After a chapter meeting, there was one club president asked me whether I have any good tips in President Opening Address preparation. As a president of The Frontier Toastmasters Club, I have to make an opening speech in every chapter meeting. Since last year July until now, I had made 6 President Opening Speeches.To me, the opening address is just another Stage Time. How to make full use of the Stage Time and at the same time whatever you say, it strikes a chord to the audience, especially to your club members? I would like to share with you my point of view in president opening address…

1) Share your vision, thinking and goals
- Whatever you are going to say during president opening address, it has to be aligned with your vision, thinking and goals.

2) Stress on your motto
- “It can be done” is my motto and a lot of time, I stress on this sentence to my members and now, whenever my members hear this sentence, they will somehow relate to me.

3) An incident that happened to you
- Share with the audience a recent incident that happened to you, preferably the incident that you have learnt something from. There must be a message that you wish to convey to the audience through your story.
- I have once shared my experience when I first obtained my driving license in Singapore. I didn’t know many road names in Singapore and I lost my way in one occasion. With that incident, I brought out a message “it’s important to do planning”, with proper road planning before driving, we can save a lot of unnecessary time in searching for roads. Same to our life… We need to do planning.

4) An incident that happened in Toastmasters Movement
- The target audience is majority Toastmasters. As a president, I think we have the responsibility to say good about Toastmasters all the time.
- I talked about how semi-annual convention has changed my perception towards Toastmasters and how my mindset was built to be more positive through the convention. At the same time, I encouraged them to join the Toastmasters Convention.

5) A book, workshop, educational program
- Talk about what you have learnt from the book that you’ve read, the workshop that you’ve attended and the educational program that you’ve listened. This will not only benefit the audience, it will help you to remember the important points that you’ve learnt in the programs.
- I couldn’t wait to share the tips about time management from Brian Tracy after I listened to his audio programme. I immediately shared with my members during the next chapter meeting after I listened to that programme.

6) Try something new
- Opening speech is your stage time. I would suggest you to try something that you have never tried in your project speeches. I have tried a stage magic to relate to my message – “to master a skill you have to know the methods, and then practise and practise until you succeed.” I was quite satisfied with this opening address and here, I have included the youtube video.

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Photo by: jagamache.com

To share the ways to prepare a contest speech, he has to be someone has not only been into number of speech contests, he must be someone who has won several trophies in speech contests. This guy is none other than J.A. Gamache, an entusiatic Toastmaster from Canada. He has been at the semi-final of The World Championship of Public Speaking for FIVE times. There are not only speaking skills that we can learn from him, his never-give-up spirit is certainly the spirit that we should go after.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s put our hands together to welcome J.A.Gamache to present to us…. “HOW TO PREPARE A CONTEST SPEECH“.

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Photo by: Antonio Bonanno

Interview with Vikas Jhingran, 2007 World Champion of Public Speaking (with Audio)

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Interview with Dana LaMon, 1992 World Champion of Public Speaking (with Audio)

Interview with David Brooks, 1990 World Champion of Public Speaking

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• My International Speech Contest Script is ready
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Today, I got a chance to practise my contest speech in front of experienced Toastmasters at Bradell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Club. I must admit that I didn’t well-prepare. However, I would like to give it a try. I wanted to know how the response from the audience was and hopefully I could receive great comments.

The speech title was “It really doesn’t matter.”

The way I crafted the speech was based on “pain-solution” approach. My pain was “Hair Loss”.

Here is the brief summary of my speech:
Opening:
- A joke saying that I was complaining to my mum that I would be a bald guy soon.

Body:
- Pains
-> I used to love trying different hair styles, but now I can’t.
-> When I looked at mirror, I felt demoralized.
-> When I was with my girl friend, my girl friend poured to me negative comments.
-> I became less confident when I talked to someone.

- Search for Solutions
-> I went to consult a hair growth consultant. The price was too expensive.
-> I tried to search for medicine. There was side-effect on the medicine.

- Acceptance
-> I accepted the fact that I will be bald one day.
-> I looked around and found that there were a lot of people suffering the same problem.
-> I searched for people who are bald and yet good-looking.
-> I found that a lot of successful people are bald and yet they are good-looking and promising and they smiled a lot!
-> I smiled more and participated in speech contests to gain my confidence.
-> I became happier and more confident.
-> My friend said I still looked great with lesser hair.
=> It really doesn’t matter to suffer hair loss.

- Examples
-> Ask for the audience to think of what matters bothered them.
-> I told a story about Nick Vujicic. He is a guy without legs and arms.
=> It really doesn’t matter how you were born, you can still touch other’s heart.

Conclusion:
- I told the audience there must be a reason why we were born in this way.
- I concluded that losing hair is actually not a big deal.
- I can see it in a positive way.

The comments that I received:
- I was trying to beat around the bush. I didn’t really tackle the core message – “It really doesn’t matter”.
- Someone felt that I had something to convey, but it was not clear. He felt that I was using “hair loss” as a metaphor and tried to convey a message. His advice to me was I have to be clear about what message I wanted to convey. He asked me whether I could use one sentence to summarize what was the message I wanted to convey. I couldn’t…
- It’s advisable not to use any joke which contains sexuality. Lady Judges will feel offended.
- I have to repackage the stories and try to touch the audience’s heart.

A lot of comments that I received sound very abstract to me. I didn’t exactly understand what the true meaning was. Anyway, I will try my best to revise and modify the script and make another round of practice on this Saturday.

I will focus on the CORE MESSAGE and how to TOUCH AUDIENCE’S HEART.

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Photo by: Seth Gaines

This topic - “The essence of leadership” was presented by Area Z5 governor, Chang Soon Onn. He shared with us the 10 habits of leadership.

Below are the habits that a great leader should possess:
1) Have a clear sense of direction goal
2) Highly competent
3) Exemplary
4) Establish co-operation and cohesion amongst members
5) Initiate strategic plans and execute the plans
6) Take responsibility
7) Commit to continuous development of himself/ herself and his/ her members.
8 ) An effective communicator
9) Calm and compose
10) Focus on results

He made full use of visual aids to support the habits that he shared by showing us videos of great leaders.

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