Finding Humor for Specific Industries

You must dig a little deeper in order to find comedic stories or jokes that fit a particular industry your looking for.
Some professions like police, law, or medicine have a lot of
individual books, newsletters, and articles written about them. But if you are a plumbing executive, or are speaking to the plumbing industry it is unlikely you could go down to your local public bookstore and find a plumbing joke book. This part of the public speaking course is very important to learn to have effective speaking skills.

I recommend starting a file as soon as possible with any industry-specific information you find. A good place to start looking for information to fill this file would be in a trade journal for that specific industry. Pretty much every industry out there has one or more associated trade journals.
If you're looking for humor to use in your presentations, sort through some back issues to find some humor you can use now. Virtually no one remembers the details of cartoons and jokes more than a month or so. Watch for industry newsletters so you can use some of their material. Check company bulletin boards regularly for funny signs and interesting postings. Using the skills you learned in your public speaking course involves knowing your audience and finding humor that relates to their specific industry.

The true devoted presenter goes even further. You can call others
in the industry to look for stories or incidents that would be of
interest to your audience (remember to give credit). Collect everything you can that is interesting and industry specific and soon you will have the best collection around.

Don't forget to utilize the evergrowing Internet as a source. Anytime I need to find something funny that is really specific, I simply type the keywords (ex.plumbing humor, or water humor) into one or more of the major search engines. Almost always something relevant pops up. Though the internet might make for some good findings you must be ready to do some sorting through all the material before you will find something useful. Here are just some of the lines I came up with for the plumbing engineer group I did a presentation for.
Note: these are the people who figure out how much water it takes to flush a toilet. hahaha

My wife's an earth sign. I'm a water sign. Together we make
mud. - - Rodney Dangerfield

The shower is the greatest invention. I don't like to take a
bath. I don't like to wash my face in the water I've been sitting in.
-- Lewis Grizzard

How come when you mix water and flour together you get glue ...
and then you add eggs and sugar and you get cake? Where does the glue go?-- Rita Rudner
(and she could further the joke by saying, "Maybe my hips?")

Getting married is a lot like getting into a tub of hot water.
After you get used to it, it ain't so hot. -- Minnie Pearl

After completing your public speaking course you will be able to involve learning and sharing of specific industry humor that relates to your audience.

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