Before the season of giving a.k.a X’mas comes the season of contesting at the long awaited District 80 Semi Annual Convention. In Toastmasters, we have two seasons of highly competitive speech contests where the best of the best pit with both wit and spit. The first is in Spring (Mar - Jun) where the International Speech Contest and Table Topics (Impromptu) Contest is held. The second is in Falls (Sept - Nov) where the Humorous Contest and Evaluation Contest is held.

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Another insightful article by 2001 World Champion Speaker, Darren LaCroix. He is da man!!!

Ouch! How I fell on my face… all the way to the top

As I waited my turn to take the stage every fiber of my body started to vibrate. And then my name was called and my world shifted into slow motion. I stepped onstage. I could see nothing past the blinding lights. But I could hear the audience. And I started to visibly shake.

Have you ever felt like that?

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Pardon the blog drought… (T_T) This week has been quite a roller-coaster ride with projects due one after another. And it doesn’t help that exams are around the corner… Nonetheless my week ended on a high note - I got into the third round (semi-finals) of the Word of Mouth Contest! It’s Singapore first talkfest organized by NTUC Club and Entrepreneur Toastmasters Club. The journey is getting more exhilarating as I pit my wit and eloquence against some of the most qualified speakers in town. Truly an honor!!! Promise to share with you more about my experience soon (which will be next week unfortunately.) For those of you who don’t know, I am representing my division (Div Z) to compete in the finals of the Evaluation Contest at Macau, China. I will be fighting it out with six other finalists from Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong and Thailand. Bright side, I will have a lot to share with you when I get back!

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I had the honor of meeting Angela at NUS Alumni Toastmasters meeting last week. She was a feisty lady with a keen eye for language and a strong sense of humor. It was through her language evaluation that I realize a lot of us tend to neglect our grammar and sentence structures. Though it seems unimportant, poor use of language can distract the audience from the content of your speech and reduce the impact that you intended for. Worst, it creates a bad first impression that will take more than proper grooming and high qualifications to erase.

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Ok, before you sue me for sexual harrassment, hear me out.

What I meant by being naked is to be fully yourself. Remember your show and tell presentation when you were six? That kind of naked-ness. No pretense. Full Honesty. Garr gives a more detailed explanation:

“Being naked involves stripping away all that is unnecessary to get at the essence of your message.

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One of the major decisions that have impacted me positively is joining the Toastmasters organization two years back. Interestingly enough, I was in the mailing list of the NUS club since 2002 but I never went for a single meeting. And the best part is I had no slightest clue what Toastmasters is. In fact, I thought it was some kind of political organization.

And then in mid 2004, I joined SpeechCraft, a four week public speaking workshop facilitated by Terence Lin, who later became my speech mentor. Coincidentally he was also the NUS past president and a distinguished Toastmasters. His passion for public speaking rubbed off on me. And I finally went to check out the NUS club and joined that very day.

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Thanks to the conference I attended last Tuesday, I have more presentation bloopers to add to my never-ending list. The previous bloopers can be found here and here. When the list is long enough, I promise to compile and come up with a book or something.

Three more with no special preference since all are equally bad!

1. Spelling errors on your slides

Here’s a couple that I found.

In the gamming industry…
Microfsoft
Upluft and Profit
Generated an annual revenue of $1.000000 dollars (huh???!!!)
Curent Maket size of 30 billion people

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I have to agree with Kathy Sierra that you should NEVER start at your pre-planned beginning. Well at least for the most of us. Like the advice given to first-time novelists, they should throw away their first chapter and start with the second chapter… coz’ that’s where the action is! Like any good hollywood movie, the viewers are usually thrown straight into the midst of action. Recall the famous Tarantino’s films like Kill Bill. The movie started at a local church. Everything was in black and white which hinted that a massacre has already happened. The camera then skilfully zoomed in onto the bride as the music plays on “Bang bang, he shot me down…” And then we see a pair of shiny black shoes walking towards the blood drenched bride. Before she can beg for sympathy, he shot her… And before we catch our breath, the scene switched to the hospital where we see the bride again… this time in colour…

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For those of you who are familiar with Friends, here’s one particular scene which I thought was very apt as a lesson for all of us. This is with regards to knowing your audience. As we all may have heard/read/remember, the degree of success as a speaker depends on how well you know your audience.

Context: Rachel and Phebe had to pit against each other to become Monica’s bridesmaid. They got Ross and Joey to be judges. To win, the girls have to convince them that one of them is much better at handling the hypothetical scenarios of Monica’s wedding.

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By sheer coincidence, I bumped into my English tutor at the NUS arts canteen a couple of weeks ago. And her first words to me were “Interested to join a speech contest?” Being ignorant and all, I thought she was referring to the Toastmasters International Speech Contest. I later found out - to my embarassment - that it was something else. The contest is first of its kind in Singapore, titled Word of Mouth: Speak your Mind” with a prize money of $10K! As PCK would have said it: Don’t pray pray ah!!

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