In this post I wanted to share the speech which I delivered at the Toastmasters International speech contest of this Spring 2018 at my club (Airbus Speakers, in Toulouse) and at the area level (comprised by 4 clubs in the region of Toulouse).
The last time I competed in such contests was in 2012 (see here a post about that speech) and for this year of 2018 I put myself as a personal objective to take part in a contest again, in order to work deeper in a speech: drafting it, editing it, reviewing it with friends, rehearsing it… it is a good exercise. Most Toastmasters’ members do not like much to compete, but I believe it is a good learning experience as I explained in this other post.
See below how the latest speech script was left after different iterations of corrections and annotations:
The message of the speech: share your passion with your children and take time to enjoy it together with them, a kind of carpe diem. With that in mind, I included in the speech most of the ingredients that make a speech as complete and varied as possible, i.e, body language, use of space, eye contact, voice variation, use of props, personal experience, quotations, etc. That is why I wanted to prepare exhaustively a speech as an exercise. See below the criteria used by the judges to evaluate a speech in order identify the ingredients.
Toastmasters’ International Speech Contest judge’s ballot.
I wanted to thank Nacho, Jaime and Luca for helping me with the preparation of the speech.
And, finally, see below the video of the speech as recorded at the area level:
The Blog by Javier 