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Since its first public version in 1987, Microsoft’s Powerpoint software has been ubiquitous in presentations, to the point “powerpoint presentation” is sometimes used as a synonymous for “business presentation”. The software changed the way we made presentations. Adding visual elements to a speech is way easier than it was before, when we had to manually write on blackboards or use actual, physical slides. Public speakers can now include diagrams, pictures, text fragments, tables and even audio or video clips to their presentations.

In this article, I’ll talk about a topic that is not often addressed: how can students improve their public speaking abilities during their studies? All students, at least from a high school level, and especially College or University students, are often asked by their teachers to give presentations, either to the class or to a jury that consists mainly in several teachers. In my (not humble) opinion, giving a presentation as a student is not exactly the same as giving a business presentation to potential clients, partners, employers or colleagues.

This is a well known fact, a lot of people suffer from public speaking anxiety. Putting oneself in front of a crowd, and talking to them for several minutes is not only difficult. It is actually considered as worse than death for a lot of people. This is known as glossophobia, the fear of public speaking. Yeah. Even worse than death. Weird, when you think about it. Jerry Seinfeld, the famous American comedian, once said:

Creating content (whether it’s for a powerpoint presentation, a speech, a lecture, a dissertation, or anything like that) is not an easy thing. These are creative, solitary tasks. Usually, your only constraint is the date of the talk, which is a firm deadline. Other than that, you’re on your own. So you have to face several threats, that I’ll call villains in this article: perfectionism, distraction, over-focus. All these villains want to steal your precious time.

Let’s talk about my voice today. As you may already know, I’m a radio host. I have my own chronicles on a local radio, here in France. I’m speaking about storytelling and about crime novels. Yeah, I love talking on the radio. But my twice-a-month chronicle is not enough for me. So I decided to launch The Introverted Speaker’s Podcast. It will be dedicated to my favorite themes, some of which you already know:

I just launched an audio course: The Introverted Speaker’s crash course on public speaking. This course is dedicated to introverted people. It will help you start a talk, getting you from zero to a structured speech, presentation, lecture or seminar. It does not deal with delivery, i.e with how to behave on stage or things like that, but will help you with how to get the most out of your preparation phase.