http://d71.org/docs/Conferences/2005autumn/judwshop

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Introduction Madam Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters. Perhaps I could start with a quick show of hands. How many of you have been a judge in a competition? And how many of you feel completely comfortable with what you have to do? Thankyou - lots of judges, and I suspect, lots of discomfort. Well in this speech, I’d like to help. As this is a Toastmasters meeting, my speech will be in the traditional three sections. First I’ll cover the role of a judge, and then go into more detail about the criteria you use when judging. Finally, I’ll give you some advice about the role of the chief judge. By its very nature the material is a tad dry and technical in parts - but if you can get through it, you can listen to Bob. Role of judge So, imagine someone’s asked you to judge at a contest for the first time. The most important thing is to follow the advice of Douglas Adams: don’t panic. You just need listen to the speeches, go to the voting slip at the bottom of your judging form, fill in the names of your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice contestants, write your name on the form and sign it. That’s all there is to it. To help you reach your choice, you can use the judging criteria in the top half of the judging form. These let you give each contestant a score out of 100, on sensible criteria like structure, voice and body language. I’ll say some more about these criteria in a moment. But it’s worth noting that you don’t have to score the contestants; and even if you do, you’re perfectly at liberty to ignore the scores altogether when casting your votes. Once the contest begins, you can just sit down and enjoy the speeches. After each speech, there’ll be a minute’s break to let you fill in your scores; after the last speeches, there’ll be a break of two minutes to let you complete the voting slip. Tear off the completed voting slip and hand it to the counters: and that’s all there is to it. A few important points to note. First, ignore the timing of the speech, even if the speech was obviously too long; even if it was too short. That’s someone else’s problem. Second, avoid bias and treat all the contestants equally. This can be tricky in area or division rounds, where there may be one contestant from your club who you know very well: the best advice I can give is just to do your best. Third, you must completely fill in your voting slip, otherwise it’ll be void: vote for three contestants, write your name on it and sign the form. Fourth, don’t talk about your votes afterwards: the whole process is meant to be secret. Finally, one of the judges is nominated as a tie-breaking judge. The only difference is that you vote for all the contestants: 1st place all the way down to 9th or whatever. The tiebreaking judge’s form is only used in the event of a tie after the vote-counting process; otherwise it’s ignored altogether.

04/10/2010

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