The October 6 meeting had a different format. It was in preparation for the area level humorous speech and evaluator competition later in the week. We only focused on the evaluator competition because we didn’t have any representation in the humour category.

For those unfamiliar with this format, in a nutshell we had an evaluation competition target speaker (Kevin Ma) and two evaluators (Ian and Arvind) who evaluated his speech. The evaluators were judged by three competition judges. The winning evaluator would represent our club at the area level competition later in the week.

Special thanks to the participants who volunteered in such short notice. Kevin Ma, one of our new members, did the ice breaker speech. At the conclusion of Kevin’s speech, Ian and Arvind were taken out of our Toastmasters meeting room and given five minutes to thoroughly review his speech and put together their evaluation of his speech. They were brought back to our meeting area one at a time and delivered a 2–3 minute evaluation of Kevin’s speech to us. The competition judges scored and tallied the evaluations.

This was really an educational night. People in attendance got to listen to different evaluation perspectives of the speech and got valuable awareness in constructing great evaluations. The evaluators got the opportunity to hone their evaluation skills and Kevin got more than one person evaluating his speech and enriching his speaking experience. Well done everyone!

Kevin had a really great speech. It was titled “Up in the Air” – he gave us a personal account as to why he flies all the time. This was truly insightful, especially to those of us who watched Kevin win the Table Topics a few weeks ago and he told us that he likes to spend time in hotel lobbies. Now we’ve connected the dots!

Our evaluators Ian and Arvind provided us with great evaluations. Well thought out, nicely articulated and fantastic suggestions too! Ian won the contest, but due to prior commitments, Arvind represented our club at the area level competition later in the week.

Arvind did a stellar job as evaluator. He’s one of our newer members and stepped up to address an exceptional first time evaluation. If you read Eric’s earlier message, you’ll recall that a cool and composed Arvind did an outstanding job at the area level contest.

Congratulations Arvind on a job well done!

For those interested in learning more about the speeches and their rules, check out this .PDF document: http://www.toastmasters.org/rulebook

See you at the next meeting!

-Michelle