Area Contests

Wow. What a week. Toastmasters District 53 held Area contests. Area B2 was on Tuesday night. Wednesday night was too many Area contests for me to keep track of.

What was the lessons learned?
1. None of the winning presenters used PowerPoint. This is a shame. PowerPoint presentations leave memorable images for the audience. This lack of PowerPoint usage opens the door wide for a future contestant to outsmart, and outshow the competition.

2. Every contestant learns, grows and stretches their own speaking skills. You cannot compete in a Toastmasters District 53 Area contest and come away without being a better speaker for having competed.

3. Contests are well-run, thanks to a contest script that our Division B Governor assembled. I have attended contests where the introduction was something like "Welcome to our contest. Let's start. Contestant #1 is Joe Soap. Joe - give your speech". Now that we have a script to follow, every contest that I attend is fair, consitent, and well-run. The lesson learned here is that we can all benefit from documenting a procedure such as "How to run a good contest" and then making the procedure available for all contest leaders to follow as a standard operating procedure.

How can these lessons help you in your life?