To kick 2012 off to a good start, public speakers need to take stock just like everyone else.  Following are my top New Year’s resolutions for speakers.  What have you vowed to change this year?  Share them in the comments.

1.  Resolve to use more video. 

This is the year to lose the Power Point, the clip art, the photos of your dog, and the cheesy jokes.  Get some high quality video clips to help tell your story.  With good video, you can bring the rest of the world (and recent history) into your speech and galvanize the audience.

2.  Resolve to stop the throat clearing.

Most speakers begin their speeches with nervous chatter thanking the group that invited them, telling the audience how glad they are to have sat in a cramped, grubby airplane seat for hours and slept in a strange bed in order to be with them in Anywhere, Planet Earth.  That’s throat clearing and it means you’re stalling for time.  Give the audience what it wants – start with a bang.  Start with something they’ve never heard before.  Tell them a story, a startling stat, ask them a question – whatever.  Just get going with something attention-grabbing. 

3.  Resolve to stop dumping data on the audience. 

Too many speakers think that giving a speech means telling the audience everything they know about the topic in question.  After all, the speaker was invited to regale the audience with his or her expertise, right?  Wrong.  The speaker was invited in to take the audience on a journey, respecting the audience’s need to hear the right things in the right order.  Audiences can only handle small amounts of information.  What they can handle is large amounts of insight and attitude. 

4.  Resolve to lose the traditional format.

Too many speeches begin with a joke, then an agenda slide, then an introduction explaining the speaker’s expertise and background, and then a commercial for his or her services.  We’re 15 minutes into the speech, and I haven’t learned anything I couldn’t find out from the program or the speaker’s web site.  Shake it up, mix it up, change it up.  Lose all that expected stuff and give us some surprises.  Think an action movie – imagine if it began with an introduction of the actors and an agenda.  Ridiculous, right?  Action movies begin with an explosion, a chase, a spectacular murder.  And they continue to deliver the unexpected for two more hours.  Do you the same. 

5.  Resolve to find your passion.

Too many speakers play it safe and say the expected, the ordinary, and the obvious.  2012 is the year to find your passion, and say something that no one else can say.  I hear that each human is unique, so share that with us.  Don’t give us received opinions, bland platitudes, and what we already know.  Life is too short, and plane rides too long.  Find your unique voice.  

Here's to a spectatular 2012!