Tag Archives: speaking

Event at City Hall! Let me know if you’d like to check it out.

On Wednesday morning, October 4th, at 10:00 am, I’ll be at City Hall to attend a public meeting on bike theft in San Francisco. The supervisor for my district, Hillary Ronen, has proposed a new rule that would change how police departments respond to bike theft and car break-ins.

You can read the proposed legislation here.

I posted this to Canvas as an “Assignment” — you can see more info on the assignment page.

There is no better place to observe public speaking than at a government meeting — this, in fact, is why we teach public speaking: to prepare you to speak up as a citizen or member of your community.

 

Malcolm Gladwell on Public Speaking

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell has written a number of best-selling books, including Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and most recently, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. You can read a lot of his articles online at The New Yorker, such as this piece about college rankings: “The Order of Things: What College Rankings Really Tell Us.”

Gladwell has also become a celebrated public speaker. You can want a bunch of his TED talks, he’s appeared at universities, and lectured at Google.

In a 2010 interview, Sarfraz Manzoor asked Gladwell about his public speaking career. Gladwell replied that “Speaking is not an act of extroversion. People think it is, but it has nothing to do with extroversion. It’s a performance, and many performers are hugely introverted.”

The part about extroversion begins at 2:10.

 

Becoming a Public Speaker

The first chapter of A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking offers some great observations about the work we’ll do in this course.

First, the authors emphasize that public speaking is a valuable skill that applies to your other courses and to your whole life.

Second, they point out that communication is essential for citizenship: in a democracy, effective communicators have the opportunity to shape law and policy.

Finally, they give some tips for how to draw on your prior knowledge and experience to succeed in this course.

You can find the text here: https://usfblogs.usfca.edu/speakingofbicycles/becoming-a-public-speaker/pocket-guide-to-public-speaking-chapter-1/