This month, May, played host to one of the larger events of MMU Toastmasters that I had the opportunity to be in-charge of – the first ever Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon.

As the Organizing Chair, the preparation works for this event consumed much of my time in April, which was also the month leading up to my final exams early this month!

Fortunately, I was able to juggle my time, albeit precariously, to make sure that both events received sufficient attention.

The event turned out to be a blast!

The Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon is an event where our club encourages six selected new members and special guests to take their glorious first step into the public speaking world of Toastmasters.

The participants had been given a month to prepare their speeches, which were basically stories that revolve around their respective own lives and experiences (hence the name ‘ice-breaking speech’).

To make this experience worthy of life-long memory for the first-time speakers, we managed to invite a very impressive panel of external speech evaluators:

From left to right: Francis Ng, DTM, District Lieutenant Governor of Marketing; Robert Ram, ACS, CL, President of IEM Toastmasters; JON TAN, ATM-G, Creative communicator and advertising consultant; Geoff Andrew, DTM, President of MIM Toastmasters; Sharifah Raudhah, CC, Founder and Managing Director of Face2Face Tech.; S.K. Walia, DTM, HRDC Certified International Corporate Trainer; Hoo Sze Ling, CC, Senior Student Exchange Advisor at Taylor’s University College.

These very experienced Toastmasters and professional speakers were really kind and encouraging to the first-timers!

How I wish my first speech was given in an occasion like this!

As a supremely biased organizer and shamelessly egoistic boyfriend, I shall now do a special mention of only one of the six participants of the marathon.

Participant #2 was none other than Teh Shu-Yi with her speech title “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. =D

Haha… It was her very first time giving a speech in Toastmasters. Although she kept telling me how terrified she was days before the event, but she turned out doing fantastic!

I daresay I totally understood her fears because after my first ever speech in public three years ago, I wrote this.

Her best friend Felicia from Ipoh was also present to support her, hand in hand!

After the participants made their speeches, the evaluation session kicked in and the evaluators did their job. One-by-one, the evaluators commented encouragingly on the participants speeches, focusing on excellent parts and those that can be improved.

In the end, participants were given a certificate for completing their first ever speech in a Toastmasters environment!

Here’s our President Megat Zahid presenting the certificate to one of the participants. =P Yup, a random one.

As per Toastmasters’ tradition, ballots slips were passed to the evaluators and audience after the speeches to vote for the winners of the Best Speaker of the Day and Best Evaluator of the Day awards.

Participant #2 Shobana won the Best Speaker of the Day Award!

And Robert Ram, ACS, CL won the Best Evaluator of the Day Award.

This is my final event in the 2009/2010 EXCO term. After this an election will be held during the next AGM and we will all have very different roles by then!

Cheers to MMU Toastmasters!

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