Okay, you wanted the long version!
Each year Toastmasters International holds its International Speech Contest, which begins in February with approximately 25,000 entrants, and whittles them down through six levels to crown the World Champion from among the last ten in the final. This year's final was held in Calgary, Canada. I qualified for the final after winning the Region V final in Kansas City, held in June.
The last eight weeks since winning region were, as one past champion warned me they would be, a rollercoaster. Developing a speech to deliver live in front of 2,000 people, with a hope of doing well, turns out to be a task that brings a lot of pressure. I won't belabor the details of that period; suffice it to say, I had good days and bad days, and 1.5 gazillion rehearsals.
An added wrinkle this year was that Tumbleweed Entertainment is making a documentary about the fear of public speaking, and about Toastmasters and the contest. They came to West Lafayette to interview me in July, and they were omnipresent in Calgary.
The week had been one of anxiety for me - I slept fitfully every night, could barely eat some days, and was generally scared to death about what lay ahead. We (me, Jen and Aidan) flew in Thursday, and we could not have asked for a better travel day from out little four year old guy. He made it easy. I ran into one of the other contestants, Martin Presse, in the lobby. He was the sole Canadian contestant, and thus was the hometown favorite. He'd had to endure all sorts of media requests all week. He kindly took me over to the venue to show me my first glimpse of the stage. Holy smokes! That sucker is huge! But it felt good to finally meet my nemesis (the stage, not Martin).
On Thursday evening I went out to dinner with 6 of the other 9 finalists. One of them, Rich Hopkins, had tracked down everyone's email, and for weeks we'd all corresponded and gotten to know each other; so, this dinner was our first chance to meet each other. We were joined by three past champions, David Brooks (1990), Marc Brown (1995) and Lance Miller (2005, one of my favorite winning speeches). David remarked that this dinner was unprecedented among groups of contestants, and he was impressed that nobody was engaging in any form of gamesmanship. I had a great time getting to know everyone who was there; we talked a little about speaking, but mostly we just got to know each other. The Tumbleweed guys were in tow, which made for an amusing walk across downtown, chatting with each other surrounded by cameras. I'm sure many mystified Canadians wondered who the heck we were to warrant such attention.
On Friday Aidan had a bit of a…hmmmm…challenging morning. Such is the mercurial nature of the four year old! After that we tried an early rest time for Aidan (and Jen), during which I then spent a little time being interviewed by the Tumbleweed guys. They asked one question for which the answer should have been obvious, but in fact it was not - was I excited? As I thought about it, I realized I was not. It's not that the occasion was not exciting, but I'd actually reached a point of calmness. Part of this was adaptive - when I thought about the speech I'd start to feel my heart race and feel shortness of breath, so I was mostly trying to put it out of my mind. But the reality is, I just had to consider myself ready.
When I was done with them I returned to the lobby, where I ran into a fellow competitor, Henry Flowers. One of the Tumbleweed guys spotted us chatting, so they swooped in with microphones and cameras to capture this spontaneous moment. It was amusing and odd - my very own paparazzi! But the odd thing is they were never really intrusive; maybe it's because they were all just terribly nice.
Friday afternoon we had the contestants' briefing, during which we went over the basic procedure, and drew for speaking order. I drew the last slot, number ten. Now, among Toastmasters, there is sort of a mythology surrounding speaking order - people never want to go first, they prefer to go last, so in the eyes of some I had struck speaking order gold. I don't see speaking order as that important. Past contests show that the winner is often someone who stands clearly above everyone else; few are so close that speaking order will determine anything. David Brooks had suggested the night before that speaking order is not as important as who precedes you; I can see some merit to that, but overall you just have to go do your thing and try to "leave no doubt who the winner is", as some people like to say. At this session I also got to meet the final contestants whom I hadn't already met. Let me say, these people make fast friends, every one just seemed like a really nice, really cool individual.
After that, some contestants went back to meetings with coaches, some went to their rooms to finish up or rehearse their speeches. Jen and I took the reinvigorated Aidan to a park to play in a little wading pool, then I spent the evening watching the Olympics on TV. I think I went through my speech in my head only once. I really felt surprisingly calm, the calmest I'd felt in weeks. I went to bed early-ish, woke up for a few hours during the night, but got back to sleep and woke up rested.
I awakened at about 6am, and was very surprised to find I was…calm, at peace with the whole thing. I got dressed, left Jen and Aidan in the room, went downstairs to get some breakfast. There I ran into Martin again. We chatted a little, then were joined by Henry Flowers, another competitor, and he and I headed over to the venue.
At 7am we had the dress rehearsal, where we all tried out the microphone setup, practiced our entrances, and had to deliver parts of our speech so that the techs and videographers could make sure they were ready for our staging, and that we could moderate our vocal volume and range with the microphones. This was my first chance to hear my opponents. This is when it started to become real. This is when I realized what I was truly up against. Woooooaaaaah, nelly. I got to see some practice movements and dancing, I got to hear some of what would be key moments and, most intimidating, I got to hear speakers eight and nine sing. And sing well. Very, very well. I don't know to what extent I might ever have thought I could win this thing - my mind has wandered down that road from time to time, but any such thoughts just got a reality check. For the last eight weeks, anytime someone had asked me about winning, I had reminded them that I was going to be up against nine other very, very good speakers, and I had no control over how good their performances would be. Well, now I was getting to see how prescient that sentiment was. These people were good. Very, very good. I practiced my movements on the stage, practiced a quiet moment and a loud moment, and that was that.
And yet, I was calm. Hey, what was I gonna do about it at this point? Write a new speech?
After rehearsal I caught up with Jen and Aidan at the pool, just to say hello. Because of the aforementioned mercurial nature of four year olds, they were only going to come in for my speech. I didn't want to risk Aidan potentially having a meltdown during an opponent's speech. I had made arrangements for them to let Jen in when it was my turn, and we were good to go.
9am - showtime. A little audience warmup from the Contest Chair, and we get underway with Rich Hopkins going first. I'll skip giving commentary on the individual speeches, except for this - I have watched past contests on DVD, and the DVDs just do not do this thing justice. Being there, feeling the crowd response, it's phenomenal. Wow. I remained calm as I got wrapped up in each speech, but in the minute of silence between each speech I started to feel the nerves, the shortness of breath. I took deep breaths, and then let the next speaker distract me.
After speaker seven I headed backstage to get wired up for my turn. As such, it was only on the backstage monitor that I watched the last two speakers before me. LaShunda Rundles went ninth. I'd corresponded with her via email and we'd chatted at dinner the night before, she's a delightful person, who has the challenge of dealing with the incurable disease of lupus. In listening to her talk, especially when I had asked her about her son, I had gotten the feeling that she would bring a lot of passion to her speech. Boy, did she ever. At least in my mind, she left no doubt. She demonstrated a broad skill set, had honed and perfectly delivered some emotional moments, and gave a spirited, passionate performance.
I knew, as I prepared to step on stage, that she had just won it. I knew that whatever I was about to deliver, it wasn't going to top that. Understand, though - this was not a disappointed or dejected realization on my part. I was, in fact, thrilled for her, that she'd done such a great job. And for myself, well, I felt liberated. Might as well just go out there and do what I came to do.
I have only isolated episodic memories of the next seven minutes. I jumped up and down several times before my name was called, just to get my juices flowing. I think I sort of bounced down the step, shook the hand of the Contest Chair. Smiled and panned the audience. If I didn't that was my intent. Got a little response during my introduction, which had been sort of iffy on that front. Good response during the humorous (and true) setup of the story of my first teaching experience. However, I began to sense it was not going to be my day to even place came when one particular moment received no response. I felt good, quiet response when I opened up the Aidan story*, but got little response on a line where I'd expected more, and no response on the point where I'd expected the last laugh. Oh well, no matter, I plunged on to the conclusion unabated. I suspect when I review the DVD it will confirm that I rushed a few moments that should have been left longer. I finished, shook the hand of the contest chair, bounded up the step to exit the stage.
(*Part of my Aidan story was about teaching him how to throw a ball; Rich Hopkins had talked about teaching his daughter to ride a bike. I suspect that this conceptual overlap did not help either of us. Originality is part of one's score and the overall perception. There's an interesting follow-up to this. About three weeks ago I'd been teetering between two speeches - Jen liked one, and former champion Darren LaCroix liked the other. I went with Jen's judgment. Had I gone with the other one, I would have found myself with substantial conceptual overlap with a speech by Robert McKenzie. This is pretty cool, because it completely extinguishes any trace of regret down that avenue.)
I felt good. The experience had felt good. I had no idea where or if I would place in the rankings, but it was over, and I was happy with what I had done. Despite those few moments where the response hadn't been as strong as I'd hoped, I felt like I had gone out there and done the speech as well as I could. I then spent several minutes wondering if I'd actually said everything I'd planned to, or if I had forgotten some lines. Post-contest paranoia. Ack!
If I could pick one part of the day about which I felt a little annoyance or disappointed, it was the contestant interviews. I didn't listen to all of them, as I chatted backstage with the other contestants. A few seemed unnecessary, and I particularly disliked the one asked of me. I fear that my annoyance will show on the DVD. I don't remember the wording, but I just kept hoping a quick joke would dismiss it, and he just kept pushing it. Oh well. I finally got the chance to thank people. There have been so many - I'll attempt to list them below - and if I tried to name them all I'd surely forget some. So I said there were a lot of people I would thank in person, and then acknowledged Jen, Aidan, and my mother by name. (One failing on my part here - Kathy Morrison had come backstage and realized she'd forgotten to thank someone; I'd told her I'd do it for her, but in the moment I forgot. Oops!)
There followed some sort of build-up to the names that I couldn't quite follow, and the announcements of third, second and first place. My name was not called, but I was fine with that. LaShunda absolutely deserved to win, and the second and third place contestants had also given deserving performances. This was the first time in a long time that a woman has won this contest, so there was additional excitement on that front, with two women in the top three and an international contestant rounding out that elite group.
Aidan was by this time about to have a meltdown, so we needed to get him out of there, but an old friend from Columbus was there and she wanted to see Jen and meet Aidan, so we all hung around for that. A number of people came to congratulate me on my performance. The Tumbleweed guys found me and asked how I felt about it all. I answered with all sincerity: it was a blast. I loved it. I'd had an experience that was truly one worth having. Sure, I'd have liked to have given a performance worthy of placing or winning, but the people who did place and win had given phenomenal performances and were absolutely deserving. I was pleased with what I'd done, and proud of my speech. No disappointment, no regrets. I was smiling.
As a postscript: several weeks ago I'd spoken with Jim Key. He'd told me to enjoy the anonymity of the last days leading up to the contest, because afterwards, no matter the result, I'd be recognized. That was certainly true. As I exited I ran into a past TM President who shook my hand enthusiastically and told me I'd done a great job and had shared an important message with the audience. For the rest of the day people recognized me around the conference center, waving, stopping to tell me they loved the speech. At the airport, in the departure lounge, on the plane I was getting congratulations from many people, lauding parts of the speech or the message. It was all pretty cool. I didn't win or place, but the word "loser" does not apply.
So, that's that. Seven months of work, finally at a close. A few people have asked if I'll compete again, or given me a "go get 'em next year!" While I have learned a lot, enough to compete better next time, I need a break! This was a lot of work, and while I'm sure I'll compete again at some point, I know it won't be 2009, and beyond that I'll just play it by ear. But I do know that when I do, I will enjoy the support of many people in doing so. And with that, here are the thanks I'd have given if I'd had the time and the memory to do so on the stage:
Thank you to everyone, and my sincerest apologies to those I might have forgotten. The truth is, so many people helped me along the way that I'm sure I've forgotten someone, but please know that if you were a part of this in any way, you have my deepest gratitude.
Sincerely,
Colin
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