In the final few minutes of his keynote, Sorensen talks of the importance of speech outlines and mnemonic devices. In comments that will be of especial interest to my colleagues in the National Speakers Association, he wonders why event organizers often request a speaker talk for free while they would never expect the caterers to provide free food at the event.

In the third segment of the keynote, Sorensen shares tips on speechwriting. He claims it is all a matter of writing ‘a few lines’:

1. Outline — used plan the speech.
2. Headline — what’s the news in the speech?
3. Front line — what’s the most important point?
4. Sidelines — quotes, poems or humor.
5. Bottom line — an ending the audience will remember.

He then lists the four features of a good speech:

1. Clarity – achieved if you have a good outline.
2. Charity – praise the audience.
3. Brevity – JFK believed anything worth saying can be covered in a 20 minute speech.
4. Levity – as evidenced by Kennedy’s ironic wit.

In this second segment from his keynote, Sorensen reviews President Obama’s Inaugural Address and discusses his own role as policy adviser to JFK.

The ghost of Camelot visited the Ragan Speechwriters Conference on Friday morning. JFK speechwriter, Special Counselor and man who lived a life at the edge of history – Ted Sorensen – delivered the closing keynote. The audience of 300 speechwriters was privileged to see and hear the world’s most famous speechwriter share his insights into Kennedy and the craft of speechwriting.

I sat in front and filmed the entire 30-minute keynote. These four YouTube videos comprise 99% of what Sorensen said.

In this first segment, he applauds the return of eloquence to political life in the USA and recognizes the importance of “just words” as the tools leaders use.

Following his prepared remarks, Schlesinger took questions from the audience. He was specifically asked about the effect of YouTube on Presidential communications. You’ll see in the video that he acknowledges that I’m sitting in the front row taping him on my Flip Mino video camera for YouTube. He notes that YouTube means speechwriters are more, not less important:

“There are no private venues any more, no place where you can just get up and talk. Someone is probably watching and if you make a mistake or say something that is wrong they’ll probably put it on the Internet.”

It was a thrill to meet Robert Schlesinger, author of White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. He’s currently deputy assistant managing editor, opinion, at U.S. News and World Report, and blogs on Thomas Jefferson Street and the Huffington Post. As I wrote in my October 2008 review, his book is a fascinating detailing of the role of speechwriters in the White House. Many of the challenges and rewards they face hold true in lesser arenas.

Robert, son of famed JFK confident Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., delivered a keynote which drew heavily on the book. The Ragan Communications Speechwriters Conference audience loved it. His talk was informative and wide-ranging. He commented on the rise of mass communications, opening new channels for speeches. FDR’s ‘fireside chats’ used radio to talk directly with the nation. Obama uses YouTube. Speechwriters affect policy. He gave thumbnail portraits of each President since FDR and their use and misuse of writers.

“I would argue that you cannot be an effective President without understanding the importance of communications, without understanding the importance of giving a good speech.”

Watch this 10-minute extract of the keynote.

Attendees at the 2009 Speechwriters Conference comment on the effect of the economic hard times on speeches by CEOs and politicians. In today’s tough economic environment, is executive communications more or less important?

Mike Long delivered an impassioned plea for the importance of structure and style in the speechwriting craft.

Mike works as a freelance writer with the White House Writers Group and teaches speechwriting at Georgetown University.

Structure is the key to a good speech. It is key for the audiences’ understanding. A speech “washes over us, like wading into the ocean” and cannot be re-played or re-read like the printed word. It must be presented in a way that is clear and can be retained by the audience, reinforcing the things you want them to take home. If a speech is just a series of facts, you are not going to make an impact. It is also key for the speaker – structure allows them to focus on the delivery. It’s a map which prevents the speaker going off at a tangent.

Mike pissed some of the audience off when he claimed that speechwriters need to understand that, fundamentally, no-one really cares what you write. Most of the audience are not there voluntarily. While they may be moved emotionally by Obama-esque oratory, most business speeches are units of information that should be delivered, like a shot in arm at the doctor’s office, as quickly and painlessly as possible.

While the speech structure are the tracks on which you lay the information, the style is the rhetorical tools of persuasion. One structure can support many styles.

Mike’s best advice was to use a well-organized process with speechwriting. This begins with the spec sheet – the logistics of the event that the speechwriter is often the owner of.

To see Mike in action, take a look at edited highlights in the 8 minute video below.

Today sees the kick-off of the 2009 Ragan Speechwriters Conference in Washington DC. It’ll be my third conference and the first one I’ve presented at. I wrote lengthy reports about the 2006 and 2007 conferences. This year will be a little different. I’ll try the strategy of podcasting interviews with attendees and presenters. It fits with the theme of my own presentation, scheduled for 4:00pm Thursday:

Get more mileage for your work: Repurposing a speech for new media

Do you want to double or triple the size of your speaker’s audience without even leaving the office? These days you have the power to reach more people, any time of the day by turning your speeches into podcasts and Web postings. By simply putting an audio recording on a Web site and letting people subscribe to a feed, you’ll have a powerful way to extend your speaker’s voice to people not otherwise in the audience. Same with a blog. Unlike a scheduled speech, podcasts and blogs are always available. Drawing on his experiences as an executive communications manager at Hewlett-Packard, Ian Griffin will share best practices from the corporate world and tell you how to:

• Record, edit and post a podcast to the Web and iTunes
• Choose the best options for hosting and distributing podcasts
• Find technical help and information on audio equipment and sound editing software
• Know when it’s appropriate to repurpose a speech to a blog, Web site or podcast

An authority or expert has instant credibility on the podium. But many experts giving technical presentations fall into the trap of overwhelming the audience with too much content. They fill in every moment of the talk with data and facts. The charts and statistics become a security blanket. Being an effective communicator requires that you understand the listener’s ability to absorb information. These 10 simple rules will help you give a talk that connects with an audience, moves them to action and leaves a positive impression.

1. Do your research. Talk to other experts, especially inside your own organization. Ignoring them might bruise the egos of co-workers who have a stake in the topic. Know what the audience expects. Research their existing level of knowledge about your topic. Make sure your content is relevant to the audience.
2. Choose one ‘big idea’ or main thesis for your talk or presentation. Don’t try to put too many ideas into your speech. Research shows that people remember very little from speeches, so just give them one big idea to hang onto. What is the one idea you want the audience to hear, remember, and act on?
3. Choose a ‘destination point’ for the talk. When people leave the room what will they do or feel differently than they did before you started presenting? Before you know where you want to take the audience, you need to be honest about your own hidden assumptions and the audience’s current situation.
4. Aim to make three main points in the talk. Use three related words or phrases to grab attention, encapsulate, summarize. The number three is interesting – we easily remember three things. Beyond this it becomes progressively more difficult to remember. Three items act as a powerful unifying format. Examples:
   • Three key themes that together cover a wide area.
   • Three items that act in sequence to get to a desired goal.
   • Two problems and a solution that resolves the problem.
   • Two actions or objectives and a solution that will result from achieving these.
5. Create the speech Abstract first. Focus your content in your own mind. If you cannot (or choose not to) do this, the chances are that your thinking isn’t clear enough for the audience to understand your purpose.
6. Construct a logical argument. There is no reason to give a speech unless you have an argument to make. A speech should never be confused with normal conversation such as “Nice day, huh?’ The speech argument is an explanation of why one believes something to be true.
   • State the Big Idea that forms the content of your argument.
   • Ask the question: Why is my interpretation of the evidence true?
   • List, in order of importance, all the reasons why you find the interpretation persuasive.
7. Start with an outline. Once you have a clear outline, writing the details is relatively straight forward, almost like filling in the blanks. Within each section of the speech:
   • State the question you are answering
   • Support the premise with examples, stories, statistics.
   • Tie-in each of the section premise to the speech thesis.
   • Transition to the next question.
8. Avoid burying the audience in raw data. Subject experts can overwhelm an audience with too much data. Less is more. Give each statistic a context that makes it relevant to the audience. Numbers alone are often meaningless and difficult to grasp by themselves.
9. Include a human element. No matter how ‘dry’ your topic, look for ways to humanize it. Including stories and case studies enables you to engage the audience and raise levels of motivation, acceptance, and approval.
10. Conclude with a call to action. State what the audience has to do, change or think after your talk. Many speeches avoid a call to action. Even in an educational presentation you want to ensure the audience knows what you want them to do. It can be something as simple as ‘read the new accounting regulations’.

Following these rules will minimize the chance that the audience will mentally check-out during your talk. They will still respect your expertise, and remember more of your speech the next day.