Introductory Speech - Jeffrey Cox

The introductory speech was rather short, so it is difficult to go into an in-depth analysis concerning the strengths and weaknesses of the speech.  To be quite honest, I do not believe I learned much from the speech.  It was extremely short and based on my own life, so no research was required.  I have made several speeches in the past and this speech would rank as the easiest speech I have ever made.  I think it took me about as long to prepare for the speech as it took me to deliver the speech.  I simply thought of 3 or 4 things about myself and my life I thought my classmates would be interested in.  There was no need to practice, other than a couple of runs through to gauge what I could say about each bullet point on my list and still come in under the time limit.  For example, one item on my list was "family."  I did not need to practice speaking about my family, I know I have a wife, two daughters, and a son.  I also obviously know their ages.  Judging from past conversation with others about my current profession, I knew people are often fascinated when I tell them I work as a private investigator, so I assumed my classmates would be interested in that as well.  I decided to think of a single case that my audience would enjoy hearing about, and judging from the reaction when I spoke about the wrongfully convicted man in Colorado I assisted a team of investigators and attorneys with in obtaining his freedom, I picked the right story to tell.

I thought I did a few things well in addition to choosing the right work-related case to bring up.  When speaking about my family I thought I made good use of a couple of pauses.  I spoke of my two daughters and gave their ages ... one at a time.  I have a 27-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old daughter (pause), and a 4-year-old son.  Then I paused again, and said something about him obviously not being planned (just two more years and we would've had the house to ourselves ... instead, we hit the reset button ... ugh).  But going back to the pauses, they helped interject some humor into my speech.  I also think I spoke clearly and loud enough to where everybody could easily hear me.

I do think I could've improved in a couple of areas as well.  While I did scan around the room attempting to make eye contact with the audience, I think it was somewhat superficial.  I do not recall ever making direct eye contact with anybody.  It was more about simply moving my head to give the impression I was making eye contact, but I do not believe I ever did make eye contact with anybody.