Remember, everyone in your position is nervous, unless they're teachers for a living or something and used to it just by doing it every day. It's how you deal with it that makes the difference. And in fact, you'll find that it's kind of like a roller-coaster ride: you might be scared at first, then at the end, you're totally exhilarated.
Write out a basic outline for what you're going to talk about. And remember the golden rule: more than 3 takeaways is asking too much. Here's a simple outline for any speech, with random comments mixed in:
1) Attention-getter: Never start a talk with "I will talk about foo"... You want to first capture their interest, curiosity and attention. For example, if you're going to talk about LD, don't say, "Today I'll discuss lucid dreaming." *snore* Instead, start with a sentence that looks more like, "Have you ever had a dream so vivid that......<insert stuff> What if I told you that you can....." NOW I'm interested to hear where you're going with this and what you have to say. Plus, you've built additional rapport because you started off with something they could relate to.
2) Actual topic: Ok, NOW you're ready to mention that you're talking about LD, and all that fun stuff.
3) Intro: Usually, I like to put another motivator in here just for good measure. Start with talking about all the practical applications of LD, say, like overcoming nervousness (in this particular talk, I'd mention I practiced this speech in LD as well ). Then, give a quick outline of what you're going to talk about (each main point or whatever). Ideally, there are three, but it can be more. It's just hard to have people retain more information than three chunks of things.
4) Meat & Potatoes: The main points. I wouldn't constrain you with templates here, just remember that all good scenes in a movie have a transition (and if they don't, it looks like a hack job). So keep in mind that you MUST transition gracefully between your main topics. Don't just jump from one to the other, or you'll lose them.
5) Conclusion: This is pretty simple. The easiest conclusion is just parroting back the outline in the intro in the past tense, but that's kind of boring. Play around with it, but DO work your main topics into it, since the repetition will help them retain it. And always finish with something memorable. It doesn't have to be really funny or really deep, but something they'll remember.
Now, if you make three points in your talk, you can smoothly do 5-20 minutes. If it needs to be longer, then it makes sense to add some points, but don't forget that it really is hard for the human mind to retain more than 3 chunks of information in one sitting.
Finally, I'd like to say, rehearse it. That doesn't mean MEMORIZE it... it just means be comfortable with the flow. You can fill in the blanks yourself, but you don't want your foundation to fall. You always want to know where your train of thought is. Don't be all over the place. You've practiced enough when you can get through the entire thing without getting lost, but without memorizing words. Usually, you'll go through it, and find a couple of stumbling blocks... random things you have trouble wording... once you iron out those wrinkles, it'll be smooth sailing. If you feel as ready as you'll ever be, it'll mitigate your nervousness. And above all, have fun!
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