Valuable Advice from 50 Wise Speakers

Clover Park Technical College’s Phil Venditti, a communication studies faculty member, created  50 Wise Speakers as a sabbatical project in 2013. 50 Wise Speakers is licensed with a Creative Commons CC BY-SA designation and answers questions like, “How do great speakers get that way?”, “What advice do they have for the rest of us?” and “What can they teach us about overcoming our fears and improving as speakers”. Understanding the many different ways we can become better speakers, from taking classes to reading how-to guides, this project offers something different; the opportunity to hear advice and stories firsthand from expert speakers.

50 Wise Speakers is a wealth of valuable information. Experts interviewed have a wide range of backgrounds; there are those in government, business, the arts, law, sports, religion and more. Each is asked to share their journey as a speaker, the best speech they ever gave, tips on preparation, and mistakes to avoid. They also discuss stage fright, using humor and persuasion, and speakers they admire. The project’s YouTube site is helpful for filtering by your interest, just pull up the channel’s playlist where videos are organized by subject, speaker and industry.