Yeah!

I Beat John in Table Topics - Hahaaaaaa!

And this wasn't easy, John is the European champion of TT!

Best Evaluator

Cool! I won best evaluator.

Now if you think that's easy because I'm "cherry picking" in Hamburg -- well it's not. Our club has many native English speakers like John Holway - European Table Topics Champion, and Cayle Young; a brilliant young lady from New Zealand who won the district championship and got to represent our club in Krakow Poland last month!

So for this best evaluator I was pitched against Fabienne, a new member of our club who speaks excellent English. It was close indeed!

The Humorous Speech

My Critique:

Wtf?! This is NOT a funeral dammit - why do I keep looking at the ground! You're losing your audience!!!

I also missed the part about "Rolf", my body language and cadence didn't ace it at all.  I was supposed to really make a dumb blank face and stare for a +3 second pause - for effect. Then I also didn't ace the end, "this too shall pass" should have been said with much more emphasis, louder and slower.

OK, it was my first competition and I'm glad I did it, I learned a lot and I'm definitely going to do more!
Übrigens, John, our winner said he practiced for more than 6 months for his speech. He is not the European Table topics champion for nothing!
Benchmark him!

• Voice
• Hmmm, didn't really work on it. Same as last time. But I still gotta work on the projection - I'm too quiet at times (or was it just my camera?)
• 5 P's
• Pitch
• This is my personal "wundepunkt".
• Do the "speaking voice" manual again!
• Projection
• I think this was OK - my camera is not the best, and it was also in the back of the room.
• Passion
• I think there was enough passion in this speech.
• Pause
• Definitely needs works (see below)
• Pace(see cadence below)
• Cadence
• No matter how slow I think I am going - I'm still going way too fast. I did practice this speech at home, for a week and with video. I need to slow down, speek each sentence more clearly, and PAUSE more. I must force myself to go even slower.
• Gravitas
• Well, I'm not jerking my head around like a disneyland puppet anymore, but now I am pacing and bouncing from foot to foot like a nervous idgit - stop it! Watch your feet!
• Also I think I'm waving/wiggling my hands too much.

The Humorous Speech - 2nd place!