In the mid 1990s, when I was an active member of Toastmasters International, I participated in a number of speech contests. It’s very challenging when you compete against accomplished Toastmasters, many of whom have years of experience. It’s like going into a sparring ring with a bunch of black belts. In the end, out of over 25,000 contestants worldwide, one will be the World Champion of Public Speaking. There is only one per year. It’s like winning a gold medal in the Olympics – the sport being public speaking.

Each year, the Toastmasters International Convention culminates in the International Speech Contest, the final speech contest which crowns the World Champion of Public Speaking. A panel of experienced Toastmasters judges evaluate nine contestants from different parts of the world, all of whom have advanced to the finals following a year-long process of elimination through club, area, district and semifinal competitions. Criteria used in judging includes speech content, organization, voice quality and gestures.

— Toastmasters International

For a list of all the World Champions since 1938, click on the link in the above quote. Let me point out three of them:

• 1995 – Mark Brown
• 2001 – Darren LaCroix
• 2005 – Lance Miller

These three World Champions put on a training workshop today in San Diego that we attended. When we arrived, there was a basket where they collected business cards, presumably for a drawing of a set of CDs. Trisha dropped her business card for good measure. There were some 200 people there, so what would be the odds?

Since we had arrived a few minutes late, she did not know that the real purpose of the basket of cards was to draw “volunteers” to go on stage and start giving a speech that the masters would then critique. They picked three unlucky subjects. The third one was Trisha, who had no idea what was coming. She had no speech prepared.

Before she had time to get nervous, she found herself on stage, starting a speech she was making up on the spot, being critiqued brutally by not one, not two, but three World Champions of Public Speaking and all veteran professional speech coaches.

The picture above is fuzzy because I was way in the back of a poorly lit room snapping away with my iPhone. But you can see that she had a good time sparring with the masters.

Here you can see how lively it got, all three of them clamoring to make suggestions, gestures flying.

She held her own and I am proud of her.

I know there is a speech in here somewhere. One day it will start:

So I went to a speech training by three World Champions and I misread the situation and put my business card in a basket…