Division W Humourous and Evaluation Speech Contests

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon 27 October 2007 when i was supposed to be relaxing at home with my children, I took time off to go to the Women's Institute of Management to lend support to my dear friend and member of MII Toastmasters Club competing at the Evlatuation Speech contest at the Division level. I felt my time was wasted as the quality of the Speakers and Judges were beyond my expectation.

This review I must state is my personal observation and has nothing to do with the club and if there is anything that I have said that cause some parties to be angry I plead forgiveness in advance as I hold on to the concept that Toastmasters is about expressing yourself and what better way then to express your true self; minus the hippocrity and white washing stuff.

In my almost 3 decades involvement in Toastmasters what I see is the standard of our judging a contest has been steam rolled down. I just wonder where the real judges are? To me it is a shame for someone at Division Level to be judged by people who has not even contested at any level or gone through a Judges' Workshop. I know some of the people may say that this is Toastmasters and standards are not required but I wish to defer.

We are all in Toastmasters to improve our standard and when we are good and selected by our club to represent at Area Level we expect a higher degree of judging and organisation but I don't see this happening. Judges are hidden from all of us and we are not transparent about who they are. Why is this so? Can we get strangers to be our judges or someone who just join us for a day to be a judge? I am sure the experienced Chief Judge would not succumb to such a level when we have abundance of qualified and experienced person. Yet, who knows?

I think we should demand more transparency here and publicise who the judges are and what their qualifications to judge at such level. If this does not happen I am afraid that Toastmasters will never improve their standards and we cannot hold ourselves as Toastmasters. The good speakers and Evaluators may shy away from competing and we get mediocres to represent our area and the rest I need not say.

I am sure if there is a panel of Judges at different levels, we will be able to give some dignity to our contest otherwise, all these contests are a mere waste of time. Judges must be prequalified before they are chosen by the Chief Judge. One of the main criteria for a member to be a Judge must be he or she must have a CTM or CC and CL. On top of this he or she must have taken part in Speech contests before at Area level for him or her to judge at Area level. This conditions should also prevail at higher level meaning for Division Level he or she must have contested at Division level and for district he or she must have contested at district level.

After establishing our District for over 10 years now I am sure we do have more than 10 Contestents at District Level to be given the honour to judge at district level. I don't think we don't have the numbers, it is how we give dignity to the judges.

Going back to the Division Contest, it is my personal opinion that the Humourous Speakers were only stand-up comedians. In fact the test speaker was more humourous. On the Evaluation contest, I may be bias in this as my club member is participating but by any standard I thought she should be placed first runner up if not the Champion considering her confidence and also the quality of her evaluation and delivery. Anyway, I may branded as bias but I know those who knows enough and were present at the contest would understand.

In conclusion, I appeal to the leaders in the District to do something about this state of affairs before the whole system goes down the drain. In business we are now competing with the best in the world,trying to reinvent ourselves in the process of corporate governance and market liberalisation but here it looks totally opposite. We are in Toastmasters to improve ourselves and let us do it properly.

Mohamad Abdullah