Global Speakers Summit presentation

September 11, 2011 at 8:07 pm

A recent presentation given 15 April, 2011 at the Global Speakers Summit in Amsterdam has just been added!

   WINNERS SPEAK GLOBISH

Idioms Heard at Summer Conferences

August 10, 2010 at 8:00 pm

I attended the World Future Society  (WFS) Conference in Boston and the National Speakers Association (NSA) in Orlando. NSA offered mostly how-to tips, while the WFS stimulated me to imagine new possibilities and provided an education regarding change, and how humans will react with developing technology.

Unfortunately there was too much language use that was not understood by the audience. The WFS presenters could be forgiven, since they are not professional speakers and some obviously were not familiar with Death by Powerpoint.. However, those who spoke at NSA should be more mindful that in every audience there are  international members. We must make every word count and be sure that everyone understands everything!

Here are some figures of speech that this Globiphile noted: data mining, lowballs (verb!) bleeding/cutting edge, in the pipeline, morph (verb). out of the blue, bootstrap some apps, getaround, grabbag, headroom (metaphor), democratize, going viral, in a nutshell, go to bat, wild card, perk up, lambast, to hell in a handbasket, yonder, free lunch, ROI, turtle on the fence, kickback, ahead of the curve, ready to roll, yonder, in stitches, blown away, dumbed down (ouch!) bucket list, dial back, fluff, level playing field (written down by one non-anglophone as level plain field) and the eponymous STUFF!

Professional speakers should eliminate redundancies like these: age of 14 years old, our own eyes (who else’s eyes?) whispered softly, going to go, brand new, every single person, One of the things I wanted to tell you…What we decided to do was..The thing that I remember most..I just wanted to say that…I am not into XX but…What I would like to present is….In case you didn’t know (ouch!)