MAKE ME LAUGH; MAKE ME BETTER

Today I conducted a double-bill workshop Make Me Laugh; Make Me Better with Wee Meng at Katong CC. He presented the first workshop on Humorous Speech Contest and I presented the second one on Evaluation Contest. There were around 40 participants.

What I learned from Wee Meng's workshop:
Craft for Power
Memorise for Confidence
Rehearse for Effect

I especially liked his suggestion to 'plant' friends among the audience and tell them when to laugh beforehand (what a cheat! but brilliant idea... haha!). This works on the premise that laughter is contagious. That's what they do on comedy shows too - canned laughter.

I felt he spent too much time on the segment about crafting. I would have liked him to give us a transcript of his humorous speech and dissect it for laughter points and different types of humour. Just listing types of humour without examples isn't very meaningful. Tying his humorous speech together with the types of humour would have been powerful.

For my presentation, I was rushing along like a bullet train and some people felt lost. Halfway through I was wondering if what I was sharing was too easy and causing people to get bored. During the hands-on segment, only a few participants were taking notes. I wondered why. Then they told me they did not know how to take notes so I took them through the points step by step.

When something comes naturally to you, you take for granted it's easy but for others, it may not be. I felt the winning formula I was sharing was straightforward and easy to apply but I overlooked the fact that some of the toastmasters are very new and hence inexperienced. They did not know what to look out for. As a presenter, I should have been more sensitive to their needs. Asking questions beforehand to ascertain their level of experience might have helped.

Unfortunately due to lack of time, we only had two volunteers to present their evaluation speeches, though I had planned for 4. After the workshop, two participants came up to tell me they have enjoyed and benefitted from the evaluation workshop. That made me very happy.