Start, Stop, Continue: Elevator Pitch

START:

• Making eye contact with individuals, rather than scanning the back wall of the room about a foot over everyone's heads.
• Be in the moment:
• I skipped over a couple lines in my speech and didn't even realize until I sat down. I was too busy thinking about my next line that I wasn't focusing enough on the present sentence at hand. This allowed me to easily slide from one sentence to another, but also encouraged me to skip a passage completely.
• Slowing down the speed of my speaking. It didn't seem like I was rushing, but it doesn't appear to be as controlled as I had hoped I would have come across. I tend to speed up when I am nervous without even noticing.
• To speak even louder. I wasn't speaking lightly, but I could afford to speak up a bit and project. It would come across more confident and professional.
• Using more space.
• It didn't look stagnant, but it might have been more entertaining and attention grabbing for the audience if I were to move around a little bit. I believe maybe even just a step to the side, front, or back could have been enough to just look more lively.
• Should have been more clear with my elevator pitch objective. I believe my objective came across, but it could have been more clearly presented and not so implicit.
• Practicing out loud with different crowds.
• This may improve my confidence, and give me the opportunity to view how my speech comes across according to different points of view (not just my closest friends).

STOP:

• Feeling uncomfortable with pausing, and holding moments of silence.
• My speech had many scheduled pauses to emphasis the awkward feeling the stranger would have been feeling in a conversation with a delusional, hopeless (mostly desperate) romantic.
• These pauses were necessary to really sell the "crazy", but I felt so uncomfortable, so where I cut them short. In some places in my speech where I had 3-5 second pauses scheduled, I breezed right through and didn't even pause at all.
• These moments of silence were intended to show that I was eagerly continuing the conversation with someone who was clearly uninterested. These moments were also where a "normal" person would have stopped rambling to this poor, innocent stranger, but not me. Because I did not hold these pauses, I felt this important aspect to my speech was lost.
• Rushing through the speech to get it over with
• It would come off more cool and confident if I could just slow down my speaking. I mention this in the section above about pausing, but this means to slow down my words to come across more comfortable.
• Looking at notecards
• I had the whole thing memorized, and I brought a card just for back up in case I froze up. I realize by doing this I looked at my card more than I needed to. I only looked twice, but if I didn't have my card I would have just needed to take a second to recall my lines, but I bailed out because it was uncomfortable and the card was a security blanket.
• Saying "umm"
• My speech was informal, but "umm" is not a good place holder, and should be avoided.
• Nervous quirks
• At the beginning of my speech I am bouncing and rolling one of my ankles, which was me trying to fight off the nerves. After the first ten seconds, these nervous quirks diminished, and I held a more confident demeanor.
• PANICK ATTACK:
• In order to get through this class, I am going to have to somehow get over this overwhelming state of terror I feel. I hope this can be improved upon with practice.

CONTINUE:

• Being animated/passionate:
• Hand gestures were good: seemed very natural, not repetitive, or over used.
• Body language was good: switched weight from hip to hip, and was representative of the nervous energy and delusion I was intending to portray. The foot tapping, arm crossing, head shaking, swaying/bouncy movements and fidgeting were great details to really tie my character to her anxiety and eagerness.
• Facial gestures were good: lots of eye rolling, coy smiles, boastful laughter, eager grins, looking away or up to emphasis that I was in thought.
• Vocal inflections were good, but room to improve. Tone of voice can convey more than the words themselves if used properly.
• Good posture
• Smooth transitions:
• Speech flowed freely from topic to topic and did not seemed forced, but came off rather natural.
• Tried to carry whatever emotion was being exhibited from the previous sentence to the following one in order to blend into the next emotion naturally, as not to cause awkward/uncomfortable gaps from one thought to another.
• Coming off as comfortable and confident
• I wasn't, but when watching the video, I appear very comfortable up on stage. Don't know how, but keep doing that.
• Using appropriate tone and language for the setting.
• Entertaining the audience and grabbing their attention:
• It feels good to look back on my video and hear people laughing.
• Although, a few of my "big hitter" one-liners didn't exactly come across and get the attention I thought it would.
• START: trying my material out on wider audiences to see how more people react to the material.
• Thinking outside the box/ being creative
• I liked that I decided to have fun with this first speech. It took the some of the edge off to know I was doing something silly. This way I did not take myself too seriously, and could feel a little more comfortable by looking at the situation from a playful perspective.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, I am, surprisingly, very proud of my first speech, as you can tell from the extensive "CONTINUE" portion of my speech analysis. Though I felt I did well, there is still a lot of room for improvement in many areas, as one can draw from my "START" and "STOP" sections. The key qualities I would like to improve upon would be: better eye contact, to embrace the moment and not speed through it, to speak a bit louder to appear more confident, to avoid nervous quirks and anxiety, utilize a little more space when speaking, and not using "um" as a filler, or my notecards as a safety net.