Posted by Freddie Daniells
I am typing this in Kerry Airport on the way back from the Killarney Conference in Ireland. A fuller description will follow later in the week. However, I wanted to be quick to break the news about our Division B contestants in the UK and Ireland finals of the International Speech and Evaluation contests.
First up on Saturday was David Jones representing Excalibur Speakers. David lead with his speech called 'Confront the Beast Within'. It was a warm tale of the impact that his stammer has had on his life, how he confronted the problem and what he had learned from that experience. The overall quality of the speeches was amazingly high and unfortunately David did not place. However, he did us proud and many felt that he could have easily placed. The winner was Sultan Nazir from Dublin with a speech called 'Fail, Fail and Fail'.
Today, we had the Evaluation contest and our Division B contestant was Hilary Briggs representing Grosvenor Square Speakers. Despite a few hiccups that I will expand on in the later post, the contest was very close indeed. However, I am excited to tell you that Hilary was the winner. It is a fantastic achievement and I hope that everyone who catches up with her over the coming weeks is able to congratulate her. See Hilary holding her trophy in the pic.
It would be great to have Hilary perhaps do a future workshop on Evaluations - what say you Hilary? :)
PS Hilary just came over and wondered whether anyone would be able to get to Stansted with a red carpet in time for us to land!! Think she was joking... ;)
