I promised to upload the videos from last Friday, so here they are!

The first, is my 10th CC speech, ‘Graveyard of Dreams’. The 10th CC project is to “Motivate your audience”. Its meant to tie in all the concepts learned in the CC manual, up till the 10th speech.

The second video is me getting my CC badge from Dermot, president of Utrecht Toastmasters club.

Yesterday was a special evening for me…..more so because I finally came to the end of the first stage of a journey that I started February last year. Yesterday, I finally delivered my 10 th speech from the Competent Communication manual, and the project is about “Inspiring your Audience”.

Now, this project was something that I wanted to do to the best of my ability. It was a project that was supposed to tie in (As much as possible), all the skills the previous projects in the CC manual were supposed to teach a toastmaster. Skills like Vocal Variety, using active voice instead of passive in your speech, and lots of others. To be quite honest, I was nervous, though people, for reasons best known to them, refuse to believe me.

Funny thing was I was quite prepared to do the speech over again, if my evaluator didn’t find it good enough.

Due to some personal issues in my life, I sort of didn’t have so much time for toastmasters. I remember talking to Derm, and he asking me (In January at the officers training) to start writing the speech. I had this habit of writing speeches one week to the presentation day, and using my natural abilities to get it done…but this time I wanted it to be different…

So I went home, and began writing. I had no idea what to write about, or even where to start from.  But I do remember that the concept had flashed into my head, when I was on the tram home, after my normal work commute, and it was simply a matter of sculpting the speech and making it beautiful. Now, half way during the speech, I got distracted, or maybe it was writers block…and I stopped, and didn’t pick it up for weeks…

I wonder why that seemed to happen, but then one day, my subconscious or my intuition, began nudging me to finish it. Now, I suspect that deep inside me lies this desire for everything to be perfect. For all variables to just come into sync all at once…but I have learned that it doesn’t all have to come together at once, before you make your move. So I just wrote stuff down to finish the speech.

Now came the hard part..Internalizing the speech. I have a 4 hour minimum commute daily on the train, so I began  reading my speech, adding stuff, and rehearsing the delivery style in my mind. I began to think back to all the feedback I had received from evaluators.   I knew my weak points were:

• Pauses. I have this tendency of speaking too fast. Yes, I am a native English speaker, but I discovered I had to modulate my voice, because of my accent.
• Smiling too often. Theres a time for everything, and the kind of speech dictates the sort of emotions you want to project. So, I wasn’t going to smile in this speech, because this was serious business. I also was going to project this air of dominance…taking the stage.
• Gestures and body language…I needed to improve that some more.

I also discovered, that I had a subconscious lid on my emotions, because of my culture and where I am from, and I always had this lid…but toastmasters is meant to be like a workshop, where you get to experiment in a supportive environment, and after watching other talented speakers (Corinne is the master of pauses I think ) I decided to take the lid off…

Was I nervous yesterday? Absolutely. I didn’t have the space to rehearse my speech out loud, so I had to say it out loud, on my daily walk, during my lunch break. I must have rehearsed the speech so many times, and I even asked the toastmaster to give me the last slot, because I wasn’t sure if my commute would allow me to get there on time..

But I did get there on time, and was able to do the Sergeant-at arming. Till the time came for the actual speech. I delivered, and people seemed to like it!

Whew, it was over! But wait, our president, Dermot, beckoned me over, and handed over my CC badge on the spot! That was a truly great moment for me, as  It sort of marked my passage into the advanced speaking stage of Toastmasters. I had to give a short speech, so I did…luckily, I didn’t thank my Dog or my Cat in the speech

My evaluator came on, later, and told me I had improved, and taken care of almost all the points, I asked him to watch out for. He mentioned I’d made a huge leap since last time, and he had actually predicted what I would do last night, based on my previous speeches, but I had proven him wrong . Its so lovely when you break out of the box isn’t it? Although, there was one person who seemed to have issues with my accent..I think I might need to get feedback about it, to see if its just one persons opinion

But more to come…after all the evaluations, and table topics (And I think yesterdays TT master has lots of talent and potential) the awards were announced, and I won best speech! Now that was amazing for me (Yeah right) because Utrecht Toastmasters has talented speakers, and to win best speech, means a lot.

So it was club business, and me dashing home to Delft, basking in the euphoria of my win, and becoming the latest CC in Utrecht Toastmasters.

The experience was wonderful, and all..I remember a fellow member asking me if I remembered my first speech, how I was so fast, and all, but I had improved. And back then, I got best speech again…but I was really awful then compared to now…

Theres still a journey ahead of me, more advanced stuff to do, and more opportunities to give back to the club, which made impact in my life.

If theres something I have learned on this journey, its this…do not rush, take your time…its a journey, not a race. As long as you keep getting better with every speech, then thats all that matters.

And to think that for me, it all started with a simple decision, February last year…2009.

I will upload the videos later….seems the WP video uploader has issues!

Question: What is the strongest element of Toastmasters?

Answer: Evaluation.

Evaluation is one of the main reasons why people join Toastmasters and it works so well that some members want more than just one evaluation and in Toastmasters there a number of opportunities for extra evaluations:

1. Mentoring. Every member has a more experienced Toastmaster assigned to be their mentor and they can not only evaluate your speech but since they’ve seen all your speeches, they can evaluate your progress and improvements, it’s an invaluable way of seeing how much you’ve improved and also to find out the little things that you repeat subconciously.
2. Mini-evaluation slips. Each speaker doesn’t just have one evaluator, the whole audience is their evaluator, writing feedback during the meeting and giving it to the speaker afterwards.
3. Group evaluation. Everyone gets to give a short evaluation of your speech, it gives you many opinions and many ideas for improvement and helps everyone learn.
4. Target Speaker. For Evaluation contests, the contestants need a speaker to evaluate. Being a target speaker means that you get between 3 and 10 full evaluations, a lot of information all at once but most target speakers find this a great way to learn and improve.

Now, added to this barrage of feedback, there is a new option – get the world to evaluate you!

Introducing Soapbox Guru.

Soapbox Guru (http://www.soapboxguru.com/) gives you the chance to upload a video of your speech for evaluation by speakers from all over the world. Set up by two Toastmasters from Canada, it has a familiar format, a section for what was good about the speech and a section for what needs improvement.

It’s still relatively new but it has the potential to bring your speaking to a whole new audience and may even bring you to a new level of public speaking…

Are you ready for a new challenge?

The Pecha-Kucha style of presentation will add that extra bit of excitement to your public-speaking life while at the same time adding style  and sophistication to your presentations…

What more could you want?

It’s a very simple concept and it suits Toastmasters speeches perfectly. The idea is that you use a presentation tool like Powerpoint and instead of giving pages and pages of boring text you show 20 images. Each image is shown for 20 seconds and then it moves onto the next image.

20 slides, 20 seconds each, your whole presentation will finish at 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Using this style effectively will mean that your audience will find it easier to grasp difficult concepts, and they are more likely to  remember your message.

But don’t let the simplicity of the presentation style fool you, this is a challenging exercise:

What 20 images will you choose to get your message and ideas across effectively?

Can you write a speech which will have one concept/idea/explanation per slide, i.e. one per 20 seconds?

This is a Goldilocks exercise, what you say during each slide should be  not too long, not too short, it has to be just right.

To see this in action then go see your local Pecha Kucha night (see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/) or give it a try with your next speech!

We recently had a meeting with the theme of  “Awaking the Senses – Touch, Taste, Sound and Smell” which explored the four non-visual senses. The meeting had moments of pure darkness and ghost stories told by candlelight so the table topics needed to be equally special.

The Table-Topic Master blindfolded the table topic speaker and gave them an object. The audience could see the object but the speaker had to use their senses to learn about the object. They were given 20-30 seconds to discover what they could about the object before they were made to speak.

They could could hand back the object and take off the blindfold or they could stay blindfolded and keep the object. They could talk about what they thought the object was or they could talk about what feelings, sensations or memories the object brought to mind. It provided some very interesting and entertaining speeches.

By giving speaker the object they automatically have something solid to talk about, thus allowing the speakers to be more comfortable and imaginative while giving their table topic speech.

For some people when they write a speech, it’s all about them – it’s their ideas, it’s their creativity, it’s their words!

But they’re wrong!

It is their ideas, it is their creativity, it is their words but it’s not about them.

It’s about the audience, you are writing for them, you are speaking to them, if you forget about the audience then don’t bother getting up onto the stage.

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Looking at the  judging criteria for the Humorous Speech contest and you will see four categories relating directly to the audience and these four categories account for 55% of the judges marks. If you’re not speaking to the audience, you not going to win!

Those very important categories are:

SPEECH DEVELOPMENT is the way the speaker puts ideas together so the audience can understand them. The speech is structured around a purpose or theme, and the structure must include an opening, body and conclusion. A good humorous speech immediately engages the audience’s attention and then builds to a significant conclusion; it is not a series of jokes or a monologue.

SPEECH VALUE justifies the act of speaking. The speaker has a responsibility to say something meaningful and original to the audience, even in a humorous speech. The ideas should be important, even though they are presented humorously.

AUDIENCE RESPONSE reflects the audience’s reaction to the speech. Did the speech hold the audience’s interest? Did people understand and laugh at the humor?

MANNER is the indirect revelation of the speaker’s real self as the speech is delivered. The speaker should speak with enthusiasm and assurance, showing interest in the audience and confidence in their reactions.

Look at the phrases and questions used:

• The speaker puts ideas together so the audience can understand them.
• A good humorous speech immediately engages the audience’s attention
• The speaker has a responsibility to say something meaningful and original to the audience.
• The audience’s reaction to the speech.
• Did the speech hold the audience’s interest?
• Did people understand and laugh at the humor?
• Showing interest in the audience and confidence in their reactions.

Ask yourself – when you write a speech (any speech, not just a contest speech), does your speech fulfill the above seven audience requirements?

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Think of who your audience is. What interests them? How can you relate your speech to their needs? Why should your audience listen to you instead of sending texts on their mobile phone?

Look at your speech – are you telling racist jokes? Sexist jokes? Is your language too technical? Will your words alienate or upset a portion of the audience?

To be an effective speaker you must be able to communicate with the whole audience not just a portion of the audience.

John Zimmer, winner of the District 59 Humorous Speech Contest 2008 and 2009, understands the importance of thinking of your audience as you write your speech. His audience were toastmasters, his speeches took toastmasters concepts and twisted them in humorous ways, he spoke about ideas that interested the audience, he spoke to them.

And he’s not the only one, in our area contest, the top three speakers had speeches about public speaking – know your audience, cater your speech for them.

That doesn’t mean that you should always talk about toastmasters or public speaking, talk about universal problems that affect everyone – love, family, babies, tax, travel, wishes, dreams – relate to your audience and they will relate to you.