1 minute read
Live Speeches with Unplanned Humor | M. Scott Norton
Live Speeches with Unplanned Humor
M. Scott Norton
Advertisement
Gone with the Wind
Most everyone has been present when humor was used by the speaker to make a point or gain the ‘favor’ of the audience. However, some of the most humorous presentations have not been planned in advance. For example, I recall a presenter who was speaking in a school classroom to a small audience of math teachers at a national conference. The speaker stood in front of the room with his notes on a rostrum. As he greeted the audience, a gust of wind came through a nearby window and blew all of his notes from the rostrum to various parts of the classroom floor. Without hesitation, the speaker calmly said, “I would like to open my presentation with a few scattered remarks.” The laughter continued as the speaker moved around the floor to pick up the several pages of notes that had flown around the room.
Lacking Contact
In an administrative conference I attended at the University of Nebraska, a major program presentation was being held at the university conference center. Approximately 150 attendees were seated to hear presentations by four well-known educators including the president of the local newspaper publication. However, they were having difficulties in setting up the microphone and audio system. The audience waited for over fifteen minutes before the microphone/audio were fixed. Somewhat amazing was the fact that no one in the audience became so impatient that they left the conference auditorium while the problem was being fixed.
After fifteen minutes or so the moderator opened the session by thanking the attendees for their patience but then stated that the technology of the various audio systems in use today has proven to be somewhat troublesome from time to time. In fact, he quipped that using these microphone/audio systems in conferences today is like “Courting a girl through a picket fence. “You can see alright, and you can talk alright, but the contact is not so good!” Laughter from the audience served to set the atmosphere for a highly successful program session.
