Every year, Toastmasters clubs worldwide run speech and evaluation contest. Winners of the international speech after competing in the club, area, division and district levels will then take part in the world championship of public speaking due to take place in Las Vegas this august. On Tuesday it was London Victorians turn to enter the Toastmaster contest season, with our VP Membership Terry Pullin chairing over both the speech and evaluation contests.
New member Natalie was the first to take part in the speech contest. With a speech ‘Music in the digital age’ covering changes brought to the music industry by the advent of platforms such as Spotify or YouTube were artists can express themselves for free. She was followed by one of our advanced members, Alan with ‘It’s a racket’ on the impact high noises can have on human wellbeing and health. Third to join the fray was Hiram ‘The voices in my head’ on how to overcome fear of failure. Closing off the competition was Sergey and his story ‘The drum’.
The mystery speaker for our evaluation contest was our very own Magda ‘AI creating god’. Using the staircase analogy whereby humans can now look down on worms as an inferior species. The challenges of AI surpassing humans were highlighted, or “what happens when we are the worms”. Ross, Sergey and Eddie took turns evaluating Magda’s speech. A testament to the high level of the competition was that none of the three participants in the evaluation contest used notes!
A short interview of some participants preceded the announcement of the results by chief judge Brian Skelton. The winner of London Victorians 2015 International speech contest was Hiram followed by Alan for in second place. Congratulations go to Ross for winning the evaluation contest.
Many thanks to the judges for your help in making this contest a success. Thanks too to vote counters Eleanor and Lindsay and for our timer of the evening club president Florian Bay.
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