public speaking topic school

So im going back to college and im taking a public speaking class. Our instructor tells us to just pick a major thing about ourselves for our introduction speech.

Im a proud parent of two wonderful kids, a veteran of the US Army, and a surviver of a very aggressive bone tumor. What is the only thing i want to talk to this class about? Beer, of course!!!

Just wanted to share this tidbit as a funny testiment to how obsessive this hobby is.

 

Congrats on all of the above. Any brewing topic in particular?

 

Beer is the obvious choice! It will only be a very small portion of the entire brewing subject, but it will be cool and very likely to be the most interesting topic in the class!

 

I only had 3 minutes to speak, so i just did an overview of why i like brewing, creativity, make out of season styles, etc. We have like an 8 minute time frame in a few weeks which i plan to run through the process.

Audience analysis was part of this, and told the class that first amd foremost im a husband and a father, but i figured that college students dont wanna hear about my kids. So thats how i transitioned into topic. It went well, and seemed very well received.

 

I got into home brewing back in 1992 at an Army school. The assignment was "teach a process," and one student taught the process of making beer. We made a class batch and drank it when the school was over (looking back, it was pretty awful, but we thought it was great).

So who says you never learn anything useful in the Army?

 

I had to take an introductory speech class when I was 28. I made an entire 10-minute speech about how lambics were made to a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds. That was fun.

 

I did a speech on Coca-Cola in college. Beer would have been better!

Maybe for the 8 minute thing you can bring in a cooler with "interactive materials". You'll really need to race through the process if you want to cover it all...

 

Yeah, im gonna talk to the instructor about using PowerPoint, pretty competent with it, and would make things really smooth, having notes and pics to reference.