So, the first two days of the Toastmasters Convention were spent developing our Leadership skills as Officers to serve you. On the third day, Craig and I attended the free Champion’s Edge Summit, where we spent some time developing our Speaking skills.
For those of you who don’t know, Champion’s Edge is a group run by several of the past World Champions of Public Speaking, including - David Brooks (1990), Mark Brown (1995), Darren le Croix (2001), and Craig Valentine (1999) with the aim of helping Speakers to sharpen their skills. To find out more, click here.
Not only did we get to hear tips and ideas from each of the World Champions, but we also got to hear them coaching several Speakers, 3 of whom were competing at various levels of the Speech Contests at the Convention. Amazing stuff!
After a really worthwhile day, we were joined by Rob and went off to the Regional Speech Contests, to watch Christof compete.
In this contest, the 17 Districts from DNAR are split into 2 different speech contests, to select the 2 people who will represent DNAR at the World Championship.
The Contest in which Christof spoke was a very tough one, with several excellent speakers. Christof drew to speak first- often a tough thing to do! His speech was “The Plunge”, with which he had won the District Contest in 2006. He was (unfortunately) edged out of the winning spot by veteran contestant Jock Elliot (District 70, Australia), who has spoken at the DNAR Regional Contest 7 times and gone through to the World Championship 5 of these.
After the DNAR Contest we held the DNAR Social. Each year, the Districts from DNAR (all those attending the Convention, not just the District Trio!) have a social event where each District has 5 minutes to “showcase” something from their home country, usually a song or skit of some kind. This year we decided to do the popular Freshly Ground song, “Dooby-doo”, and it went down a storm! The event is usually “judged” by the Second Vice President of Toastmasters, and this year was no exception, with witty feedback being given by 2nd VP Gary Schmit. We were awarded a prize for Best Vocal- a pink plastic tiara, which I got to wear, though we were advised to get a better backing band (I had everyone from the audience to sing along in the chorus!). Still, a lot of fun!
And...
Then off to sleep after a very long, but very productive day!