SpeakerRate Blog

Social Sign On & Account Verification

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 11:41:25 -0400

Key to the success of SpeakerRate is the ability for users to easily rate and comment on talks. Equally important is the integrity of user feedback and the subsequent need to tie actions to user accounts. Yesterday we deployed an array of social sign on features that we hope will achieve both these goals. Users can now access SpeakerRate with their Facebook, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn credentials. If desired, users can still use their legacy SpeakerRate account, and connect their social accounts on their account settings page.

As part of this feature we have also implemented new account permissions. The goal of these permissions is to allow ‘casual’ SpeakerRate users to easily provide ratings and comments, while providing ‘power’ users with greater flexibility. Here’s a break down of the new permissions structure:

Log in is required to rate and comment on a talk.
An email address is required to start a profile.
A verified email address is required to create a talk, a series, an event, and to include non whitelisted URLs.
URLs in comments will still be subject to the whitelist.

If you did not receive an email containing a link to verify your email, or you do not have an email on file, please visit your account page.

We are excited about these changes and we enjoyed building them on your behalf. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments and as always, thanks for using SpeakerRate.

the SpeakerRate team

A New App & Spam Measures

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:41:05 -0400

When SpeakerRate started getting decent organic search rankings, the spammers took notice and have been hitting our site hard ever since. A couple of months ago we made a number of tweaks to our spam filter to help catch spam comments and speakers. This afternoon we deployed changes that restrict the use of URLs throughout the site. As of now an entry will be marked as invalid if it contains a URL when it shouldn’t (e.g. the ‘location’ field on the create talk form shouldn’t contain a URL). Entries that should contain a URL (e.g. the ‘slide URL’ field on the talk create form) will be run by our whitelist and either marked as spam or approved. If your URL is marked as spam, please note that you can always request an addition to our whitelist by pinging us through our feedback form.

We have also removed the notion of a pseudo user, which streamlined the process for rating or commenting on talks by allowing users to bypass the account creation process. We liked the simplicity of this approach, but it facilitated spam accounts and comments. We also needed to remove this feature to begin integrating with third party apps.

We realize that in some respects these controls are draconian; however, we believe that the community and speaker ratings are ultimately SpeakerRate’s most important value.

On another note, for the engineers out there, we also wanted to mention that we have recently upgraded to Rails 3.2.x and migrated SpeakerRate to Heroku. We hope this will enable us to build and deploy features quicker while also providing a more stable environment.

Housekeeping

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:44:00 -0400

It’s been a while since we jumped on the SpeakerRate blog. We’ve been positively distracted by other billable pursuits, but thankfully have been digging into the app recently and making some much needed bug fixes.

Some of our users experienced an over active spam filter that was designating all talks created on SpeakerRate as spam. We have made several tweaks over the past month and the filter is now behaving more effectively. Unless you’re a spammer, you should not have any difficulty creating talks from here on out. Similarly, we had a spam bot (or two) dump a ton of 2.5 ratings on a few select talks. We have implemented a fix that seems to have done the trick.

To round out our housekeeping, we deployed a fix that took care of disassociated ratings showing up on speakers’ profile pages, we added a CAPTCHA field to the comments form (for non-logged in users), and cleaned up some duplicate listings in the database. Fun!

As always, if you have any feedback, feature suggestions, or just need to report a bug, please don’t hesitate to hit us up using our feedback form.

Happy Holidays from SpeakerRate; New Homepage and Dashboard

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:18:47 -0500

For some time, the SpeakerRate team has been planning and working on a new homepage and dashboard for registered users. We believed the homepage should more accurately portray the value of SpeakerRate for event organizers, speakers, and attendees as well as provide more relevant information such as upcoming events and talks, along with recent activity on the site. With these goals in mind, we set out on the redesign adventure and have completed it in time for the new year.

There are a few new homepage elements that are worth mentioning.

First, we have integrated a search into the top navigation; this can be found on the left side on the homepage, and on the right on all other pages.

Second, the main focus of the homepage is providing a brief explanation of the value that different users will find in using the site. Event organizers (“organize”)can use the site to find speakers, get feedback, and promote. Attendees (“attend”) can use the site to get connected, find events, and provide feedback. Speakers (“give”) can use the site to build reputation, improve, and win gigs. We hope these brief explanations will provide clarity to new visitors interested in using SpeakerRate.

Third, we’ve modified how we bring relevant speakers, talks, and events to usersattention on the homepage. You will find a featured events console, which will provide important upcoming events. If you think your upcoming event should be featured, let us know. The “Speakers to See” console will provide information on an upcoming talk and the speaker of that talk. This should provide a great way for up and coming speakers to build some rep.

Finally, the homepage will also provide recent activity on SpeakerRate, such as ratings and comments. This should provide an easy way to know what talks are trending and to see what all the buzz is about. We think it’s a great new package and we really hope you like it. Now go check it out!

Not only have we launched a new and redesigned homepage, but we have also released a completely new dashboard for registered users. Our goal for the dashboard is to provide more value for users to return and continue using the site throughout the year. When you are logged in to SpeakerRate, the dashboard will be your default homepage. You will have quick access in the top right corner to your profile and the ability to sign out. There are several useful elements on the dashboard.

First, a quicker way to find speakers, talks, or events is provided in the center of the dashboard, along with a quick way to add talks. These are the best ways to participate on the site, and now they’re even easier to access.

The second, is a stream of recent activity on the site. This will soon be more directed at the logged in user, so you can see specifically how people have been interacting with your talks or events, or just talks that you’ve also rated or commented on.

The third element is a stream of featured talks, speakers, and events. This will provide information in a similar manner to the homepage, but you will now have the option, under featured talks, of selecting whether you plan on attending the talk. This will not be broadcasted in any way, but can simply be used as a reminder to go back and rate talks that you have attended. If you select “Yes,” then the talk will automatically be added to the “Your Events” console in the right of the page. After the talk has occurred, a rating button will appear under that talk so you don’t have to go find it. This functionality provides an easy way to make your own schedule for an event, and to remember what all you saw. If you select “Maybe,” the talk will remain in your feed, with the ability to change your commitment. If you choose “No,” then the talk will be removed from the feed in your dashboard.

Finally, two small consoles on the right of the dashboard provide an easy way to let your friends know about SpeakerRate, and to stay up to date with what the SpeakerRate team is up to. You will have the ability to send your friends an invitation to check out SpeakerRate right from your dashboard. Just insert their email address and we’ll shoot them an email. Don’t worry, we won’t use their email address for anything but that initial email. Underneath the invitation console, you’ll find links to our most recent blog posts about cool new features, like this one.

All in all, our team has put a lot of effort into making SpeakerRate the best place for event organizers, speakers, and attendees over 2010. We’ve seen our user base triple in size, and have seen the amount of activity on the site increase dramatically. We look forward to continued momentum and growth in 2011. We have no one to thank but you, our users.

Happy holidays!

Spam Spam Spam

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:21:48 -0500

Spam. It’s the cause of nightmares and cold sweats for online communities big and small. For some time, SpeakerRate operated with little interest from people looking to get quick SEO ups for websites selling Gucci bags and Air Jordan shoes. Sadly that time came to an end, and an all out war had begun. After working through many different anti-spam measures, we believe we’ve finally won the war and can continue on with our lives mostly free of hearing from our Gucci bag friends. Because our new measures tend to be on the “stricter” side, we thought you, the user, should know about them.

The mindset behind plugging up the spam hole is simple. If links are what spammers want, then that’s exactly what we can’t give them. We tried a couple of automated approaches, including the industry-standard Akismet, but spam still managed to make its way in. Our final solution was to subject all comments containing URLs to moderation, with two exceptions:

Speakers who belong to a specific talk will be able to post links on that talk freely. This should allow for speakers wishing to answer questions or to give more information the ability to do so through links.
A whitelist of accepted, legitimate sites that can be linked to is also allowed. We’ve started small by evaluating sites already linked to on SpeakerRate and will continue to grow this list as the community increases in size.

These measures have worked to plug the black hole of spam with very few problems of catching legitimate comments. If your comment gets marked as spam, you can easily send us a request to approve it, and we’ll get it up on the site. What’s more, when your comment is marked as not spam, the URLs included in it are automatically added to our whitelist.

We understand that our system is not flawless, but we will continue to make it better and less restrictive. We think a world with no spam is a good world. So goodbye Gucci bags and Air Jordan shoes. We won’t miss you.

Recent Updates to the Mobile Site

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:07:45 -0500

Over the past few weeks, the SpeakerRate team has been busy making updates to the mobile site. What’s that, you say? You didn’t even know SpeakerRate had a mobile site? Of course it does. Pull up the site on your iPhone (or any mobile device with a WebKit browser) or simply
head to iSpeakerRate to have a look.

Prior to last week, you could only rate talks using the mobile site—no commenting allowed. Using some code we wrote as part of the widget launch, though, you’re now able to comment and rate talks at the same time.

We’ve also made the mobile site easier to access. Prior to these recent efforts, only visitors to the site’s homepage were redirected to the mobile site, even though most of our visitors come directly to talk and speaker pages. We’ve changed this so that all mobile users are now shown the mobile site, with an option in the footer to toggle between the two views.

So check out the mobile site. We think it’s a great way to leave
feedback when you’re away from your computer or the conference wifi is
flaking out.

Giving a Talk More Than Once?

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:09:07 -0500

Until this point on SpeakerRate, if you have given the same talk multiple times at different events or locations, you have had to enter all your information over again for each talk. But thanks to some valuable feedback from users and a speedy development team, that is no longer the case. Any user will now have the ability to duplicate their own talk and enter any new information such as date and location. This should make it much easier for speakers to keep their resume of talks up to date. So go ahead, duplicate away!

Talk Rating and Comment Widget Released

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:00:00 -0400

For some time, the SpeakerRate team has been working on how to make rating and commenting on talks accessible for more users. Last month we saw access and activity open up by no longer requiring registration for rating or commenting on talks. Today, we take a step further. For any talk, you will now be able to export rating and commenting functionality to your own site. This is a feature that numerous conference organizers and users have requested. As feedback and ideas from our users are always valued, we listened closely and have worked hard to release such a widget.

In order to access the widget for a talk, you will either need to be the creator or a speaker associated with the talk. You can find the widget html on the right sidebar of the talk page underneath the time and location. Copy this code and paste it wherever html can be used.

Immediately visible on your site will be a “Rate It” button with the current talk rating information displayed immediately below it. A user can then click the button and an overlay will appear with the ability to rate and comment. When the rating and/or comment is submitted, the data will be sent to SpeakerRate and the user will be prompted to close the overlay, never having left your site. We believe this will increase attendee feedback participation even further by allowing the user easier and quicker access to SpeakerRate talks.

In the post above you’ll see an example of the widget for a talk we’ve created just for you to see how the widget operates. Give it a test drive and let us know what you think.

Account Registration No Longer Required

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:36:37 -0400

One of SpeakerRate’s goals is to increase participation in talk and event feedback to improve everyone’s overall experience. For some time we’ve been working to increase this participation rate, and today, we’ve taken a step further. Account registration will no longer be required to rate or comment on talks. While complete registration is still encouraged, we only ask for a name and an email address to participate on the site. We have also increased spam measures to ensure that only useful data is collected. Let your attendees know and see the data flow!

Impromptu Speaking: Best Practices (Part 2)

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:44:23 -0400

Impromptu speaking is one of the best ways to practice thinking on your feet (refer to Part 1 of this post). There are good ways to go about prepping a speech in a limited time, and then there are bad ways. I hope to detail some of the more effective ways in this post.

Using your Prep Time Wisely

Time is your most scarce resource when it comes to impromptu speaking, but more specifically the time you spend preparing seems like it’s over before you even start thinking. Here’s a step by step of about how much time you should try to spend on each area, given that you’re provided two minutes to prepare:>/p>

0:00 - Draw your topics.

0:00 - 0:10 - Choose the topic you wish to speak on. Don’t waste time here, it will do you no good. Quickly pick the topic you have the most knowledge about or one that seems interesting to speak on.

0:10 - 1:00 - Build your basic framework. By the end of your first minute you should have a working outline of your speech, on a base level. You should have your introduction, main points, and conclusion brainstormed. If you’re using notes, they should each be labeled with 1-5 words. The shorter hand you can manage, the better. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean all the details should be filled in yet, that comes next.

1:00 - 1:30 - Fill the speech with meat. You should look to support each point with some rhetoric. This could include a personal story, example (literary, film, music, historical, etc.), analogy, or basic logic. Look to have one or two solid forms of support for each point. Don’t overload yourself.

1:30 - 1:50 - Wire everything up. Run through everything you’ve brainstormed so far and think about simple transitions and what you will actually say for five minutes. At this point you should start to feel like you have a finished product that you’re excited about presenting.
1:50 - 2:00 - Focus on your introduction and how you’ll start your speech. Repositioning your mind to the beginning of your speech will prepare you to actually start speaking, and to begin confidently.

2:00 - Ready, set, go!

After you give your speech, document your outline and all the examples you use. Begin to build a list of these things so that you can study them and be more prepared each and every time you give a speech.

Practicing in this way will enhance your overall critical thinking skills that take place on a public platform. Whether it’s on the platform at a conference or in a sales meeting with a potential client. It might be a scary way to test yourself, but nothing is scarier than feeling and looking unprepared in a real situation where you need these skills.

Impromptu Speaking: Practice Thinking on your Feet (Part 1)

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:51:02 -0400

Impromptu speaking skills are coveted by the masses, if not for any other reason than to have the ability to speak on virtually anything given only a short time to prepare. While this task seems fairly trivial, the implications of being able to do such a thing are huge. Becoming a great impromptu speaker gives you great confidence, foresight on handling speech messups, a solid handle on any type of Q&A your audience might throw your way, but most importantly, you will learn how to think on your feet.

So how does one become a great impromptu speaker? Practice. Boring and cliche, I know, but it’s true. No matter how much you think about thinking on your feet, you’ll only get better at it by doing it.

How do you practice? First, grab some impromptu topics by printing off a bunch of quotes from any of the various quotation websites. Don’t spend too much time dwelling on these and asking yourself if you could give a speech on it. That ruins the entire purpose. It would be ideal if you could get someone else to do this step for you. Then, cut the quotes up so that each quote is on its own slip of paper. Stick these quotes into an envelope and shuffle them around. Now you’re ready for the fun part. Draw three quotes and spend 15 seconds choosing the one you think you could give the best speech on. Place the leftover quotes back in the envelope. Now give yourself two minutes to prepare speaking for five minutes. If need be, you can use a notecard to jot your notes down on. (The less you depend on/use the notes method, the better you will become at thinking on your feet.) After your two minutes are up, no matter how ill you feel, give your speech and try to last for five minutes. You can do this in front of a mirror or any friends that are willing to listen. Rinse, repeat.

The more times you go through this “ritual,” the more comfortable you’ll become in front of any audience speaking on any topic, whether you’ve prepared the speech ahead of time or you’re dealing with Q&A at the end. Look for part 2 of this post to come soon with tips and tricks on using your two minutes of preparation time to form a great five minute speech. In the meantime, impromptu away!

Slap Disclaimers and Excuses in the Face

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:46:05 -0400

Think you’re unprepared for a speech? Feeling queasy and shaky right before starting your talk? You probably think the best next step is to let your audience know that this may not be a good talk and that you’re unprepared, because we all like having realistic expectations right? WRONG.

Starting your speech with a disclaimer is probably the worst thing you can do. Your audience will immediately check out and at that point, you’ve lost them altogether… in the first 10 seconds! Yes, being completely prepared and confident before every speech is near impossible. Thus, the solution is not “just be more prepared” (although that would help) because inevitably you will always feel less confident and ready than you probably are. The solution: act confident no matter how confident you may actually be. No, this isn’t dishonesty, because the likelihood is that you’re being dishonest with yourself about how well your talk will go. You will naturally jump to conclusions that people will hate your content, think you’re stupid, and are probably going to laugh at the abomination of a speech you’re about to give; but don’t worry, everyone feels that way.

Not only is making disclaimers taboo, but apologizing is as well. Stutter on your second point? Forget a few lines of your speech? Don’t apologize, just move on. The more you consider apologizing and giving excuses, the more you’re thinking about how poorly your speech may be coming off to your audience. As soon as you let that thought process in, you’re on a sure path to destruction. No matter what goes wrong, just pick up the pieces and move on.

It’s simple. Act confident and you will become more confident with every speech.

Increased Control Over Events and Series

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:06:09 -0400

In the need to update your event or series details? Decide to create a series for events that you’ve already loaded into SpeakerRate? Now the creator of each event and series has the ability to edit and update their already added details. Happy editing!

Interview with Dave Troy of TEDxOilSpill

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:28:18 -0400

Dave Troy is an event organizer extraordinaire, having organized everything from TEDx conferences to Barcamps. He is most known for his work in organizing TEDxMidAtlantic and the recent TEDxOilSpill in New York City. I recently had the privilege of picking his brain about his organizing process and challenges. The following is a transcription of a paraphrased interview.

[Z] Hey Dave, thanks for taking some time to fill us in on your organizing processes. Do you mind starting off by explaining the process of how you find speakers for your conferences?

[D] Sure. TEDx is more of a brainstorming process: identify who would be good choices, reach out to 3 or 4 times more people than we expect to actually show up as speakers and then treat it as a sales funnel. We don’t necessarily give it too much thought. After maybe halfway through wrapping up the slots we reevaluate how to move ahead with what kind of topics, etc. It’s process driven.

[D] It feels like a numbers game. That’s because with TEDx you have a larger source pool. With more industry specific conferences, the source pool is smaller.

[Z] How do you get feedback on the events you organize?

[D] We get informal feedback through emails from attendees. We haven’t had time to think of a meaningful process. The experience is different for TEDx because one person can see the whole conference. With larger conferences, everyone is everywhere so it’s more difficult to get consistent feedback.

[Z] What’s your biggest hurdle as an event organizer?

[D] In general it involves getting people to register and commit. People are making fewer plans in advance. It’s hard to get people to register a couple days before. As you’re coming up on an event, you don’t know if you’re going to sell it out or not so you don’t know how much budget to commit to the event. At TEDxOilSpill we didn’t get a real amount of registrations until 9 days before the event and it sold out in the next 7 days.

[D] Having mechanisms to manage registration expectations would be very helpful. People have busy schedules. On any given day, people have 3 or 4 things they could choose to do. Events are easier than ever to organize which means there are so many of them to choose from. Registration then becomes an option on attending. Then you’re dealing with an overbooking scenario.

[Z] What’s the main functionality that would boost your overall event experience?

[D] TED conferences or Barcamps tend to produce this very active engaged community while they’re at the event, then they generally leave feeling energized but with no way to continue the conversation or to reconnect with the speakers or attendees. We’re trying to address this concern.

[D] Hands down the thing that TEDx could use is a way to keep the attendee community connected to one another. If every talk had a discussion board, the ability to have videos integrated, but noting feedback from live attendees vs. video viewers. This could create a pretty 3-dimensional picture of how the talks went off.

[D] With bigger industry specific conferences, there’s a lot more room for variation and quality of speakers. They have promotion of the unknown element. You never really know if the speakers are going to be good communicators.

[Z] Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions Dave. You’ve been very helpful. Good luck on future endeavors with TEDx conferences and Barcamps!

Hooking Your Audience

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:56:00 -0400

The first 30 seconds of your talk can make or break you. This part of your talk can be referred to as your “hook.” Looking at it as an analogy, all of your audience members are fish (we’ll say bass, maybe a few catfish) swimming aimlessly in the sea. Your objective is to attract them all to the same point and reel them in. With some attractive bait and a well positioned hook, it’s possible to do just that.

No this doesn’t mean start by calling your attendees a bunch of fish and getting a move on with your talk, it means starting with an interesting and compelling introduction that will grab your audience. What does that look like? Well there isn’t one simple formula for creating a great intro, but there are some criteria to go by:

Out of the ordinary - If you start with something everyone has heard before, they’ll probably tune out immediately and jump to believe that the rest of your talk has nothing new to offer.
Relevant - Regardless of how much you want your audience’s attention, no intro is worth having if it doesn’t connect to your topic in some way.
Easy to follow - A complicated math problem is probably not the best way to get your attendees to follow you. You want the beginning of your talk to be the easiest place for everyone to jump on board.
Tone setting - If you’re giving some dramatic talk about starving children, you probably don’t want to start with a joke. Match the tone of your intro to your topic and save your audience the emotional roller coaster.
Short - No one likes an intro that drags on and on. Keep it short and to the point.

There are several ways to create intros that match the above criteria. Here’s a few options to draw from for an audience tailored intro:

Story - Everyone loves a great story, especially when it comes at the beginning of a talk. There are several different types of stories to choose from, each with different benefits depending on your topic.
- True personal story - This will help to establish credibility not only on your topic, but as a speaker. It introduces your personality through an example that relates to your topic, and should hopefully be interesting to follow.
- Fictional personal story - Putting yourself in a hypothetical environment or story that didn’t actually happen (make sure you’re honest and let your audience know) can make for awesome fun and might be easier to tailor specifically to your topic.
- Non-personal story - This could be fictional or nonfictional, serious or light-hearted. Whether you know the story from someone you know or researched it, there are too many interesting non-personal stories to count.
Analogy - Analogies can be a great way to introduce principles or compare to a real life person or object. The beauty in analogies is that they have the ability to boil complex ideas or topics into the simplest elements in a fun way. You can make analogies up or draw from a large pool already available (ant and grasshopper, frog and pot of boiling water, etc.).
Quote - Quotes can be funny, serious, to the point, quirky, and challenging. The challenge with quotes is that they can be cliche or boring. But if you make sure the quote lines up with criteria #1 above, it can be a golden opener.

These are just a few ways to crack into the attention of your audience. Get creative and have fun with your first 30 seconds. Hook, line, and sinker!

How to Leave Testimonials

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:38:26 -0400

Testimonials are a great way to recommend a speaker to the speaking community. Speakers with testimonials on their profile will be more likely to land speaking gigs. This video shows you how quick and easy it is.

Short URLs Now Available

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:32:00 -0400

Looking for an easy way to give your attendees a way to rate your talk? Short URLs are now available and displayed on every speaker, talk, event, and series page on SpeakerRate. Happy Tweeting!

Interview with Mark Mzyk of TEDxRTP

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:09:22 -0400

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Mark Mzyk, organizer of a TEDx conference in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina earlier this year, about all things event related. TEDx conferences are offshoots of the well-known TED conferences. The following transcription is a paraphrased interview.

[Z] How did you arrange speakers for your conference?

[M] We had a committee of people to brainstorm names of speakers and other people in the industry that might be helpful in finding speakers. This might not scale well. Having another way to find speakers would be great.

[Z] How did you look to get feedback about the event?

[M] We didn’t use any formal method for obtaining feedback. We had an after party where we talked to people and got some more informal feedback.

[Z] If you were able to use a formal system of getting feedback, what elements would be useful to get feedback on?

[M] What people thought of the overall event and what their takeaway was. Did they gain insights? Did they feel that they had easy access to the speakers? (Attendee access to speakers is a big part of TEDx.) Feedback on venue, food, pacing, and thematic grouping. I would lean towards having a customizable form with targeted questions and open-ended answers.

[Z] What kind of relationship do TEDx conferences have with the TED organization?

[M] TED and TEDx have a pretty loose relationship. TEDx organizers have to get permission from TED to put on the event and then they have a set of guidelines to follow. Other than that, there’s not a very strong relationship.

[Z] What was the biggest hurdle in preparing for and managing the conference?

[M] Our biggest hurdle was managing the lineup of speakers and getting responses from them. It was especially difficult when speakers dropped out at the last minute and we had to fill their positions.

[Z] Did you consider taking call for proposals (CFPs) to engage speakers?

[M] That’s something we considered but didn’t have the time for since we were starting our search later in the game. If we were to take CFPs in the future, our concern would be managing being swamped with them and determining which speakers are serious.

[Z] Thanks so much for your time Mark, your answers have been very helpful. Good luck on any future endeavors with TEDx conferences!

Expanded Search Functionality

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:31:06 -0400

The team at SpeakerRate has been working hard to make your search experience easier and more straightforward. We have rolled out expanded search functionality which allows non-exact matching and excerpt highlighting. This should make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. Check it out; feedback is always welcome.

Ummm: The Use of Filler Words

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:22:18 -0400

“Um, well, ya know, like, consequently, so, uh, know what I mean?” Does this sound familiar? It’s called using “filler” words or saying everything without really saying anything. It is the weakness of many brilliant people when it comes to giving presentations.

So what’s the problem with filler words? Don’t they make pauses less awkward? The answer is no, they actually make pauses more awkward. I once counted someone saying the word “um” 215 times during a 20 minute presentation. Was I paying attention to the content of the presentation? No. I was so distracted with the verbal pauses that I couldn’t focus on what he was really trying to say. You don’t want your hard work to go to waste and fall on deaf ears. Filler words are distracting, interrupt the pace of the speech, and demonstrate poor preparation. Thus, filler words should be nowhere in a good speaker’s vocabulary.

Obviously this is easier said than done. So what’re some ways to kick the habit of lining your presentations with filler profanity? There are numerous methods that work for different people. The one that worked for me is pretty simple:

Invite some of your friends to watch you practice your presentation.
Instruct them all to clap every time you use a filler word.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

It almost seems too simple. But believe it or not, the annoyance and break in rhythm is enough to “scare” you out of using your go-to fillers.

Olivia Mitchell provides another method:

“To be effective at stopping the habit you have to focus on something else – something positive that you can do, as an alternative to um’ing. That alternative is chunking. Chunking is talking in short chunks of words with breaks in between the chunks. When you chunk you get into a rhythm: burst of words/break/burst of words/break….Focus on that rhythm and your um’s will go.”

Whatever your method, you’ve got to, um, get rid of, like, all of your fillers… ya know?