and conversing with people. I am just that  person. However, my hear will drop to my stomach at the thought of giving a speech or presentation. I would really would love to get rid of this fear of mine. It’s so contradictory to my personality. I love speaking and being heard, but when I’m put in a situation where I’m going to be graded and criticized, I can’t do it. Every presentation I’ve given in high school, I have been petrified. I start playing with my hair, my voice starts shaking, and I refuse to make eye contact with anyone. I would really like to most past this because it’s simply not professional, and it definitely won’t get me an A in this class.

Everyone who knows me also knows that I am J. Cole’s number one, die hard fan. For those of you that don’t know, he is a main stream rapper. A phrase that people commonly associate him with is “cole world” – hence the title to this. His music is my biggest inspiration and I’ve watched through his interviews, performances, and speeches over and over again. He is just such a motivational person in my eyes. The link I put up is part of a speech he gave at Harvard. I want to be the speaker he is in that video. It’s like once he’s up speaking, he doesn’t have a single worry. He just speaks and connects with his audience. All through out the speech, J. Cole is calm, smiling, looking around, using his hands, and making his audience laugh. Now that is the type of speaker I am looking forward to becoming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX39J_YyKbs

– Praneeth Bolgodu

Public speaking is the art of speaking to a group of people in an attempt to inform, entertain, influence, or inspire and empower them. When most people think of public speaking they think of a speech given on stage like a valedictorian or one like the dean gave at convocation. Although, in my case the person who influenced me and anyone else who may have been on a sports team, is the coach.

When my basketball coach spoke to us the in locker room before a game, he spoke to us with such power and confidence in his voice. During his speech and after it was over we all felt a sense of courage, strength, and the desire to do our best. The way our coach used to do that and the way the coach in the video does that is by telling the team they’re the greatest, by asserting that no matter what a team must give it their all, and with the power and passion in the coach’s voice it impacts the team.  This video shows the relationship between the coach and the player in that the coach hypes them up and gets them ready for the big game and throughout his speech he involves them by saying ” Who am I” and the team who is empowered by their coach’s speech replies ” I am a Champion”

Jimmy Marshall

I see most people are making posts about their favorite public speaker, but I don’t watch a whole lot of TV or anything so I’ll just talk about my own experiences in public speaking. First off, I’ve never been too good at it. Something about standing up in front of an audience makes me crack under pressure. Throughout high school I’ve done many presentations, doing very well in some and not so well in others.  Sometimes I’ll freeze up and completely forget what I’m even talking about, which is what happened once at a DECA competition. My parter and I (who also was not so good at public speaking) had to come up with an original business, and explain in detail how we would manage it. I wanted to win so bad that I memorized every freakin word of the presentation. Of course, when it came time to present, nothing came to mind. We didn’t win that year, obviously. Anyway, I think I just let my nerves get to me and over-think my presentations. I try to make it so perfect that it ends up the opposite. That’s why I’m happy that I’m taking this class; It’s a weak point that I need to improve on. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will at least become more comfortable presenting and being in front of an audience. Well, now you guys know what to expect!

CJ Furchert

Thulasi Pius

Everyone knows how hard it is to sit through a speech or lecture that we don’t find riveting.  Keeping that in mind, we have to realize that one of the most difficult components of giving a good speech is keeping the audience captivated.  This is exactly what motivational speaker Jeff Yalden has perfected.  Being a motivational speaker is hard enough as it is, but Jeff’s targeted audience is teenagers.  Teen audiences are the most arduous age group to reach out to because of their susceptibility to distraction and obstinacy, which we all know.  Jeff however knows not just how to capture their attention just by his first statement but keep them like that till the very last word.  Jeff knows exactly how to deliver his speeches so that teens will be inspired by his words.

When Jeff delivers his speeches, he takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster.   For instance he repeatedly starts off with humor, and by doing so he catches the audience’s attention.  When applying humor he tends to level with the audience and make them feel comfortable by opening with jokes about himself.  He refers to his weight, his baldness, and even his height. Just by this the audience accepts him as one of them.  He is no longer someone who is telling them what to do or how to do it, he is now someone who associates with their problems and understands them.  Jeff has been through suicide, bad break ups, depression, learning disabilities, bad acne and more.  His speeches are so emotional at times that it brings listeners to tears. The passion and emotion he conveys show the audience just how authentic his pain is.  This is what touches their hearts and as Jeff put it “if you touch the heart the mind will follow”.  If you have ever listened to Jeff speak then you know this to be true and you will know that this emotional connection he constructs with his audience is what really inspires them.  The image above of Jeff delivering his speech to the laughing audience and then the shift to the very emotional student perfectly portrays this emotional bond he shares with his audience.

Frannie Torres

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIuz6fUtfRE

Nick Vujicic’s story of how he overcame his disability in order to help encourage millions of people all around the world through his motivational speeches is one of the most inspiring stories I have ever heard. Vujicic was born with a rare disability known as tetra-amelia snydrome, a disability that rendered him without arms or legs. His syndrome resulted in depression and attempted suicide during his early childhood, and he truly believed he would never achieve happiness in life. Despite his mental and physical struggles that worsened from being a target of  constant teasing and bullying, Vujicic eventually learned to embrace his lack of limbs. He soon became grateful for his life and decided to use it in order to inspire others to never give up through motivational speaking.

So far, Vujicic has addressed over three million people around the world through his motivational speaking. Therefore, he has comforted millions and has possibly even saved lives. Vujicic has truly impacted these people through his story and unique way of sharing this story. He mixes such elements as humor, tragedy, and compassion in his speeches in an effective way, in order to trigger an emotional response from the audience. Listeners of Vujicic’s motivational speaking can even feel the passion and comfort in his tone and voice during his speeches. Audiences are so moved by his speaking that they all laugh and cry in unison as an appropriate response to Vujicic’s ardent words. Vujicic constantly emphasized this following saying in most of his speeches: “If you can’t get a miracle, become one.” He never let his disability get the better of him, and hopes that  he will help others so that they will also never feel hindered by their own supposed flaws. The image above shows Vujicic under a spotlight, surrounded by thousands of people. It is truly an accurate depiction of Vujicic’s impact on the world.

http://youtu.be/scyXvdedz5c

Kevin  Oberman

The late great satirical comedian George Carlin was known mostly for his witty charismatic remarks about religion, the government, and pretty much anything that is socially accepted by the general consensus. What most people never realize about George Carlin is how he pulls you into his discussions as soon as he pops up on the stage. He had a way of making people laugh and agree with him, just by the way he conveyed his thoughts. His quick thinking and loud animated tone of voice leave the audience with no choice but to laugh and agree with what he was saying. Even if you don’t have the same political and social ideals as he does, you will still laugh and at least think to yourself “thats a good point” . If one were to watch any of his shows, they would instantly be intrigued by his topic selection, jerky movements, funny faces and loud and quick voice. George always had the great ability to speak incredibly fast without messing up a single word.

However, the thing that separates George Carlin from every other comedian is his delivery. When he did his shows, it felt like he was actually having a conversation with you and that in a way, he knew that you were agreeing with him. He was so passionate about what he said, be it serious topics or not,  that you knew what he was saying was what he actually thought in life outside the show.  This is proof that an audience feeds off the sincerity of the speaker. An audience can tell if someone actually means what they are saying or if they are just reading off a paper. In order to get a good reaction from any audience in any situation, the speaker must speak from the heart and actually mean what he/she is trying to convey to others. This must be true because I have neither seen nor heard of a show in which George Carlin got a response from the crowd that was not positive.