SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hi, my name's Brendan O'Sullivan, a Toastmaster from Brisbane, Australia. Welcome to my Toastmasters World Tour podcast. Please join me as I travel virtually around the world and chat to Toastmasters from different countries and all walks of life. Let's explore for this episode of Toastmaster's World Tour, we're still virtually in the land of a thousand welcomes. Cade Miller Fulcher in Tralee, Ireland, famous amongst the Irish diaspora for its Rose of Trillee International Festival. This time chatting to Anthony Garvey, listening to his tips on how to present naked and his well-argued case for a return to a hybrid world championship of public speaking.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Oh, thank you very much. Uh it's almost like listening to a fluent Irish speaker. So try and translate that if you can. I just said that I've got a little bit more, a little bit more Irish than most of my friends. Uh over here, we we all learn it at school, and uh, you know, it's part of the tradition. There are a few pockets of locations in Ireland where people speak Irish only, but that's rare. So it's uh it's rare to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yes, in the guilt. And I've got a funny story about that, actually. Have you heard of a short film called Yu Ming is Anam Dong? I have. I love that movie. So you might recall it's about a Chinese, just for our listeners, it's about a Chinese guy sitting in China in a like a dead end sort of job, and he's a bit depressed. And where's his life going as a young guy? And he goes to the library and he spins the globe and just sort of puts his finger randomly on the globe as it's spinning and it lands on Ireland. So he goes and looks up Ireland and works out that the national language and the book it says is Irish. So he spends you know six months learning as much Irish as he can. When he arrives in Dublin, he starts speaking, asking for a room in Irish, and they clearly don't understand him. And he gets really depressed because you know he's put all this effort in and no one understands him. But the guy that's on reception is actually an Aussie guy, I think.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Oh, right, okay. Well, it it it there's a beautiful bit of comic timing, really, really the whole of that it's a short film, it's about 10 minutes uh long, and the whole the whole thing revolves around him discovering that the uh the national language of Ireland is Irish. And as you say, he learns it religiously, gets off the boat, and the uh goes into a bar, and the first person he sees, he says to him, uh, you know, uh conosite to uh you know, uh, and the guy says to him, I'm sorry, mate, I don't speak Chinese.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

That's right. That's so funny. So actually, and I've got another story just before we move on about uh Guelga, about uh Irish. Back in 1993, I was traveling around Ireland, and it wasn't uncommon to come across hitchhikers, pretty safe country, and picked up this young Irish teacher, and I think she was a bit of a scalywag and had been in trouble with the law a little bit. I think it was probably on some minor she I think she was a little bit hippie, and maybe she'd done a few some minor drugs. But she was gleefully telling us how when she'd gone to court, and I'm not sure if this is still the case, but when she'd gone to court, she'd insisted upon the the whole court proceedings were done in Irish. And so it was a way of it was a way of getting out of some charges because she could sort of talk rings around them. So is that is that still the case? Can you insist on the court cases being in Irish?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Uh I'm I'm just adding that to my list of possible excuses. Should I uh should I ever be caught uh for what whatever I do next in life? Uh yeah, no, I mean there are there are famous uh there is a uh a court case where a um a man was apprehended uh for uh urinating against a police car. Um and he was uh taken in and brought up in front of uh Justice Wendell. And Justice Windle famously said, if a man's got to go, he's got to go and let him up.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Let's segue that into another, shall I say, mildly questionable uh story, which which I must say I loved. But on the way home from work, I was listening to the Irish Talkers podcast, and it was the episode where you were doing your TEDx talk on how to present naked. Right. Uh hailing back to your youth in Spain, I think it was finding yourself working on a on a neuter speech. Now, how do you think you know I'm a skin cancer doctor? How do you think you went? How do you think you went in my eyes?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Uh well, well, I uh yeah, look, I was if you're a listener, so I was uh 17 years of age, and my uh parents said um uh like I wanted to stay on in Spain for an extra week, and my parents said you can do so if you find a job. And that's uh that's difficult demand for a 17-year-old, but I went round the shops. It was one of those years when the Spanish students stayed at home rather than going uh going overseas to get jobs elsewhere, so they were very, very tight. But I finally found a job selling ice cream on a beach. My parents were happy enough with that, and off they went. And when I turned up on the first day, the guy said to me, you know, there's there's your apron, uh, there's your ice cream, all I need now is your clothes. And I was like, What? He said, Your patch for the next week is the nudest beach. So uh yeah, I uh well, look, I mean, as long as you have lots of factor 50, I had an apron. So uh that's that's safe. And believe it or not, I sold an enormous amount of ice cream. I kept coming back to refill my uh my supply, but uh yeah, it was an experience, got a very uneven tan, uh, but whatever, skin cancer. I wouldn't recommend it. Lather up with factor 50, it's your best friend.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Well, look, I look, I was pleased, I was pleased to hear you sort of uh talk about lathering on like lots and lots of SPF 50 plus sunscreen, so you got a point for that, and then you also mentioned having Sunny's on, so you've got a point for that, but we talk about slip slop slap seek and slide, so there's five, so you've got two out of the five, you've got 40 percent.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

But if I take my but you see, the the the difference is in your part of the world you actually get some sunshine, yes, yes. Over here in Ireland, uh, and look, I'm a huge fan of the place, and I would encourage all your listeners to get on a plane and come over here uh as soon as you can if you haven't been. But uh it's yeah, we get a lot of rain. Uh we we don't uh see a lot of sunshine. There it's so far we're in uh we're we're we're four or five months through through the year, and when uh when I looked out the other day, the sun appeared and there were people dashing to the beach, dashing.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yes, I've seen that. I've seen that. So you know, but if I take my doctor's hat off, I absolutely applaud the story and the uh the bravery, and it sounded it sounded like you were starting to promote everyone getting up as the speakers presenting naked. Of course, you're going to explain that what that was, but I was thinking, geez, that's a reversal on you know, people when they're nervous can sometimes say, Look, imagine everyone in the in the audience is naked to sort of be a bit of equalizer. Yeah, this is sort of good.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Although that's in in real life, that would probably be more distracting than uh than anything else. No, I I used the story as in the TEDx as a segue to encourage people to speak naked, in other words, without notes or little cute cards. That uh you know, there are so many people that I see who come up and they've got their speech written out in long hand, and uh, you know, they're pages and pages and they lose their way and they're fumbling for what they've written. They can't read their own handwriting. You know, this one of the secrets, if you remember nothing else, ladies and gentlemen, from today's presentation, what I'd encourage you to do if you're one of those people is to distill your speech down into maybe eight, nine, or ten single words. So imagine you're uh you're you're a marketing person. You know, you might put down uh price, you might put down advertising, you might put down the product, and then you can talk knowledgeably uh for 30 seconds, 25 seconds about each of those little points, and that will encourage you to eventually arrive at a point where you don't have slides, you don't have to rely on them. You can look into the whites of people's eyes and see if you can connect with them. If you and if you can't, if you're losing the audience, then you pivot, you change things, you stop. Whereas if you're busy looking at slides, then uh you've already lost half the audience, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

100% agree. And I must say that I'm usually guilty of not rehearsing well enough. But something that saved me, one of my clubmates said years ago, often the audience won't know what you were intending to say anyhow. So if you forget something you were gonna say, you just improvise a bit.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

100%, 100%. And uh look, I had uh I'll I'll I'll tell you about an awkward situation because um I I had this, it was a tricky speech that I was doing, and uh there were three jokes in it in the middle because I'd I like to use humor when I can, and one of the jokes was a little bit complex and I hadn't rehearsed sufficiently, so I was driving to the uh location and I was running it through uh in in my head, but I knew that this particular joke, the uh punchline, was tricky. So before I got up to speak, I wrote it down, the punchline on a little card. And I was out in the middle of the audience and I was delivering the speech because again, I like to wander rather than stay uh in one location. I believe that you should use your hands, you should be expressive, you should use the stage as much as possible. And I suddenly realized as I was approaching the joke, I'd forgotten what the punchline was. It gone clean out of my head. So I uh maneuvered my way backwards towards the uh podium where I had written this down and it was on a card. And I uh reached out for a glass of water, took a sip uh of water, put it down, and only then did I look down at what the punchline was, saw what it was, and then uh continued as normal. And there was only one of the people in the audience who knew me well who came up afterwards and said, Why did you uh go backwards during that speech for a glass of water? That seemed a bit odds, but they still didn't know why I had done it. So you uh you you know, if there's a weak point in your presentation, either change it, which is the easiest thing, or if it's really important, write it down somewhere and then find your way back to that location, hopefully without tripping over a whole lot of wires.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Excellent tip, Anthony. I believe during COVID the World Championship of Public Speaking went online. Subsequently, it's no longer online, it's all face-to-face, in person. Do you think that's been a good idea to move back to in-person only?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Well, there have been a number of changes over the years that uh that that I think are a bit of a missed opportunity for uh Toastmasters International. So let me let me take your listeners back because I've I've been in Toastmasters quite a long while. And when the uh World Championship was held, the finals, typically in America, you would have 10 semi-finals with 10 people in them each. So there would be a hundred people who would bring their families and their friends from around the world to the uh Toastmasters convention, and they would uh they would all appear on the semifinal stage, and what an amazing experience that is to give to a hundred people. Now, the way the system is set up is even if you win your district. So I see that you're in uh district 69, um, I'm a member of District 71 and District 91. When I won the uh international speech contest in District 91, I then went into a uh uh video round, um, which is shrouded in mystery. Um, and out of those 10 people who were in that round, only two advanced. And what it means is that there are only 27 people who make it to the World Championship. Seems like an odd number, but trust me, 27 uh make it through instead of the hundred. And you would have had loads of people arriving from all around the world uh at the convention previously. Uh, now that number is severely reduced. But when COVID hit, um all of the contests went online. In fact, uh Zoom saved Toastmasters International.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Uh there were no online clubs or hardly any, and suddenly they began to spring up all around the world. The club that I'm uh president of uh this year, Shilling Speakers, moved from being a physical club to being online only. And there are a lot of very, very fine world championships who appeared uh online, and people started to use the technology to do all sorts of creative things. Now, Toastmasters described the fact that people could enter online as an exception, and they uh they did what they uh what they call uh hybrid meetings. I'm sure your listeners are well well aware of this. So you'd have people in the room who could give a speech, and you would also have people like me who might not be able to travel all around the world for various reasons, who were competing from their their bedrooms or their studios or whatever, but they still had the opportunity to take part. More importantly, um, you have people who are sick, who are infirmed, who can't travel for whatever reason, who have who were suddenly able to take part in world championship contests. We have a lady who's a member of our club who's 93, 93 years of age, and her ambition was to be world champion by the time she was 100. And that ambition is crushed now that the world championship has moved back to in-person only, she can't travel. In fact, uh, you know, I would argue that maybe it's uh it's it's almost discriminate, discriminating against people who uh, because of their disabilities, we've people who've spina bifida, we've people who have multiple sclerosis, who physically can't travel to compete, um, and they are now disqualified from taking part in the uh public speaking contest. So I passionately believe that Toastmasters could have been a leader in this whole online space. You can do so many creative things with it, but instead they decided instead of going for the hybrid and sticking with it, they move back to in-person only. They'll use uh uh online for training, and uh you can get trained anywhere in the world, but when it comes to competing, they have shut down the online uh possibility, and I think it's a much missed opportunity. I really do. Like, think of all of the young people who uh we could bring into Toastmasters, think of how interviews are done now worldwide. You know, young people have to appear on this uh rectangular screen and sell themselves, and Toastmasters could have led in that area, but instead they have returned to in-person only, you know, where you have to have your shirt and your tie and sit in a stuffy room for five, six, seven hours while you compete. You know, isn't it much better to use the technology and uh uh or at least a blend of both to give people the option?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, no, I see your point. Have you tried to take that up with the people that sort of make call the shots?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Well, I uh uh I I'm one of those people who if I get a B in my bonnet, I uh I try and change it. So I wrote to the uh the president of uh Toastmasters International and he said, Oh yeah, well talk to the rules uh committee, they'll be uh looking, they'll be reviewing it in uh November. And I wrote uh I wrote to them as well with uh with a pitch. Um I even considered um doing a piece for the uh for the newspapers, but look, I'm I'm part of Toastmasters and and and I want the organization to succeed. So I believe that we can chart our own course. And in in a way, Shilling Speakers, the our our little online club, we're being innovate innovative uh despite the uh restrictions that are put on us. You know, we still run our club contest, right? Our winner this year, uh the uh our club technically is based in England, so our area finals are in England. Okay, the winner of the international speech contest in our club comes from California. So they would have to relocate to England for a couple of months, hope that they win the area final and the division final, and then get through to the district. Um, the person who was second has multiple cirrhosis, right? So suddenly you uh you're down to your third place person who's in France, you know. So it's it's not realistic to expect people to drop everything so that they can compete. They should be afforded the opportunity to compete beyond the club level stage, would be my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Do you think it will come where they will allow hybrid back in the international convention?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

No, uh no, I don't. Uh I I think it's gone. I think it's a missed opportunity. I think sadly, the only way it'll come back is if there is a COVID Mark II and the organization is in peril again and people can't meet in person. I understand the uh the dynamics of meeting in in person. Like I'm a member of both a um an in-person club and one that meets online, and I see the differences. But look, let me let me highlight it to your uh listeners in just one simple sentence. I live in a rural part of Ireland, and in the winter I have to get into the car on a cold winter's evening with ice on the road, drive to a cold community hall, sit there, uh, meet the same people now, they're warm, they're interesting uh people, um, and then come home, have to cook dinner for myself, uh, and my kids are already in bed. I've missed them for the night. The alternative to that is that uh I can have my dinner with my kids, I can log on to Zoom, I can do my meeting with shilling speakers, and I'm still there in in time to tuck my kids into bed, and there's no risk to my car or other people out on the roads, and I'm not freezing cold, I'm nice and warm. So there's a huge advantage, it's different things, but why close the door on online? I think I think actually what's what's going to happen is that the uh it's not the direction of travel that the Toastmasters wants to go, and there will be pockets of people who pop up around the world, like what you're doing, where you are where you're having a virtual tour of uh of the world uh by dropping in on different people. That's a brilliant use of the technology. So I I think that's fantastic, but sadly I think the uh the direction of travel is in the other uh the the other we're heading in the other way.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Well, I think you make a very strong argument, and I think it's worth keeping the conversation going. You just never know. When you're in person, you get to use a bit of stagecraft. What do you think of that? Do you think there's too much stagecraft in theatrics, or do you think there should be less?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Well, here's uh here's another area where perhaps I uh I diverge from the direction that uh Toastmaster is traveling in. I uh I like uh drama and I like uh going to the theatre and I like watching people use the whole width of the stage and appeal to the audience and uh draw people in. And I think that Toastmasters should should do that um now, or at least have the option of doing it. But there is a move at the moment back uh the Toastmasters International have done a that they've commissioned a paper and they have they're arguing that the content is more important than the style and the delivery. And I disagree. Like uh I I I really do think that the the way that you deliver your argument the uh is is just as important, or maybe sometimes more important than the actual message that you're trying to get across. At least, at the very least, there's room for both. Um, and but there's a move away in terms of marking the international speech contest. Um, you know, they're beginning to focus more on content. And I accept that content is uh is is really uh really important. But in the online forum, I was just telling you earlier that we had uh speech contest. One of the people dressed up as a prisoner and they had designed a cell uh for themselves. They were able to reach out and grab hold of the virtual bars and shake them, you know, which was uh very effective, something you wouldn't be able to do in person. There was someone else who was sitting in Santa Slay. Uh, think of the uh the expense of trying to recreate that in a live environment. Sure, you could come in a Santa uniform, but it wasn't as good because we could see him flying through the air, you know, and delivering presents down to the house houses because he used the technology well. There was someone else who, in their hands, they were able to make a light appear, virtual light appear. Again, you could do the same thing with matches, but you'd be fiddling around with them forever. It's so much easier to use the technology to do this in a creative way. Um so we uh we in terms of designing meetings that appeal to people, you can reach around the world to get speakers from anywhere. So when we have uh Irish Night, for example, is one of the big nights in Shilling Speakers. I invite Irish people who are all over the world to come and speak. And instead of being restricted to your local catchment area or having to pay for people to fly in and stay with you, uh stay with you or stay in a hotel, I can get really, really experienced people from all over the world to come to our uh meeting and deliver sensational speeches that really captivate our audience. And the quality of meetings is so much higher. So, I mean, here's uh, you know, the your travels around the world will will give you experiences and flavors that you would never get uh in real life, and you're able to do them virtually from your own home. Um, what a sensational experience that is, too.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Well, the world's our oyster, isn't it? Oh, yeah. I think what you're really getting at with the delivery versus the content, you know, I agree, I think both are super important. Ultimately, what is going to get your audience engaged, and people want to keep coming back to Toastmasters?

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Yeah, I mean, uh I I it's part of what I do for a living. Like I'm I I'm very fortunate. I'm a PR guy by trade, so get you in the media, keep you out of the media. Um, but thanks to Toastmasters, I now teach people how to present for a living, and I'll go into organizations and I will watch people uh deliver their presentations, I'll suggest things that they can do differently, or I'll do them online and I'll watch how they uh how they deliver online, if they're doing interviews or if they're presenting their annual results. Uh, you can you can see by watching them areas where they can improve their communication skills. And one of the things that I suggest to them is whatever the most important point in your presentation is after you deliver it, pause for a second or two. Let it soak in with people, watch the reaction and you know, nod your head, particularly online. You know, people, if you stop talking online, people will think that you've frozen. So you need to move your head while you uh while you're making your point. In real life, fair enough, you can pause and close your eyes and not say anything at all, and it's very, very effective. But you know, keep your head moving when you're uh when you when you're making uh you when you're not saying anything and nod the way, and it's a really effective way of communicating.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Makes sense. The pair of the paws. Thanks for listening to today's show. One of the key elements of Toastmasters is evaluations. This is how we grow and improve, both by encouraging comments for things we got right and points for improvement. We all learn and benefit from these evaluations, not just the person being evaluated. So any feedback in the comments is greatly appreciated. If you have a Toastmaster story you'd like to share or would like to be on the show, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me at Toastmasters World Tour at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.