Toastmasters International District 85
2010 Fall Conference

By Never WANG

Time: Oct 22~Oct 24, 2010
Locaction:  Schengen International Hotel, Beijing

"TM Fans", the first time when I heard the slogan, I was attracted.

YES! I'm a new TM fan, I'm always trying to. Though I didn't attend such conference before, I still decided to sign up to experience what other big Fans do.

Together with my fellow members in A1 TMC, with big fans from all over the country, with Randy Harvey (2004 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking), I enjoyed the conference. From then, I know what a good toastmaster can be.

When it's time to recall my unforgettable memory in the 2.5 days, I want to use the following keywords to share with you.

SHOCK

On Oct 22, Mandarin humorous Speech Contest was held. Since I failed to advance to the semi-final, I was curious about the survivals' performance. From the semi-final to final, audiences cannot stop laughing because of contestants' humorous words, voice, and gesture. Those kinds of humor are different from what I did in club, area, and division level contests. Unlike my speech-  "梢普濦琣" (I mimicked different cities' accent to let audience feel curious and humorous), they used their own stories to make audience laugh and think. That's the message which can be remembered by audience after laugh. Besides the contents, they fully employed what they have learned from Toastmaster like body language and vocal variety.

Also I cannot forget our friend David Qi who won the championship of English Humorous Speech Contest. I know the guy 1 year ago in Caterpillar TMC's outing. On the stage, he is open, smart and calm. On that day, on the stage of national contest, his body language was so natural that I thought he did subconsciously. His stories were impressive and his pronunciation was quite good.

For sure, he is good at vocal variety. Sometimes, he slowed down with low pitch to express his shyness. Sometimes he speeded up with high pitch to express his excitement.

Generally speaking, the survivals' performance deserved applause and respect.

When looking at the excellent big fans, I can see the GAP. I satisfied with my English/public speaking before knowing Toastmaster. After joining A1, I was SHOCKED by my fellow members. Then I attended the contest, I was shocked by TM fans from other clubs inside and outside of our area. Now, I totally shocked again by the TM fans from the whole country. They are excellent toastmasters.

EXCITEMENT

When we are talking about Fall Conference, it's impossible to miss Randy Harvey, the US man was the champion of 2004 Toastmasters public speaking. He delivered 3 speeches including attitude towards life, public speaking experience sharing, how to use the whole stage and body language.
At conference, he gave us 2 simple but meaning slogans,

What are you doing at 4am?
-  Randy received one of his doctor degrees by working from 4am everyday
One sentence one day
-  Randy used this method to prepare his speech and thesis

Besides these, I also learned a special explanation about speech's script.

You cannot be a good speaker if you WRITE a script.
You cannot be a good speaker if you don't write a script.

Sounds self-contradiction? No, actually, Randy explained that what we write is written English while we speak oral English. They are different. If you write the script, then deliver, you will try to translate the written English to oral English during the speech. That's why many of us pause for a little bit longer when delivering speeches.

Given this, Randy taught us a new way to prepare the speech. Simply speaking,

• find a suitable topic
• create the outline
• According to outline, deliver your speech without any preparation, and record it
• Listen to your record, write down all words (start a new line when pause is needed)
• Review the script, and update it
• Deliver and record it again, and then repeat step 4,5
• Through this way, you may find you can deliver your speech without any translation, because all the words are oral ones.

Frankly, I tried it in my CC6, the result was encouraging.

FRIENDS

People appreciate and recognize each other when they have common interest and goal. All toastmasters want to be a good public speaker. They are passionate, energetic, and friendly. They are eager to support each other on the way to be a good speaker.

At the conference, I saw friends from same division. We talked about our clubs latest status and own development. And we were invited to visit each other's club. Beijing is a huge city. But in the name of toastmaster, Beijing is a "Small" city.  Also we met lots of friends outsides of Beijing. Some of them have become toastmaster for more than 10 years. Compared with them, my 1 year journey is merely starting point.

Here I want to mentions 2 ladies in particular. Champion of Mandarin humorous speech – Sasha Li(李丽篳), connected her experience with the Shenzhen's development in the past 30 years. Through her speech, we can see people can achieve more if dreams haven't been disappeared. And the reason why Shenzhen keeps young is that lots of people like Sasha are there.

We may like the BMW car, and big house, however, second place of Mandarin humorous speech, Emily Zhu(祝瀥) used different keys to describe her attitude towards life: love the people you want to love, car or house are nothing.

Besides toastmasters, I still had the opportunity to cooperate with students volunteers. They won't get pay but they still worked hard to help the organizers. In my opinion, it was worthy for them to attend such conference to improve themselves. I regretted I didn't have such chances when I was in the university. Anyway, Better late than never.At least I started my journey 1 year ago.

Getting back to 10 years ago, I may envy excellent people at conference. But now, I feel lucky that I have so many experienced and great TM fans, friends. Learning with them, I could improve more and quicker.

END

My friends, when you finished such fantastic conference, what will you do besides excitement?
You may agree with me:
                 Sign up the next conference in Xiamen as soon as possible.

See you in Xiamen next May! At that time, I will be a bigger fan.