Better Marketing for Engineering Firms Through Better Public Speaking

  Colter has been enjoying working at his job as an engineer at a regional engineering firm.  He is good at his job, liked by his co-workers and management, and has moved up a couple of rungs at the company.  At his last performance evaluation, he visited with his manager about starting to take on […]

Strategies for Delivering a Presentation to a Hostile Audience

As engineers we often get the opportunity to work on great projects. We often transform the landscape through construction and make life safer and more efficient for the people using our infrastructure. However, not everyone is going to see it that way. Many of us have had to deliver a presentation to a hostile audience […]

Avoid Torturing Your Audience When Giving Presentations

We all know it. We all hate it. Yet, all of us do it at least once in a lifetime. How often have we suffered through a presentation where the slides, usually crammed full of information, were simply read to the audience? It’s not really a presentation so much as a live reading of a document meant to […]

Actions Speak Louder than Words in Your Presentation

Most engineers, and most people, will tell you that giving a presentation is not something they look forward to.  However, given our love of efficiency, engineers should have a different outlook.  One reason we give a speech to an audience is because it should be the most efficient way to share information.  The presenter has […]

How to Begin your Speech Planning and Design

A long time ago in a conference room far, far away, speakers used to give their presentations using a slide projector.  Before computers were easy to move around, the slide projector was the all-in-one machine used to put graphics on the screen during a presentation.  You may have heard of the Kodak Slide Carousel.  You […]

Speech Preparation: Preparing and Not Preparing for Presentations

    I’m always excited when I get to deliver a speech, so I sent in an application to speak at a conference of operators on one of my favorite subjects.  I had spent two months with speech preparation and would be able to deliver it a couple of times for practice, between the acceptance […]

Five Benefits of Public Speaking

Five Benefits of Public Speaking

    Engineering is a tough job that is dedicated to completing complicated designs that solve complex problems. Solving those problems is not up to the engineer alone, but requires a team effort of partners to secure financing, address the social and environmental impacts, determine the best design options and construction techniques and tackle a host […]

Public Speaking for Engineers – Ep 064

Public Speaking for Engineers

In episode 64 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I talk with Shoots Veis, P.E., author of the book called: Public Speaking for Engineers which was recently published by ASCE press. We will be talking about why public speaking for engineers is an important part of your professional development as an engineer. Here are some of the […]

Presentation Visual Aids – Design a Tool, not a Crutch

  Engineers use a variety of tools to complete their daily tasks. The list may include a calculator, a computer with the right software, and a book of engineering standards. These tools support the practice of engineering and make for a more productive engineer.  They assist the engineer, but they do not replace the practice […]