Category: video

In today’s Vsnap, I am glad to find out my iPhone isn’t the only non-Celtics fan iPhone out there.

I stumble a bit as I try to record this one in only two takes (because that’s all I had time for.) My thoughts were kind of all over the place because I hadn’t yet had coffee. Not as good as I could have done, but this project is a learning process, so it’s not going to be perfect. I’m just happy I made it to day three without giving up!

In the second day of my Vsnap experiment to work on my public speaking, I take total issue with how Boston fans and media members alike think former Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis’ habit of arguing with umps is the best example of his level of passion for baseball.

(Mind you, these videos are only a minute long – the recording stops at the 60 second mark. I could have spoke for hours on this. But I figured no one wants to hear me talk for hours. Maybe when I get better at this talking thing they might, but probably not even then. I’ll save the my unabridged thoughts for my cat.)

When I was small, I sounded like a born and bred Bostonian. Not that there is anything wrong with that, except that I lived in the middle of Rochester, New York, not Southie.

I was shipped off to intensive speech therapy at four to find the letter R, as well to find my th, sh, and h sounds. And to try to bridge the disconnect between my brain and my mouth – I had so much to say, but it felt like there was a road block on the highway between my brain and my voice. I remember a day in kindergarten where I was building a giant complex with blocks. When it came time to explain to the teacher what exactly I had built, I got one word out and couldn’t get the others, so I just shrugged blankly. I wanted to cry, but I held it together, figuring my teacher knew that I was not exactly the most naturally loquacious girl she’d ever meet.

Speech therapy worked wonders, and I even joined speech and debate in high school to try to make up for lost time in the public speaking department. But I still wasn’t exactly eloquent. I still stuttered a tad, and there will always be a tiny bit of a lag between what my brain wants to say and my mouth saying it. (Which is probably a bit of a blessing.)

Fast forward to today. I usually sit behind the scenes when other people speak, which is fine by me. I speak on occasion (like my Binghamton speech last month and the recent interview I did with Ken Fang for the Sports Media Journal podcast.) But I know my sing-songy voice (something I’ve relied on since speech therapy) and my stutter will not help matters if I ever want to take my sports media career to the next level. The only way to fix those roadblocks is with practice.

Enter VSnap. VSnap is a video recording service meant for recording one minute customer service or sales follow-ups. It’s cute, easy to use and its community manager, Trish, is a serious Twitter-lebrity. I was playing around with VSnap a few days ago, trying to find uses for it in my full-time education job when I got the idea that I could use to practice speaking.

So here is my first try. For a week, I’ll record a VSnap a day about a sports related topic. The one minute limit will keep me succinct in my word choice and force me to talk normally (and not like a hyperactive cheerleader) to fit everything in. Day one – which is just an intro to the project – was rough. I went over a minute and I stuttered in the middle. But hey – if it was perfect, then there would be no reason for me to take this challenge on.