News: Division H Contest = Awesome Oration
Despite the desperate attempt at alliteration, the Division H Humorous Speech contest is one that shows all the best parts of public speaking. You need to be able to combine humour, content and delivery in a very neat and entertaining package.
That’s exactly what today’s contestants hoped to achieve. Each one has fought through 2 heats at club and area level to win a place at this contest. Whoever wins will take one other division winners in the National level at the Flourish 2011 Autumn Conference.
But let’s not jump ahead! The first part of the day was made up of two workshops.
The first, titled Confidence, Charisma and Connection was delivered by Jane Bennett. She delivered a unique perspective of how to use some Neuro-linguistic programming skills to build your own confidence. The workshop progressed to using non-verbal communication to build charisma and how being prepared enables you to create a positive connection with your audience.
The second workshop, Empower Your Voice, was conducted by Peter Street – a voice coach who brings the skills of singing a vocal training to the fore to get the best out of your voice. Peter introduced us to the very basic blocks of what helps us to use our voices well, things that might not even occur to us normally! A great and fun session showing how oration shares a lot of its skills with performing arts.
After a lunch break we all got down to the nitty-gritty – the contest itself.
5 areas brought forth five contestants ready to use their skills and deliver humorous speeches. Our own area’s winner, Robin Poole was the 3rd speaker among the high-standard speeches. Taking us from being a member of a jury giving a verdict on an elaborate tail of shampoo to the wild world or dog flaps and suicidal parrots.
The second set of contests were the Table Topics. There are the impromptu speeches in. Which you stand up and are given a topic without any preparation! Thinking on their feet, minds whirling faster than the Hadron Colliders, five contestants were given the task to talk about “Is honesty is always the best policy?” We were lucky enough to hear an assortment of funny speeches ranging from discussing the X-Factor, GP advice, Children and avoiding difficult conversations!
The day had to come to a close, however, and the important business of who would represent our division at the national contest.
Here are the hard-fought places in today’s competition:
Humorous Speech
1st Place: Robin Poole
2nd Place: Bob Nisbet
3rd Place: Richard Green
Table Topics
1st Place: Chris Boden
2nd Place: Robin Poole
3rd Place: Adrian Moore
Congratulations to everyone who took part today and made the event so enjoyable. Ambassadors wants to wish Robin and Chris the best success at Glasgow. Good luck!