But if you could learn the insider secret that makes the difference between good public speakers and great ones, that would help you make that transition.
Actually there is one great secret to what makes speakers that really shine in front of a group so great. But it isn't magic or something that you can take as a pill and an hour later, presto, you are ready to stand up and dazzle the crowd.
It is a very simple process that is something you already know a lot about. It is just simple, old fashioned hard work and preparation.
The further in advance you can start getting ready for a presentation, the better your public speaking will be. You know that feeling of terror that you experience when you address a crowd. Well you may not be able to pinpoint why that feeling comes upon you because who can think when terrified?
But many times it comes up because you aren't completely prepared and you don't know what to do or how it will go because the material is not as well developed as it should be.
If you put the work in on your presentation, it will make all the difference in the world when you stand up to give your presentation. First of all, make sure the content meets your standards. You should make that speech compelling and fascinating to you.
And if that presentation is full of great material that it not only fascinates you but you will be eager to get up there and share what you know with this crowd.
And that eagerness to speak is a very refreshing feeling when it replaces that terror you felt when you did not work hard in advance to make sure the material was well developed in advance.
Your audience will notice that big change in your attitude too. Enthusiasm is contagious and if you get up in front of them bubbling with anticipation because what you have to share is just that cool, they will be eager to hear it.
It's like when someone says to you, "Hey, want to know a secret?" You are dying to hear that secret. That is the attitude you will see in your audience when you get up there not only well prepared but excited to tell them what is in that outline.
The more you have that outline and the details of your presentation in your mind, the more confident you will be in front of a crowd.
If you have that presentation virtually memorized, when you begin to speak, you will look at your audience more and only have to glance at your outline to stay on track with where you want to be next.
That is a terrific skill to develop and huge benefit when speaking to the crowd because you have that material down pat in your mind and you always have a destination throughout your talk.
It will take some work to get to that level of confidence in your material. Rehearsals of your presentation help a lot. Prepare a dynamic opener that puts the problem statement into the minds of the crowd and then proceed to solve that problem.
Also know the navigation plan of your presentation and plan the transitions from point to point. That will help you not get stuck in one part of the talk and not have awkward transitions which will make you and then your crowd nervous.
Finally plan how you will conclude. There is a conclusion you want your audience to reach. Make sure you know the critical points and what parts of your talk are "optional" or there for illustration or to fill time.
In that way, you know where to cut if time runs short and you will still get to your point and close strong. If your talk has good content, enthusiasm, good points to lead up to solving the problem and closes strong, not only will you feel great about it, your audience will applaud the job you did. And won't that be a nice way to end a public speaking exercise for you?
I have come across this useful acronym to describe whether a work is in the public domain
If it in the FRIDGE ? its in the public domain.
F is Facts R is Recipes I is Ideas D is Dedicated Works G is Government Works (U.S) E is Expired Works
FACTS: Any fact whether historical or present, scientific or biographical are Public Domain. News reports and news broadcasts are sometimes copyrighted but not the news itself so you can rewrite a news article in your own works and you are not breaking any copyrights as facts just cannot be copyrighted.
Some Facts related Public Domain resources:
News: http://www.cnn.com/
Biographies, Histotical facts, science and more: http://www.infoplease.com/world.html
Selected historical transcripts, translations and facsimilies from Western Europe http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
RECIPES: Recipes actually come under facts. Same sort of thing though you will have to reorder the ingredients and rewrite the methods to avoid copyright complications. The annotations and pictures in a published cookbooks are copyrighted however the recipes themselves are not. Although not protected by copyright they can be protected to a certain degree by intellectual property laws so proceed with caution in you are unable to make recipe look like your own.
Here are some sites for food for thought:
Searches over 400,000 recipes by ingredient, recipe, dish, chef etc. http://www.foodieview.com/index.jsp ?
Recipes approved and provided by home cooks worldwide: http://allrecipes.com/
Another searchable database: http://www.recipeland.com/
IDEAS: Ideas by themselves can not be copyrighted. If you apply an idea and can show something physical from it can be patented as long as they are novel or useful. But ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted so keep an eye out for an idea you like add a unique selling point of your own and copy away!
Some great idea sources are here:
A fantastic idea database http://www.springwise.com/
If you download David Valliere's FREE ebook "Fail As Fast As Possible - And Other Contrarian Business Success Secrets". The excellent bonus section is an Internet brainstorm with plenty of ideas for you to copy and try. http://interneka.com/affiliate/AIDLink.php?BID=9179&AID=25364
Lastly you can look at the magazine covers on this site and find ideas that you are know will be popular as they would have been researched throughly beforehand. Or you can look on the shelves at your local newsagents. Http://www.magazine.com
DEDICATED Sometimes you will still statements on websites saying work are dedicated to the public domain. Also ebooks that are freely distributed are in public domain (they have conditions that you cannot change the wording but they are in public domain all the same). Look out for websites and ebooks that have words to this effect in "I grant this to the public domain".
"I grant this to the public domain" sites:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/book-criteria.html ? lots to explore on this one some great finds to be discovered
http://www.sxc.hu/ - copyright free photos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page - "All of the information in Wikipedia is free for anyone to copy, modify for their own purposes, and redistribute or use as they see fit, as long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a credit or backlink to the original article is sufficient for this)."
GOVERNMENT In the U.S works published by officials of the government are public domain. However when private contractors write government publications, the copyright can be retained. The government website have a whole load of information and images. If you looking for images a good tip is to search your subject in Google Images and limit to .gov sites .
This is likely to be the largest source for public domain government content. Google has indexed loads so you can find it. http://www.google.com/unclesam
All about the FBI! http://www.fbi.gov/
Government resources made available to American public http://www.gpoaccess.gov/databases.html
EXPIRED Works that have expired are ones that have reached and gone beyond the limit of their copyright protection. This is not always easy to determine. You can safely assume everything before 1923 is public domain unless someone has renewed it.
To find out if it has been renewed you can go to The Library of Congress Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/).
Or you can do a quick search on net to see what other people are doing with that particular work or search something along the lines of "Little Red Riding Hood + public domain". One of those should get you your answer.
Expired works can be found on these sites:
Project Gutenberg ? probaly one of the more famous sources for public domain material http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
Fantastic selection of links to a a variety of speciality public domain books http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/archives.html#specialty
Increbible collection of public domain materials covering almost all religions http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm
By reading through the above and taking a look at the resources given, you will be well on track to understanding how to determine what is in the public domain and hopefully be able to find a public domain works that you can republish, package and sell.