Speech Topic (choice, America, pray, worship, verse)

[Druidus]

I've been assigned a topic for a speech competition. I 'm just having trouble coming up with a central them or much content for it.

The topic assigned is: What is the role of communication in technology and trade careers?

I just can't think of anything that wouldn't be sickeningly obvious.

If I win this competition (only one other competitor left), I get to represent Nunavut at the nationals.

[Jaymes]

I dunno if you've already considered this (probably, since it is kind of obvious), but you could bring up the role of translators, especially in regard to China and Japan. The technological industries seem to be booming in those areas (Japan in particular), and translators are vital.

[Druidus]

That's excellent Jensa! I hadn't thought of that at all!

I'm definately going to be fitting that in as a major portion of the speech! Frubalistic!

[Engyo]

Druidus -

I work in a technology field. Communication is enormously important. Jensa hit one of the main things, of course. When our client is from elsewhere in the world, we need to be able to understand what they want and need from us, and we need to be able to communicate our information needs and ask questions of them.

Another point, though, is that communication within organizations is enormously important as well. The complexity of modern technology requires that any changes be communicated throughout an organization immediately, as a small change in something simple in my area of interest may have extremely significant impact on another department's area of responsibility, and vice versa. If we do not have good communication between project mangament and individual engineering disciplines, then things go off the rails very quickly. If I, as a discipline project lead, do not communicate changes to my team quickly and efficiently, then it costs us money and time in rework. If things don't get caught, then they cost enormously more to be fixed onsite during construction and startup.

Cultural communication is also important when you have diverse workforces from different cultures intermixing. Islamic workcrews often have breaks for prayers, for example. There are vastly different forms of communicating between workgroups, and within hierarchies, on a jobsite. Who can talk to whom, and how they must be addressed; what is considered polite and good business practice here in North America may be considered rude and obnoxious in the Middle East, and both forms might also be rude and obnoxious in China or Vietnam. Things (like bribery) that are illegal here are accepted business practices in many parts of the world. Those who ignore this find very little cooperation when trying to work in such situations. Some cultures just do not worship schedules and time the way we do here......if it doesn't get done today, it'll get done tomorrow, and so on. This can be enormously frustrating to a western crew leader who is used to beating deadlines and getting paid bonuses to do so.

I think you can see where all this goes.......

[Druidus]

Great thanks, Engyo!

I'm looking now for some tips on memorization. I think that for this competition on Tuesday I can only use cue cards and brief notes, not the whole speech. I will have a five to seven minute speech, and I'm not sure I can memorize it all so that I can bring up each paragraph with a mere cue-sentence.

I've never had to memorize a long oratory like this before...

[Engyo]

Know your subject well. Don't worry about mmemorizing exact phrasing or word choice. If there are any specific phrases you want to use, they go on the cue cards, along with an outline to keep your points in order.