Humourous Speech and Table Topic Contest 2017

What a fantastic contest! For those of you that don’t know, Lingo Advanced Communicators held their Humorous Speech and Table Topic Contest on Tuesday, September 19th.  We had a great turn out despite the bad weather we had.  With Judges, Contestants and Guests, we had around 20 people.  We had Mike Morin started the meeting, Mike is not a current member of our club and am glad that he was able to come out to help with our contest.  We look forward to seeing you more at our club in the near future!! Peter Kolotyluk was the Toastmaster who incorporate humour throughout the contest.  Peter did an excellent job and his Table Topic questions were interesting and yet hard  to answer in my perspective.  I was glad that I wasn’t a contestant!

We had our Humorous Speech contest, both Rhys Davies and Eileen Szakacs gave an exceptional speech and it was tough on the judges.  The winner came out to be the “cat”, I am sure everyone knows who that is.. Rhys Davies.   Both Rhys and Eileen will represent Lingo in the Area 51 Humorous Speech Contest.  As for the Table Topic contest battle.. it sure was a tough one between Rhys Davies, Eileen Szakacs, Bob Barker, and Robin Changarathil.  The winner of this contest was Eileen Szakacs.  Both Eileen and Bob will be representing Lingo in he Area 51 Table Topic Contest.  You maybe wondering why we are sending two people.  The reason is that we have 4 clubs in Area 51.

We wish all the contestants the best of luck in the Area 51 Humorous Speech and Table Topic Contest.  As for the date, I believe our Area Director announced it to be Thursday, October 19, stay tune on the location!!  We hope all of you can come and cheer our contestants on!

How can a contest succeed without a bunch of dedicated assistance and judges.  Thank you to Dan McCosh and Dave Cartledge for being our ballot counter, Melanie Kruger and Edith Baraniecki for being our timer,  Mike Morin for being our Sgt-at-arms, and our Toastmasters Peter Kolotyluk.  Thank you to all the judges who came out, who I cannot name for taking your time out of your busy schedule to help us out.

Last but not least, our contest chair Rick Lebeuf who was unable to attend for all the work you did lead up to the contest!

Our next meeting will be a workshop presented by Dave Cartledge and Melanie Kruger on “Speaking to Inform”.  If anyone is working on this manual, you will not want to miss this workshop!  Bring your manual, ask questions, that may help you come up with ideas you can present!  We will be posting more information on this workshop by the end of this week!! Stay tune!!

How to Judge a Contest Recap

Our September 5th workshop on judging speech contests provided many answers about judging, thanks to Toastmaster/facilitator Rick Lebeuf, DTM. However, it also raised the question "Is sex involved?" Actually the question should  be "Does gender matter?" Since in our group it almost seemed like the women leaned towards the female speaker and the men towards the male speaker. But then, as we worked through the scoring, we realized that being able to hear the speaker clearly made a huge difference. Something judges should consider when selecting where to sit when judging.  Interesting that some participants scored all sections relatively low and others scored all sections relatively high compared to the next judge, but as Rick indicated, there is no right or wrong scoring, it is your score and there is room for subjectivity.  All in all, it was a very enlightening evening for eight Lingo members and five guests, even for this old judge.  Looking forward to our speech contest September 19th.

Organizing a Club Speech Contest Workshop Recap

Submitted by Edith Baraniecki DTM

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, it is speech contest time.  On August 15th, Edith Baraniecki, DTM facilitated a workshop on "Organizing a Club Speech Contest."  The logistics for planning and conducting contests, in particular tabletopics and humorous speech contests, were reviewed. This included the eligibility rules, the forms needed and the roles of chair vs chief judge, timers, ballot counters, and the most important person in a contest, the contestant.  We were fortunate enough to have a real live contestant, Collin Greene, give two speeches at the workshop in preparation for representing District 99 at the International Convention, where he did the District proud.

The number and qualifications of judges for the various levels of contests was touched on but our next workshop "How to judge a contest" will give you everything you ever needed to know on judging contests.  You won't want to miss this September 5, 2017 workshop facilitated by Rick Lebeuf, DTM a former District 42 and 99 Chief Judge.  This workshop will prepare you for your own club contest either as a contestant or in a judging role.

Note that Lingo Advanced Communicators' speech contest is September 19th 7-8:30 pm at the Riverbend Residence by Revera.