Area B-1 Contest - Part One of Two

Before the Area B-1 Contest.

I attended a meeting of the Founder's District Speakers Club at the Crystal Cathedral. Attending helped me prepare for the upcoming evaluation contest because the Speakers Bureau has speeches given by either Toastmasters who are professional speakers and those who wanted to turn professional.

Speakers bureau evaluations are a round-robin format as all the members have the chance to participate in the evaluation. This helped me to learn and hopefully pick up a few evaluation pointers.

The day before the contest I decided on how I was going to approach the contest. One idea I debated was having a checklist of things to look for. I decided against the checklist as I felt it would make my presentation too mechanical.

As an alternative strategy I decided on keeping several holistic goals in mind. These were:

1. Giving an inspirational evaluation meaning the type of evaluation that would insprie the target speaker to give their next presentation at a higher level.

2. Focus on the strengths of the speaker that helped convey his/her message.

3. Give constructive criticism on areas that took away from his/her message.