| 
|
Contest Goals
If you accept the challenge of hosting or conducting a speech contest, there are several goals to strive for.
We'll start with goals for the club level:
- At least a month in advance, announce the date of your club contest.
- At least a month in advance, recruit your Test Speaker (if organizing an Evaluation contest), Toastmaster and Chief Judge.
- At least a month in advance, recruit a backup Test Speaker.
- At least a month in advance, pass around a sign-up sheet at a club meeting.
- Strive for a full slate of contestants. For a 1.5 hour meeting, it five evaluators and five speakers is the perfect amount. You might be wondering, "What if we only have 10 members in our club? How could we have a full slate of contestants?" Visit the following page for suggestions.
5 and 5 for clubs with only 10.
- FILL the slate. You might think this is repetitive with step 5 but it's not. You as Contest Chair will likely need to approach a few people and personally challenge them to enter the contest. Stress the benefits listed on this site and make the challenge. Guarantee that they will thank you for it later...because the will!
- Challenge members to prepare in advance and do the best job they can.
- Conduct a professional and organized contest offering each contestant an equal platform of competition.
- Have 1st and 2nd place awards.
- Take a picture of the winners and send a news release to your local paper and feature them on your club web site. Contests are great for membership building.
Now, let's look at goals to strive for at an Area or Division contest:
- At least a month before the contest you're hosting, promote the date, location and time of the event directly to the clubs.
- Find out when each club is holding their club contest.
- Contact the winners no more than two days after their club contest an congratulate them on their victory. Encourage (and sometimes convince) the person to show up for the next level of competition and discuss location, time and date of the event. If he or she cannot attend due to scheduling conflicts, contact the second place finisher.
- Have all volunteer positions filled prior to contest day. You'll be surprized how much more smoothly a contest operates when all positions are filled and committed to in advance.
- Provide an equal platform for all contestants. This is the most critical element of any contest. If you are leading the event, it is your foremost responsibility that this goal is accomplished. If you introduce a speech title incorrectly for one person and correctly for everyone else, is that considered an equal platform? Of course not.
- Start and end on time.
- Have an upbeat contest.
- Plan for the actual contest to be conducted in 1 hour and 45 minutes
- Plan for a section of time where the District officers will speak. Usually 15 minutes at the Area contest and 20-25 minutes at the Division. Allowing for this time will assure that your entire contest will be concluded within 2 hours.
- Plan for pictures to be taken and for someone to promote the outcome of the event to newspapers and club web sites.
|
|
Have questions or suggestions about how to conduct a contest?
Contact Marty through the webmaster link
E-mail the Webmaster
|
